Is SLI worth it these days?

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I am thinking about buying another 1080ti ftw3 and going sli. Is it worth it these days for gaming? Are the drivers viable for sli? I haven't sli'd since the gtx 480's I had working out the local power plant! lol
 
Personally I feel that multi GPU for gaming has been dying a slow death for quite some time. Its just easier to drop in a high end single card and go. You get more consistent results across all games as opposed to some games actually scaling well and most not. If you use your rig for production , machine learning or some other GPU leveraged task maybe multi gpu is worth it. If its just for gaming just toss in the most powerful single GPU your budget allows and let er rip.

My 2c
 
I am thinking about buying another 1080ti ftw3 and going sli. Is it worth it these days for gaming? Are the drivers viable for sli? I haven't sli'd since the gtx 480's I had working out the local power plant! lol
I have two 1080 TIs, it can be great or you can one card doing little. Your not loosing game play or going below 1080 TI performance but at times you will be way faster than a 2080 TI. Don’t expect everything to scale or not have issues.

If you want least problems then a single card is the better answer, which you can actually do if you have two cards. Just that some folks have a hard time accepting there is an idle card doing nothing even though it is best for a particular game.

For me, getting a 2080TI I would be gaining performance in some things and loosing in others. Price wise it would be a wash, sell 2 1080TIs and buy a 2080TI.

My recommendation, sell your 1080TI and buy a 2080Ti.
 
Nope. Not at all, not even AAA titles support it anymore 90% of the time.
 
Driver support for SLI is the key here. If Nvidia has done its part and has a profile for a game you want to play in SLI then it may benefit you to have it. Sometimes it plays great other times it may cause more errors than it's worth. Question is do you want to take the chance? Another 1080TI will run you over $550. Plus with two cards your up to almost the price of a 2080TI. Only you can decide if it's worth it or not but ther are new features in the RTX cards that once are matured I think will be of great use in gaming. And surely the prices of these cards will slowly start coming down somewhat .
 
No, SLI is not worth it. I've been multi-GPU gaming for years but I recently sold my secondary cards.

Basically, you will gain points in benchmarks and in some supported titles. But it's a real hit or miss, probably most games do get some boost but many don't work at all.

There are a couple games with great support like GTA 5 and the Tomb Raider series, where you can see double performance. Most of the time you are looking at around 30% to 50% gain.

Which means if you upgrade to a better single card you are almost guaranteed the lower level of performance for most games with 2 older GPUs, aside from canned benchmarks and the handful of titles with real support.

Not to mention, there are odd bugs and glitches that can happen, microstutter, etc. It is just not worth it in the end.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm just going to stick with my 1080ti for now. As busy as I am these days, I just want to sit down and play instead of troubleshooting why I'm having issues with a particular game in sli.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm just going to stick with my 1080ti for now. As busy as I am these days, I just want to sit down and play instead of troubleshooting why I'm having issues with a particular game in sli.

That’s a good choice. I am in the same boat and I used to have SLI. Basically what cyberreality said, but also even if you do figure it out... a game patch or driver rev can break your game. It’s annoying when you load up your favorite game, only have 20 minutes, and find out 5 minutes in your fps is 30% below a single card because the last game update broke mGPU. Sort of ruins the point.

That actually bothered me more. If a game did or didn’t support it I can almost work around with profiles. Problem is a lot of games would support, then not support it, then support it again. You’d also have to generally wait a few months after launch for mGPU bugs to be resolved... shadow flickering is a common one.
 
2080ti is just the better choice IMO. There are very few games that scale well with SLI these days, not to mention you're missing the RTX features compared to the 2080ti.

I was in a similar situation and after looking at benchmarks the single 2080ti was the obvious solution.
 
Only sli if you need it for games at 4k.. though I've never really felt the need over a single fast 1080ti.

Though if ya got one of those expensive $1600 4k 144hz monitors then ya.

For ultra wide 1440 120hz screens you should still be fine with a single 1080ti. Though some games will tank those frame rates like the newer tomb raider.

I wouldnt mind playing with something new just for the fun of it but it's hard to move on to the rtx cards with all there issues! My 1080ti's are solid. And if I need more power for a certain game that can work with sli,I can just steel my sons 1080ti hybrid and run sli.

It's hard to think about a top end evga 2080ti ftw3 ultra for like $1400 or the copper version for $1600!!! When not too long ago that would be more then enough for 2 cards! Nuts.
 
Also besides some issues with sli.. (I'd do it in a heart beat if I needed it) theres also a heat issue with running 2 of these on air. Only do it if ya going water cooling or atleast buy a hybrid card or kit for the top card.
 
One last tip for the road!

IMHO, If you decide to buy a RTX card go Evga! If ya have any issues with the new card they have the best customer support! You get a new card within 30 days and after that a reverb but they will replace that card as many times as needed!
 
One last tip for the road!

IMHO, If you decide to buy a RTX card go Evga! If ya have any issues with the new card they have the best customer support! You get a new card within 30 days and after that a reverb but they will replace that card as many times as needed!

There's been at least one [H] member here who has had less than legendary support from eVGA; it seems that the best support so far has been from nVidia itself with their FE cards sold through the nVidia store. Now that failures seem to be less common, maybe the support from nVidia will drop.
 
Yeah, I almost pulled the trigger on the EVGA RTX 2080ti ftw3, but I just can't seem to pay double what I paid for my EVGA 1080ti ftw3 when that card is still working just great for me. I'm just going to wait for the next gen and see if prices go down and quality goes up.
 
As someone who had tried SLI for 2 2080 Ti FE's - a few major downsides are this: Even in a case with good airflow, they still thermal throttle, with the top card hitting 84c under load in games easy. Also, with so few games truly optimized for it, the benefit gained was extremely minimal. I switched to a single MSI Gaming X Trio and haven't looked back. Far better frequency stability and thermals.
 
Yes, heat is a concern. You basically have one card blocking the other and pumping in hot air.
 
It feels like much less of a thing nowadays. I was a huge SLi guy from the 6800GT all the way to the GTX970 ... always had a pair of what ever the current card was one level below the flagship.. except for the 8800GTX, I had a pair of flagship cards then. Heat and noise are issues.. You have to have good airflow to the cards or else the top card will cook. Literally attack them with air from the sides and bottom if you can. Or go water (ideally). There’s always that chance your game will not support sli also. I was thinking about doing the same with another 1080ti FTW3 but decided to take the RTX plunge and stick with a solo card. I’m selling my other card off and a few other cards and mem kit and cpu etc I have to offset the cost.
 
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