The future of multi-GPU gaming?

W

Wag

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 29, 2006
Messages
1,352
Now that SLI seems to be on its way out, I wonder if the shift will be towards AMD for 4k gaming? You still need more than 2 cards for bleeding edge games @ 4k. Eventually that will change, but right now (and maybe for 1 or 2 more generations) this seems to be the way it is.

My 3 way 980Ti/4k setup has been a disappointment as SLI support from Nvidia seems to be nonexistent (especially 3-way).

What does the future of 4k (and above) multi-GPU gaming look like what with the shift to DX12 gaming on the horizon?
 
From the looks of it, AMD supports DX12 and Vulkan better than nVidia is doing, so if DX12 EMA becomes the norm, I do expect AMD's support to be better.

The problem is that AMD simply doesn't have a lot in the high end now, so it's really a "High end & shoddy support" vs "Mid-range & good support", which neither will get you there.

I am sticking with nVidia for now though, since nVidia has more raw power to pull it through DX12, and nVidia does better than AMD in DX11, which is still what majority of my games run on.

I haven't pulled the trigger on 1080 yet, for the simple reason that, it's not enough, I am hoping 1080ti might be enough.

Maybe in a year's time this could all change.
 
I think the future viability of SLI/Crossfire sort of rests on whether or not VR developers support it. As the NV fun House demo shows, there's a massive boost going from one 1080 to 3x1080 (one for physics, though it's overkill even in Fun House) as long as the software is designed from the ground up to support multiple cards. No other game sees such a boost from adding a second card right now. We're nearly at the point where a single card can handle 4K gaming, VR is about to become the only application that actually demands multiple GPUs.

Multi GPU solutions have always been targeted at the very top end of the market, and when it comes to playing on a TV or a monitor, that market has been leveling off for the past half decade as GPUs continue to advance at a faster rate than the software used to interact with them. AMD and NV both seem to think VR is the future of their market, but it will be up to consumers to make the choice and developers to support it.
 
My concern is now that Nvidia has officially dropped more than 2-way SLI support in its flagship products, the previous generations (980Ti> multi-GPU support) will all but be forgotten. I can't even remember the last game that supported 3-way SLI on my setup. Now it seems like it will disappear completely.
 
Sorry, but coming from a crossfire setup, the future of multi-card gaming is bleak. I can't comment on SLI support, but of the games I wanted to play in recent memory (Farcry 4 was the final straw) too many had issues with CF support. At this point I'd need to see a massive shift from game developers to support CF / SLI before I even thought about touching more than one card again. If nVidia is backing away from SLI on reasonably priced gpus I really doubt we'll see game devs suddenly jumping on the bandwagon.
 
I think it is more of a case that SLI and Crossfire support is waning. I kind of think, both AMD and Nvidia are very keen to see EMA really tale off. There is a chance that EMA won't be held back by the limitations of the current dual card setups.
 
I'm running 1080 SLI w/ the HB bridge. I works great. Of course, not every game takes full advantage, but a lot do.
 
Maddness said:
Nice. I bet gaming would be awesome on 2 of those. Are they Founders or AIB's
Click to expand...
Using the MSI Gaming X actually. Got them mostly for the look, as the FE design just seems tired to me at this point. Haven't gone crazy doing SLI on/off A/B tests, but pretty much every game I've tried runs great at max settings, so I'm happy.
 
Wag, what makes you disappointed with your 3x 980ti's? I love my 2x SLI setup. I have had an absolute blast playing games like TW3, Fallout, and Doom at a solid 67 FPS.
Here, check this out -->
 
Diminishing returns after 2 cards. There is a reason nVidia is dropping support for mainstream users who want more than 2 GPU's in SLI.
 
SLI worked in DOOM with my GTX 690. Had to force it, but it worked.
 
capt_cope said:
Sorry, but coming from a crossfire setup, the future of multi-card gaming is bleak. I can't comment on SLI support, but of the games I wanted to play in recent memory (Farcry 4 was the final straw) too many had issues with CF support. At this point I'd need to see a massive shift from game developers to support CF / SLI before I even thought about touching more than one card again. If nVidia is backing away from SLI on reasonably priced gpus I really doubt we'll see game devs suddenly jumping on the bandwagon.
Click to expand...

SLI on "reasonably priced" GPUs was never a priority.
 
ir88ed said:
Wag, what makes you disappointed with your 3x 980ti's? I love my 2x SLI setup. I have had an absolute blast playing games like TW3, Fallout, and Doom at a solid 67 FPS.
Here, check this out -->
Click to expand...


... Because 3 way has always been terribly supported, even back to the 8800GTX days (when I was running it). The third card is usually unused, and that's assuming it isn't flat out dead weight.
 
I ran a 2x 780 SLI system back when I was playing modded Skyrim+DLC, Assassins Creed, and a couple of others I can't remember, and had no issues. I upgraded to the 980ti's, played Dragon Age Origins, Witcher3+DLC, Fallout4, a handful of others, and now Doom. All of these played with no issues; maybe I just got lucky. To be fair, I did have to wait for a while for a proper SLI config to be released for fallout, and had to choose "alternate frame rendering" in Nvidia control panel for DOOM. These were all pretty low drama issues, though.

Sounds like the wise upgrade path is to get rid of my 980ti's eventually and get a pair of the newest cards, rather than mess around with trying to score a cheap third card.
 
BF43Way_2560x1440_PLOT_0_0.png


BF43Way_3840x2160_PLOT_0_0.png


Excuse me while I go puke in a corner.
 
Any description in that article about the system that this was run on? When I designed my x99 system, I went with the 5930K specifically to have 40 PCIe lanes available. Systems with less PCIe lanes available could potentially bottleneck the GPU performance, especially in a 3 and 4way SLI situation.
For instance, this article (Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti SLI / 3-way SLI / 4-way SLI review: Ultra HD in Ultra quality | Hardware.Info United States) was run on a 5960X system. Scaling looks good on both bench marks and games all the way through 4x SLI, as long as we are talking about 4k res and ultra settings. Lower res/settings and it doesn't make much difference.
 
I predict multi-GPU support by game developers will increase because many computers assembled today already have 2 GPUs - one integrated, one discrete. The integrated GPU will take care of some lightweight tasks while the discrete GPU will do the rest. Yeah, it'll take a while for the developers to figure out how to best do it, and no we won't see perfectly additive scaling, but it will make a positive difference.
 
I don't completely understand why there isn't a way to make multi-gpu / SLI / Crossfire work with the API from the get go? Why didn't it happen back when? Was it just not relevant enough?

Perhaps we have just reached the point where process technology has eclipsed software. When software is pushing beyond the limits of hardware once more, we'll likely see it again. We haven't seen the likes of a Crysis type game that pushes the envelope beyond what's currently capable in a LONG time. Software is no longer the moonshot, the hardware is.

Coming from someone who has a multi-gpu SLI system (a laptop at that) and a single GPU system. Multi-gpu / SLI / Crossfire sucks right now. I would never, ever do it again. It was a bad idea. It was a mistake. I should have spent the extra money on a more powerful graphics card to begin with as something was available. Right now there's almost no situation where a multi-gpu system is necessary. And at that the experience is extremely inconsistent, mostly unavailable, and scales quite poorly.
 
I'm almost perfectly happy with my SLI config. Way better that I went with SLI 980Ti than a single Titan X.
Sure some games require fiddling with Inspector (or trying to download already finished bits off the net), but it made my 4k gaming playable, a single 980Ti or Titan X or even 1080 would be unable to give me that performance. Maybe the new Titan X, but I think it will still be behind two 980Ti.
 
atmartens said:
I predict multi-GPU support by game developers will increase because many computers assembled today already have 2 GPUs - one integrated, one discrete. The integrated GPU will take care of some lightweight tasks while the discrete GPU will do the rest. Yeah, it'll take a while for the developers to figure out how to best do it, and no we won't see perfectly additive scaling, but it will make a positive difference.
Click to expand...

That's DX12's EMA, and from what limited previews you can get on google from the only game it is currently enabled on (Ashes of Singularity), it doesn't paint a pretty picture at all. My take away view is that it only works if the GPUs in question are similar in performance, IE it'll benefit the low end and maybe the highend, mid ranged systems (the typical single dGPU with iGPU system) would see little benefit.
 
Nebell: I have had the same experience, and really am happy with my SLI setup. Try for a monitor overclock, if you haven't already. I am getting a very stable 67fps on my low end samsung 4K monitor.
 
Nebell said:
I'm almost perfectly happy with my SLI config. Way better that I went with SLI 980Ti than a single Titan X.
Sure some games require fiddling with Inspector (or trying to download already finished bits off the net), but it made my 4k gaming playable, a single 980Ti or Titan X or even 1080 would be unable to give me that performance. Maybe the new Titan X, but I think it will still be behind two 980Ti.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my experience. Volta Titan will be the card 980Ti SLI owners can upgrade to for single card 4K. The new Titan X is a pricey side grade.
 
I'll definitely pass on the Titan X. No point in it.

2 way SLI on the 1080 is barely up to the task for 4k gaming on the bleeding edge games, and will probably won't take long for the newer games to overpower it.
 
Wag said:
2 way SLI on the 1080 is barely up to the task for 4k gaming on the bleeding edge games
Click to expand...
Not sure about that. I've been using GTX 1080 SLI at 7680x1440, quite a bit larger than 4K and getting great performance.
 
cybereality said:
Not sure about that. I've been using GTX 1080 SLI at 7680x1440, quite a bit larger than 4K and getting great performance.
Click to expand...
Yep, seems like a lot of people are of the view that video card power is the bottleneck at high resolutions. Even with a pair of 980ti's this is not the case. Monitor refresh rate and the need to enable vsync are the bottlenecks.
Try gaming with a fast SLI setup and you will quickly find that the tearing is unbearable, and the faster the cards, the worse the tearing is.
While enabling vsync cures this, it locks your fps to the monitors refresh rate as a maximum. So, no matter how fast your cards are, you will never get over 60fps (on today's 4K monitors). 980ti's, 1080's, titan's, who cares... never over 60fps.
Give me a 120hz 4K monitor, and THEN my 980ti's will be the bottleneck, but probably not the 1080's.
 
Games like The Witcher 3 struggle to get a consistent 50FPS @ 4k maxed out on a high end setup with 2x 980Ti SLI. I have no idea about the 1080.

Future games that push the graphical envelope should have similar problems on a SLI 1080 setup.
 
Wag said:
Games like The Witcher 3 struggle to get a consistent 50FPS @ 4k maxed out on a high end setup with 2x 980Ti SLI. I have no idea about the 1080.

Future games that push the graphical envelope should have similar problems on a SLI 1080 setup.
Click to expand...
Ummm, No. Thats not right.
Doom -->
Witcher3 -->
 
Doom doesn't support SLI (I assume this is the Vulkan version here) and I'm not talking "adaptive V-Sync" I'm talking plain v-sync. Adaptive V-sync disables v-sync at low frame rates.
 
Wag said:
Doom doesn't support SLI (I assume this is the Vulkan version here) and I'm not talking "adaptive V-Sync" I'm talking plain v-sync. Adaptive V-sync disables v-sync at low frame rates.
Click to expand...
Supported or not, I get a large increase in fps in Doom when I enable SLI. I did have to select "force alternate rendering" in the invidia control panel.
I tried Vulkan, and the fps on my system was significantly worse.

As for vsync, there are a couple of flavors, with adaptive-vsync and vsync being two of them. Adaptive is just supposed to kick in when things are easy for the cards, but hold back and let them do their thing when they are working hard. This attempts to limit the vsync penalty when your fps is below your monitors refresh rate. Regular vsync just imposes the fps cap blindly.
 
I dont think SLi is on the way out. I don't think it will ever be really.. it still works..
 
SIzzor said:
If multi-GPU was on its way out , why will microsoft designed DX12 with multi GPU with adding feature like Explicit Multi Adapter(EMA) and vulkan is going to support in future , its going no where.
Check out this article on Best features of DX12 and Vulkan on :
Best features of DirectX 12 and Vulkan Explained - Tek Grains
Click to expand...

You mean a feature getting added over a year after release. Doesn't sound like a priority. Didn't AMD say that at this point, nobody really knows how to even do MultiGPU for Vulkan. Not that Vulkan matters anyway.

Anyway, the big issue is who is going to pay the bill (and time). You have to convince developers to add MultiGPU support so the tiny amount of people using it will have it working, for free. Perhaps a 20$ MultiGPU DLC? ;)

They already fail to get DX12 paths for all IHVs not to mention the quality of said paths without IHV support. And you expect MultiGPU on top?
 
It's a good idea for gpu makers to sell two cards to every buyer instead of one. Given this simple universal point, it is surprising that optimization is not done on a greater level. It is sort of ironic given the profits left on the table.
 
thesmokingman said:
It's a good idea for gpu makers to sell two cards to every buyer instead of one. Given this simple universal point, it is surprising that optimization is not done on a greater level. It is sort of ironic given the profits left on the table.
Click to expand...

Because its not what consumers want, plain simple. And MultiGPU is still fundamentally flawed, more problems than good.

When the main task was moved from IHVs to developers. It went even further south due to the economic aspect.
 
Shintai said:
Because its not what consumers want, plain simple. And MultiGPU is still fundamentally flawed, more problems than good.

When the main task was moved from IHVs to developers. It went even further south due to the economic aspect.
Click to expand...

The thing with EMA is supposedly you will be able to use the onboard graphics on the CPU with the dedicated GPU. So there is a lot of people who would get more performance out of this. How much performance and how well this all works remains to be seen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top