Went from 980 SLI to a single 980TI...

C

CruisD64

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
2,464
So I went from 980's in SLI to single 980TI, and I couldn't be happier. I recently purchased a ROG Swift to go with my 980's and it had been nothing but problems. Even prior with my previous screen, SLI just wasn't working well. When I had SLI 680's and 470's I never had problems, but something was up with my 980 SLI setup. AC:U, The Witcher, Dying Light etc all suffered from FPS being all over the place, and the max FPS rarely exceeded what I get on average with the 980ti. Anyone else have these problems? I mean I'm not going back to 980's, but having been an SLI user for a VERY long time, I think I may have been scared off finally.

What triggered it was the Witcher 3. 30FPS average with 2 980's at 1440p. Now I get a consistent 50-65FPS with a single 980TI. I guess the point of this post is to share my experience and see how 980's in SLI are working for others...
 
Did the same. I saw a notable improvement over 980 SLI in most of the games I play, not in raw frames but the performance is way more consistent resulting in smoother gameplay. There are some games like BF4 where SLI shined but they are few and far between.

I also gave a 290X CF a try before moving to the 980s and it had the same issues. Better scaling but inconsistent performance. You can mitigate the issues somewhat by using a frame limiter, but for me, I'm done with multi-GPU for awhile.
 
I am not impressed with SLI scaling and I am likely to continue with my single card setup until Pascal arrives.
 
RadXge said:
I am not impressed with SLI scaling and I am likely to continue with my single card setup until Pascal arrives.
Click to expand...

Yeah with Pascal it might be worth jumping in again. It seems like NV hasn't made any significant changes to SLI in a really long time.
 
My SLI 780ti's still solid... :D

Hopefully hold out till 2nd gen pascal!

These OC's im seeing on the 980ti's are looking pretty sweet.
 
Interesting. I'm currently running 290x in CFX for at 5760x1200 resolution. I've been thinking about upgrading and gave some thought to 980ti in SLI. Based on this thread, though, maybe a single 980ti would be ok - presumably a bit slower than 290x CFX but with less hassle/horrible drive issues associated with MGPU?

Anyone using a single 980ti at a comparable resolution? I think 5760x1200 is about 20% fewer pixels than 4k.
 
I had 970's sli on an x58 MB and it was HORRIBLE. My i7-920 was a stuttering mess with those cards. Upgrading fixed 80% of the problem.
 
I was considering SLI 970's for 1080P gaming (PCars and Dirt Rally). I've been nothing but happy with my 980 Ti. This confirms my decision.
 
Supermr2 said:
I had 970's sli on an x58 MB and it was HORRIBLE. My i7-920 was a stuttering mess with those cards. Upgrading fixed 80% of the problem.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, that could be it! I'm still on X58 with 5660 at 4.2. I was going to be upgrading to a 4930k very soon. I wonder if I should hang onto my 980's just to test that theory.

EDIT: But then there is x3sphere, who has a pretty burly system and experienced similar issues...
 
Last edited:
The only problem I worry about is this a major problem with this generation of cards? I'm planning on grabbing a second TitanX for 4K gaming, but if SLI issues are this bad, is there really a point?
 
KazeoHin said:
The only problem I worry about is this a major problem with this generation of cards? I'm planning on grabbing a second TitanX for 4K gaming, but if SLI issues are this bad, is there really a point?
Click to expand...

SLI simply doesn't work in some games (no or retrograde scaling, SLI Profile or no SLI Profile) but most problems stem from SLI frame pacing getting broken by various games due to either not having a true exclusive Fullscreen mode or a broken in-game vsync. Usually the solution is to force Fullscreen mode or enable vsync in the nvidia control panel.
 
dragonageinquisition said:
SLI simply doesn't work in some games (no or retrograde scaling, SLI Profile or no SLI Profile) but most problems stem from SLI frame pacing getting broken by various games due to either not having a true exclusive Fullscreen mode or a broken in-game vsync. Usually the solution is to force Fullscreen mode or enable vsync in the nvidia control panel.
Click to expand...

Which means even with multi card, 4K may be just too damn much to handle.

I want mah godamn 4K 60FPS gaming, damnit!
 
Wait....

In the witcher 3 were you unknowingly in full screen windowed mode? This is the game's default with SLI and only uses 1 card. I found this out the hard way.

I have SLI 970s and when the game defaults back to borderless windowed or whatever it's called I average 30 fps...switch back to full screen and low 50s.

I bet a lot of people are hit by this without knowing. I bet this was your problem. My younger brother has SLI 980s oc'ed and witcher 3 is locked at 60fps at 2560x1600.
 
QuiteSufficient said:
Wait....

In the witcher 3 were you unknowingly in full screen windowed mode? This is the game's default with SLI and only uses 1 card. I found this out the hard way.

I have SLI 970s and when the game defaults back to borderless windowed or whatever it's called I average 30 fps...switch back to full screen and low 50s.

I bet a lot of people are hit by this without knowing. I bet this was your problem. My younger brother has SLI 980s oc'ed and witcher 3 is locked at 60fps at 2560x1600.
Click to expand...

Yes, I read about this problem and fixed it to run properly in fullscreen, however the issues were still there. I'm beginning to think it's because of my X58 setup...

I have a machine with a 3770k that I can try it on. I just need a PSU that can run 2 cards. I found an AX860i on CL for 100 which I'm going to pick up and test against.
 
980s in SLI are horrible. Send them my way and put this bad experience behind you. :D
 
Use to own a pair of GTX 970's in SLI and my experience was horrible, was always getting inconsistent framerates and stuttering though my GTX 670's in SLI had less issues. Sold the other card because of it. Now running a single GTX 980Ti and my experience is much better. Multi GPU setups always have it's issues, I've had issues with both SLI and Crossfire.
 
CruisD64 said:
What triggered it was the Witcher 3. 30FPS average with 2 980's at 1440p. Now I get a consistent 50-65FPS with a single 980TI. I guess the point of this post is to share my experience and see how 980's in SLI are working for others...
Click to expand...

I had 970 SLI before moving to 980 Ti and the biggest change is that the 980 Ti doesn't have the occasional random hitch in framerate. Witcher 3 run just fine in 1440p as long as fullscreen mode is used instead of windowed or borderless.

Generally for me SLI worked well if you exclude any game specific issues (Far Cry 4 was on and off broken in SLI from patch to patch and SMAA still doesn't work on it). To be honest while I like being able to use G-Sync with DSR and MFAA now (DSR+SLI+G-Sync doesn't work and neither does SLI+MFAA), I maybe shouldn't have moved away from the 970 SLI. It ran quieter, overclocked really well, had no coil whine. With my MSI 980 Ti I installed an AIO cooler on it because I felt it was running too hot and loud when overclocked. Now it's of course cool and quiet but that was significantly more extra money spent than I had anticipated.

Going forward I think I'll get the next single card that is significantly faster than the 980 Ti and hopefully can fit my AIO cooler setup on that as well. Should be easy as long as Nvidia doesn't make huge changes to cooler mounting hole positions.
 
I recently went from SLI 680s to a single 970, and I will never ever go back to SLI. Just too much of a headache. I'm about to upgrade to a 980Ti in the near future. It's tempting just to get another 970 but my SLI experience was not good.
 
ChronoDetector said:
Use to own a pair of GTX 970's in SLI and my experience was horrible, was always getting inconsistent framerates and stuttering though my GTX 670's in SLI had less issues. Sold the other card because of it. Now running a single GTX 980Ti and my experience is much better. Multi GPU setups always have it's issues, I've had issues with both SLI and Crossfire.
Click to expand...

My last SLI setup was x2 650ti boost cards and I didn't have any issues with SLI which made me wonder why so many have problems with it, just got lucky i guess. I much prefer the single card setup now anyways as i get those other 2 mobo slots opened up.
 
I had great success on my 670 SLI. Now I'm running a 980 Kingpin, with another one on the way, purchased during the recent price drop. I'm looking forward to running SLI again.
 
Last edited:
I'm running 780 SLI / NV Surround /144hz and I have no frame rate problems or SLI problems.

However, getting HDMI audio working with SLI is nearly impossible - I had it working a while back but since I moved, I can't get it working again.

I'm thinking of selling my 780s and going to a single 980ti - running all 3 of my screens with Displayport and then HDMI to the receiver. I think I can use an HDMI input on one of my monitors as the 4th screen.

Is anyone running NV Surround + HDMI 7.1 Audio off of a 980ti?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top