• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

SLI vs Single card

GazEaton

GazEaton

GazEaton

Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2013
Posts
93
Location
Gutersloh, Germany
Hey peeps

Question:

Depending on a budget for example, say £450-500(ish).

which would be best to get?

1 card, or 2 in SLI?

1x EVGA GeForce GTX 980 SC "Reference Design" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (£500)

vs

2x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 ACX 1.0 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (£530)

Thanks :-)
 
I guess that really depends on you. Do you like tweaking, or do you prefer things just to work right out of the box?

You'll certainly see more performance from SLi (in most games). But be prepared to wait for patches and driver updates to get the most from your cards in the latest game titles.
 
Was in the same position and went for the two 970s as SLI today is pretty much perfect (I don't mind tweaking here and there, like with Ethan Carter); I guess it also depends on your monitor.
 
I chose two 970s over a single 980 , coming from a 780ti DHS clocked at 1266mhz I diddnt have much upgrade options . 80percent of my games use sli of the bat , 10% with other games sli bits , and the other 10% tbh are early access games like dayz that will only use a single card ... Even early access games like assetto corsa has an sli profile tho now . I don't think I'd go back to a single card unless I was blown away by single gpu performance now .
 
Bonjour said:
A single 980 leaves the door open to the possibility of SLId 980s further down the line.
Click to expand...

Yes, But what i've noticed is a lot of the cards availible today wont be availible in the future, as in the same design, being a tad OCD i wouldn't SLI unless it was 2 cards bought together.

I was only using those two cards in my first post as a referance.

Thanks :cool:
 
In terms of raw performance the SLI 970 will be way faster IF the game supports SLI. In terms of ease and guarenteed performance the single 980 may be a more solid option. Personally I'm going to be going for SLI 970 though :)
 
Just a thought that someone more knowledgeable can comment on, will the OP's i3 3220 be a major bottleneck paired with either card or sli?

Also if you're gaming at 1080p why not just get one 970 and see how it performs then get a second a couple of weeks later? Or one 970 and a new monitor?
 
I SLId 2 8800GTs back in the day, as they represented the best value solution at the time. We may be something similar at the moment with the 970s.
 
MoRT489 said:
Just a thought that someone more knowledgeable can comment on, will the OP's i3 3220 be a major bottleneck paired with either card or sli?

Also if you're gaming at 1080p why not just get one 970 and see how it performs then get a second a couple of weeks later? Or one 970 and a new monitor?
Click to expand...

Probably would be, but not massively, he will still see a big jump from his current 7850. Although, for 1080p60, I wouldn't bother with SLI. One 970 or 980 would be plenty.

More to the point his B75 motherboard doesn't support SLI, as it can't split the lanes to x8/x8, so it's x16/x4.

AMD allow crossfire to work like this, but not nVidia.

His PSU is also only a 500W model, with 34A on 12v (so 408W at 12v). This is NOT ENOUGH for 970 SLI, even if you say each card uses only 150W (and actually they peak at more than that) and the CPU 80W, there just isn't enough room remaining for HDDs, motherboard, RAM, etc.

So, 970 SLI would mean a motherboard and PSU and likely CPU upgrade anyway!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom