Honest SLI questions for SLI owners please :)

[RanxZy]

The 980ti will have a few less cores and 6gb of memory but both of these should allow a tiny bit more OC headroom than the TX making it very close.

Yup it should be pretty close. The only time I could see a real potential difference is with both options at SLI and having enough grunt to push past the 6GB frame buffer. Not all games really are capable of replicating this situation. Shadow of Mordor does come to mind if one wants to push frame buffer limits.

 

[ALXAndy]

Titan Black SLI user here and 4k.

Gaming is awesome and I rarely see any stutter at all. I am using Gsync though but even before that on a 1080p screen it was very smooth.

Certain games like Wolfenstein doesn't support SLI but that's a small price to pay for experiences like Dying Light and GTAV.

 

[RanxZy]

If you try and max out Watch Dogs or GTA V @2160p on a pair of TXs, yes it will use about 8gb of memory but you will be playing the game at about 30 to 35fps which is pretty useless.

Right, spot on. By the time you're pushing the frame buffer limit past 6GB with two card SLI you will likely be out of grunt.

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

2160p works great for me.

I'm not going to say you are wrong, since you do run multiple cards. But many tech sites still suggest running 1 card over 2 or more because of the issues with frame latency not always being consistent.

 

[llamadal]

Using 2 780s at 1440p and the only game I had stutter in was borderlands 2 and the pre sequal, wasn't game breaking, wasn't often and probably just poorly optimised areas.

Think rroff hit the nail on the head in post #14.

I find its good, works perfectly most of the time, but can require some fiddling.

 

[Poneros]

I think at this point in time you don't really go SLI/CF without Gsync/3sync unless you're looking to push performance at the expense of graphical fidelity, i.e. >60fps gaming. It does look like the equation will change with DX12 & Vulkan but I'd say that before those two make meaningful strides it will still be another two years.

I think in your case this doesn't matter at all, since the 980 ti by all accounts looks to be a Titan X Jr. just with less VRAM, which is still more than plenty, and quite a bit cheaper. So the choice seems clear.

 

[Kaapstad]

I'm not going to say you are wrong.

You can if you want to.

The thing with graphics is no 2 people have the same experience when looking at something. Some people are sensitive to stutter some don't like jagged edges some don't like something else.

For me I like maximum sharpness and good clear colours.

My other monitor is a 1600p Dell U3011 which is supposed to be very good but when I upgraded to a Dell 32" 2160p monitor the difference was like night and day.

 

[Five.Stars]

More than 6gb only really becomes a must have when you use 3 or 4 cards.

Using 2 cards there may be the odd occasion when having more than 6gb would be nice but 99.9% of the time you won't have the GPU grunt to use it.

If you try and max out Watch Dogs or GTA V @2160p on a pair of TXs, yes it will use about 8gb of memory but you will be playing the game at about 30 to 35fps which is pretty useless.

You can try maxing out Watch Dogs all you want - the game simply doesn't work with SLI. Horrendous. You would get better fps and frametimes using a single card.

Unless things have changed in the few months since I owned my SLI setup.

 

[AssaTM]

A 980Ti SLI setup is sounding very appealing to me right now then, especially when you consider I do not care about jaggies at all, obviously if I can up settings to remove them I will, but its no bother if I cant, so in that regard with less AA than other people would like to use, I can hopefully expect a nice frame rate in almost every game at 4k, and 1440p on my monitor especially, i'd like to hope so anyway if thats the route I take! haha

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

You can if you want to.

The thing with graphics is no 2 people have the same experience when looking at something. Some people are sensitive to stutter some don't like jagged edges some don't like something else.

Well regardless of who prefers higher resolution or lower resolution, i think we should all agree that multiple cards could be working better than they do currently i just hope DX12 makes a big difference, would benefit everyone who wants 2 or more GPU's.

 

[Kaapstad]

You can try maxing out Watch Dogs all you want - the game simply doesn't work with SLI. Horrendous. You would get better fps and frametimes using a single card.

Unless things have changed in the few months since I owned my SLI setup.

Runs fine on my 4 TXs.

 

[Ste]

The answer is simple. If you want maxed out graphics at 4k SLI is your only option.

There are some drawbacks but you're not gonna do it with even a single Titan X So might as well just go for it

 

[Kaapstad]

You can try maxing out Watch Dogs all you want - the game simply doesn't work with SLI. Horrendous. You would get better fps and frametimes using a single card.

Unless things have changed in the few months since I owned my SLI setup.

Watch Dogs maxed @2160p

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
18324, 229609, 68, 93, 79.805


GPU usage on 4 TXs

 

[N19h7m4r3]

A 980Ti SLI setup is sounding very appealing to me right now then, especially when you consider I do not care about jaggies at all, obviously if I can up settings to remove them I will, but its no bother if I cant, so in that regard with less AA than other people would like to use, I can hopefully expect a nice frame rate in almost every game at 4k, and 1440p on my monitor especially, i'd like to hope so anyway if thats the route I take! haha

Thank you for making this thread. This whole 980Ti or Titan X SLI situation has been driving me a tad mental.

All this is doing is leaning me more towards 980Ti Dual card SLI. Now let's hope the leaked price and performance is accurate.

 

[Kaapstad]

Thank you for making this thread. This whole 980Ti or Titan X SLI situation has been driving me a tad mental.

All this is doing is leaning me more towards 980Ti Dual card SLI. Now let's hope the leaked price and performance is accurate.

If you go 980ti SLI I think you will be very impressed as these GM200 cards are awesome.

 

[AssaTM]

That is exactly what im leaning towards as well, watercooling them at the same time to avoid any throttling, now lets hope the prices are kind, well, as kind as they possibly can be! haha

 

[varkanoid]

What is the definition of microstutter these days ? I thought it was regular freezes in frame display with very little gap between the freeze/stutter.

Anyway 4k here and 980sli dont see any stttttttttuttering.

 

[wunkley]

SLI issues are entirely game dependent. That is the long and short of it.

Some games are absolutely fine and have zero micro stutter. Some games just will not work on 2 cards without stutter/ micro stutter. I have years of experience with SLI and stutter and am pretty obsessive about it, and finding possible workarounds.

 

[AssaTM]

Let me make a mental note of your username then if I come across a game with a bit of stutter, cuz hopefully you'd already have the solution haha, SLI definitely sounds like something worth experiencing at least once just because of the pure power it gives over just one card

 

[CapitalOne]

Another vote for sli (TX in my case) especially with gsync - although I am only on a Swift not 4k. Easy setup (as long as you dont need a new psu) - plug in card and tick the SLI box. The only game I have seen an issue with is Dirt Rally with some stutter. It's pretty bad but I've not changed any settings so it's probably my fault. If it was terrible on a game i was desperate to play I would just untick SLI.