Will 4-way SLI Titan X last me 5 years at 1440p?

r7slayer · 2 Jun 2015 at 07:52

No they will likley be gimped later when next gen comes. Then they will not be optimised as much for to make even newer cards look better than past sli.

*rattles cages and runs

:-D

Edit - ****in phone

Silent_Scone · 2 Jun 2015 at 07:54

Works better with decent grammar

snips86x · 2 Jun 2015 at 07:55

shankly1985 said:
No...
4x 980ti will though.

I would do this! 2 should be fine

Yaayuh! · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:01

My crystal ball says it should. Providing DX12 is good on them and further DX versions for that matter.

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:17

ALXAndy said:
Amazing how many people who think four cards actually works.

Apparently they do or I would not be typing this.

This important message was brought to you by a fat old fart using quad SLI TXs.

rare · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:19

Seems silly. You will be plaugued with SLI issues with so many cards, especially after a couple of years when driver support becomes non existent. Buy two now, save the rest of the money. In two years buy whatever top end card is out. Seems more logical.

rtho782 · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:22

Guys, you're all looking at this wrong.

OP didn't ask how well he would run the latest games in 5 years time, he just asked if 4 cards would last him that long.

The TX is a very well built card and should have no problems working in 5 years from now. Some even give 5 years warranty so should give perfect peace of mind.

You may not be running many games very well in 5 years, but the cards will work fine.

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:26

drunkenmaster said:
While I can understand the reluctance to upgrade computers in terms of cpu/motherboard because it does take longer to take out, clean up and put in new parts. A gpu change can take literally a couple of minutes including unplugging everything and putting it all back.

There is no reason to buy now for games up to 5 years from now.

What is the point of spending even if you went with 980ti's, over 2k for one year of having flaky but epic when it works performance at the expense of having 3-4 years of worse performance than you could otherwise have.

Lets say 5 years
1st year, unmatched performance
2nd year, 2 of the next gen cards will surpass performance due to scaling issues beyond 2 cards. 2 cards also works better in a hell of a lot more games than 4 games do.
3rd-4th year 1 next next gen card will match your current setup easily but in every game, with new features, smoother and with no sli issues at all.
4-5th year, a single next next next gen card will be beating your now 4-5 year old quad card setup handily.

Lets say 980ti's and £2200 all for great(when it works) performance for a year but meh performance the second 16nm chips come along. Your other option is

1st year 2x 980ti's £1100
2nd year 2x 1080ti's £1100 - £600 for the old cards = £500
3rd-4th year 2x 1180ti's £1100 - 600 for the old cards, £500.

By the third year you spend the same amount, have much more reliable performance less noise and faster performance. For any games where sli is plain broken you'll have double the performance the second year, 4 times the performance after that, etc.

This is also the single worst time to upgrade. End of 28nm, drop to 16nm next, HBM and 2-4 times the bandwidth, DX12 and architectures tuned to next gen engines with dx12 thought about upfront. At best if you absolutely(for a reason I can't fathom) have to have 4 cards and keep them for 5 years, wait till the first 16nm parts. 16/14nm + HBM2 is going to cause a massive shift in performance AND what devs can do with that bandwidth, new features to take advantage of it.

Let me see

2 years ago I bought the original Titans with 6gb of VRAM which is great @2160p.

This month AMD will launch their Fiji top of the range card with 4gb of VRAM which is not great @2160p.

So for 2160p usage my 2 year old Titans are a better option than AMDs latest Fiji cards.

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:29

rare said:
Seems silly. You will be plaugued with SLI issues with so many cards, especially after a couple of years when driver support becomes non existent. Buy two now, save the rest of the money. In two years buy whatever top end card is out. Seems more logical.

Both AMD and NVidia do support 4 way setups on their older cards contrary to what some people think.

rtho782 · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:32

Kaapstad said:
Both AMD and NVidia do support 4 way setups on their older cards contrary to what some people think.

I had 8800GTX 3 way SLI, and then 4870X2 4 way crossfire. The 4870X2s sucked but I don't think AMD had realised frame pacing was a thing back then.

formby · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:40

Yes but the odds are you will lose one of these cards to heat related problems, solder doesn't like temperatures this high over long periods and you're going to generate a lot of heat. Water cooling would be wise for longevity.

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:43

formby said:
Yes but the odds are you will lose one of these cards to heat related problems, solder doesn't like temperatures this high over long periods and you're going to generate a lot of heat. Water cooling would be wise for longevity.

Water cooling in use here.

Ch3m1c4L · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:29

having previously used quad, and now tri, I wouldnt really bother with more than dual. Upgrade more often with less cards is a better option. Unless money is no option, in which case, go nuts and have fun learning the ins and outs of your driver settings for different games (its easy after you've learnt it).

I found diminising returns worked liked this on average:
Card 1: 100%
Card 2: 180%
Card 3: 230%
Card 4: 250%

While my system still runs loads of stuff fine, certain high end new games struggle, a lot, now, and there are always games that don't work with SLI hardly at all, at which point you can be left running on one very outdated card.

a66as · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:31

buy yourself 2x 980ti ( £1200)

3 years later do the same with the top end cards

that will still save you money and give you top edge performance

snips86x · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:32

Kaapstad said:
If you max the game out @1440p you would be looking at about 65fps on a pair of TXs.

@2160p maxed with a bit of overclocking my 4 manage just under 60fps for Witcher 3 and about 78fps for GTA V.

At the moment though the drivers need work for Witcher 3 on 4 cards as it is not properly utilising them.

Are you talking game specific here?

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:37

Ch3m1c4L said:
having previously used quad, and now tri, I wouldnt really bother with more than dual. Upgrade more often with less cards is a better option. Unless money is no option, in which case, go nuts and have fun learning the ins and outs of your driver settings for different games (its easy after you've learnt it).

I found diminising returns worked liked this on average:
Card 1: 100%
Card 2: 180%
Card 3: 230%
Card 4: 250%

While my system still runs loads of stuff fine, certain high end new games struggle, a lot, now, and there are always games that don't work with SLI hardly at all, at which point you can be left running on one very outdated card.

Quad TXs work very well for me and even in the worst case scenario where there is zero SLI support I am still better off than most setups even if I am down to using a single TX.

Also your scaling figures are way out of date as both CF and SLI have moved on a lot since then.

Ch3m1c4L · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:37

he specifically states he is talking about witcher 3, and its in response to a question asking how they perform on witcher 3

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:38

snips86x said:
Are you talking game specific here?

Yes

I was talking about Witcher 3.

Ch3m1c4L · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:39

Kaapstad said:
Quad TXs work very well for me and even in the worst case scenario where there is zero SLI support I am still better off than most setups even if I am down to using a single TX.

Also your scaling figures are way out of date as both CF and SLI have moved on a lot since then.

While they are the best, obviously you are fine with one card. I meant in a few years time, when they are no where near the best.

I haven't noticed tri scaling get much better, but that might just be as the cards I have are so old now.
What would your figures be nowadays then? Averaging across games, not just the one or two games that scale incredibly well.

Kaapstad · 2 Jun 2015 at 11:50

Ch3m1c4L said:
While they are the best, obviously you are fine with one card. I meant in a few years time, when they are no where near the best.

I haven't noticed tri scaling get much better, but that might just be as the cards I have are so old now.
What would your figures be nowadays then? Averaging across games, not just the one or two games that scale incredibly well.

Most of the big title games eventually get good 4 way scaling but it can take a few months. Middle earth have just got a big improvement in performance but it has taken a while.