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Does GTX 1070 SLI look like a better buy than the GTX 1080?

My SLI 980 Ti setup was a great experience but heat and noise have made me want to move to a single 1080. If the high end 1070s end up around £350, I'll have to seriously consider cancelling my 1080 Hybrid (which is £689) and buying two 1070s.
 
The benchmarks also reflect the fact that the 1080 has a sizeable performance gain from the 980 Ti, contrary to much of the sentiment around here.

An overclocked 1080 may well provide a better experience overall than stock SLI 1070s. It's a difficult decision.
 
I ran SLI 970s but I probably wouldn't do it again, when it worked it was great but that was only about half of the time and usually less with the latest titles. Often I found performance was barely improved and occasionally worse until the drivers properly caught up.

My advice unless you're happy to spend hours troubleshooting (no offense intended, some people enjoy/don't mind this) is to buy the best card you can reasonably afford. The 1070 will be better value for sure but a 1080 will last you a bit longer and if you can afford it without missing the money too much or being strung up by the missus then go for it :)
 
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Nvidia (especially with the latest enthusiast key stunt) is moving away from SLI - I was there twice: 980x2 back in the day and 970s until moving to a single 980Ti. Never again.

Heat, stuttering, noise, power consumption. Plus you'll assume AAA game will support SLI on day one: hell no. It feels like nobody cares, even Nvidia sponsored games come out broken sometimes...
 
Mayh3M said:
The benchmarks also reflect the fact that the 1080 has a sizeable performance gain from the 980 Ti, contrary to much of the sentiment around here.

An overclocked 1080 may well provide a better experience overall than stock SLI 1070s. It's a difficult decision.
Click to expand...

But the problem is the GTX1080 has a massive gap over the GTX1070. The GTX670 in comparison destroyed the GTX580 and was quite close to the GTX680. Even the GTX970 was quite close to the GTX980.

Nvidia has made sure,that the 70 series card this generation won't be making the 80 series card sweat that much.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
But the problem is the GTX1080 has a massive gap over the GTX1070. The GTX670 in comparison destroyed the GTX580 and was quite close to the GTX680. Even the GTX970 was quite close to the GTX980.

Nvidia has made sure,that the 70 series card this generation won't be making the 80 series card sweat that much.
Click to expand...

Is that weird or surprising? It does cost much less :confused:

The past is the past, things change.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
But the problem is the GTX1080 has a massive gap over the GTX1070.
Click to expand...

It really isn't that massive, on average it's about 80% the performance for a lot less than 80% of the price.. I'm not sure what you were expecting. It's faster than a TitanX or a 980TI, I've not had an Nvidia card for many years but I'm impressed and it looks great on balance.
 
razorpakk said:
Nvidia (especially with the latest enthusiast key stunt) is moving away from SLI - I was there twice: 980x2 back in the day and 970s until moving to a single 980Ti. Never again.

Heat, stuttering, noise, power consumption. Plus you'll assume AAA game will support SLI on day one: hell no. It feels like nobody cares, even Nvidia sponsored games come out broken sometimes...
Click to expand...

Their not moving away from sli,

They just do not know what developers intend to use in dx12 if they use LDA SLI will remain the same as dx11.

As developers are lazy they will go the LDA route

Not had any sli issues since the 280gtx s

Noise would be the users fault you can have a quiet sli rig easily
Heat now days is no problem

Every game I've played in last year+ had sli day one

Examples
Overwatch beta
Rocket league
Witcher 3
Tomb raider
Sleeping dogs
Watch dogs
 
I just can't agree with any of that, heat and noise are both issues with SLI setups, you can mitigate them for sure but to say you can have a quiet & cool SLI rig "easily" is stretching it a lot and that's not accounting for the extra power draw you have to allow for.

I remember Sleeping Dogs being pretty broken with SLI at launch and The Witcher 3 was even worse so either you didn't play them on day 1 or picked them up well after release or have a dream setup that somehow managed to avoid the SLI performance issues that plagued the game for a long time.

This thread is one of many documenting just how broken TW3 was with SLI - https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833600/sli/the-worst-sli-profile-ever-witcher-3/

I eventually got it working many weeks later but I have feeling that only happened after some German chap started messing around with SLI bits. You only need to google "The Witcher 3 SLI" to see all of the top results referencing just how broken it was.
 
1. Noise, this has not been a issue since the 280GTX, even reference coolers are quiet at 100% load & i hate any type of noise. Aftermarket is even quieter
my Superflower PSU for example in Fan on mode at idle is LOUDER than 980s at 100% load. glad i can turn this off..

2. Heat heat is not a issue with SLI anymore and has been since the 480s both cards will stay well under the throttle limit in Aftermarket coolers if the Fan setup has been optimized.
you only max of 3 fans in the right positions to combat any heat issues
reference cards hit the their thermal in single config anyway. so no difference in SLI

if your overclocking more heat might lower your OC, but it not a Issue of SLI itself

Witcher 3
Witcher 3 had SLI day one over-wise that thread wouldnt be their, i took a week off for Witcher 3 & ran 1440p on 980s at 80fps not something i could have done with one card

If you actually read the thread its not just cut a dry that its bad many users are fine
Just a few as I'm on my tablet
"Seems to be ok for me 2560x1440p 980x2 all max and hair works on. 42fps single card 70-90s sli. Cant complain as everything max. Cards running at 99 and 97% usage. Have gsync enabled so might mask a few hiccups"


"Good scaling for me SLI 780 GTX.
Hight to ultra 2560*1600p 60 fps with SLI 30-35 without.
no AA, no hairworks, shadow medium, HBAO+ on, foliage hight and other to ultra."

Was the sli profile poor? Maybe but it was their & was updated the first week of witcher 3

My experience

280GTXs Ref
3870 Xfire Aftermarket
480GTXs Aftermarket
7970 Xfire Windforce
7990 x2 Reference
980s Ref
1080 aftermarket (might go SLI too)
 
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ricky1981 said:
I just can't agree with any of that, heat and noise are both issues with SLI setups, you can mitigate them for sure but to say you can have a quiet & cool SLI rig "easily" is stretching it a lot and that's not accounting for the extra power draw you have to allow for.

I remember Sleeping Dogs being pretty broken with SLI at launch and The Witcher 3 was even worse so either you didn't play them on day 1 or picked them up well after release or have a dream setup that somehow managed to avoid the SLI performance issues that plagued the game for a long time.

This thread is one of many documenting just how broken TW3 was with SLI - https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833600/sli/the-worst-sli-profile-ever-witcher-3/

I eventually got it working many weeks later but I have feeling that only happened after some German chap started messing around with SLI bits. You only need to google "The Witcher 3 SLI" to see all of the top results referencing just how broken it was.
Click to expand...

I've had 970 sli for over a year. Then suddenly one of my MSI cards died and I have single 970.

Strangely, I enjoy gaming more now than when I had sli despite the fact my fps dropped by quite a lot.

These are sli issues

-heat
-noise
- lack of sli support in games
- little things (enabling sli every driver change)
- microstuttering (!)

Nobody can argue with first 4 points. It's given. Heat wise one of your cards will be running 10-15C hotter (I have four £100 worth of be quiet fans that are "strategically" placed)...and that's a lot. You will get used to seeing your top card running at 80C+. But it's not a dealbraker. And it's nice to have extra "heater" :-) You can go on water but that's a lot of hassle and £.

SLI driver wise - it's is hit and miss.

Microstuttering - the worst issue imo, and reason why I won't go sli again.
I think there is so much disparity in opinions on sli is because of microstuttering. I think people see it differently. I am very sensitive to it, can see it straight away and dislike it a lot (I love 144hz/fps buttery smooth gsync gaming. SLI isn't going to give you that). But some other people may not be so sensitive to microstutter. But it's definitely there in majority of games I have no doubts about it.
my 2c
 
skywalker909 said:
I've had 970 sli for over a year. Then suddenly one of my MSI cards died and I have single 970.

Strangely, I enjoy gaming more now than when I had sli despite the fact my fps dropped by quite a lot.

These are sli issues

-heat
-noise
- lack of sli support in games
- little things (enabling sli every driver change)
- microstuttering (!)

Nobody can argue with first 4 points. It's given. Heat wise one of your cards will be running 10-15C hotter (I have four £100 worth of be quiet fans that are "strategically" placed)...and that's a lot. You will get used to seeing your top card running at 80C+. But it's not a dealbraker. And it's nice to have extra "heater" :-) You can go on water but that's a lot of hassle and £.

SLI driver wise - it's is hit and miss.

Microstuttering - the worst issue imo, and reason why I won't go sli again.
I think there is so much disparity in opinions on sli is because of microstuttering. I think people see it differently. I am very sensitive to it, can see it straight away and dislike it a lot (I love 144hz/fps buttery smooth gsync gaming. SLI isn't going to give you that). But some other people may not be so sensitive to microstutter. But it's definitely there in majority of games I have no doubts about it.
my 2c
Click to expand...

Thats the issue with sli for sure.
single card always is the better gaming choice.
 
Considering Nvidia have improved 2 way SLI support this gen, including the higher bandwidth bridge and what is expected to be better scaling... yes. Even with bad scaling, the SLI 1070s will always outperform a the 1080, since the 1070 is fairly close to a 1080 anyway. The only place it might not work will be games with no/terrible SLI support. Still, 1080ti would probably be on par or better than 1070 SLI. But that card is a long way off.
 
As I said in the other thread 1070 sli is the smart choice, Nvidia has already rendered the 1080 dead in the water with the 1070, 80% of the performance for about 60% of the price? Lol if your buying a 1080 right now i feel sorry for you, when you can buy 2 x 1070 for not much more and have a lot more power.

Dx12 mgpu support and Nvidia Sli support will soon become extremely good
 
smogsy said:
Every game I've played in last year+ had sli day one

Examples
Overwatch beta
Rocket league
Witcher 3
Tomb raider
Sleeping dogs
Watch dogs
Click to expand...

Only one DX12 game supports SLI, that can't be ignored. I'm happy the experience is good for you and all of your games work with it properly. I just don't understand why some SLI users try to ignore that there are several big recent games with no support and this is part of using dual GPU. How do they benefit from seemingly pretending there are no potential negatives of dual gpu support. I've tried the 6990, 690, 7990 and 295x2 and I will never try and portray that it's problem free.

Whatever developer or NVIDIA excuse there is, it's just not a given SLI will work day one and that's a fact that shouldn't be ignored or played down with "all my games work fine".

SiDeards73 said:
Dx12 mgpu support and Nvidia Sli support will soon become extremely good
Click to expand...

Yes but it's a shame that "soon" is anyone's guess. Until then it's not fun stroking your powerful SLI setup that uses only one GPU in some of the latest games.
 
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