970 SLI vs. 1080

[stooeh]

I have had 970 SLI since they launched and I find they are a very good fit for 1440p gaming. The performance of of a single 1080 is nice but for me its not enough of a leap for the money.

1070 looks much better value but hopefully I can wait until 1080Ti...

 

[P.B]

depends on how much it would cost to upgrade ?

 

[adbee]

depends on how much it would cost to upgrade ?

This is what people are not taking into consideration. I have just sold one of my 970s for £200. So two would be about £350 after eBay fees. You are now looking at around £250 for the upgrade not £600.

 

[Mayh3M]

This is what people are not taking into consideration. I have just sold one of my 970s for £200. So two would be about £350 after eBay fees. You are now looking at around £250 for the upgrade not £600.

At the very least upgrading to a 1070 seems like an obvious choice for SLI 970 users.

 

[Holst1981]

I have one 970 at the moment.

With second hand prices slowly dropping I could buy another 970 and go SLI without spending too much if I buy on ebay and take my time.

For those of you who are using it how much trouble is SLI?

I tend to want to play my games not tweak them, so I tend to use Geforce Experience to get the settings close and rarely tweak anything beyond that.

Will I need to mess about every time I buy a new game (lets presume I wait a month before buying for updated drivers and patched)
Or will "most" games just work (to a greater or lesser extent)

If it makes any difference I'm running a 5820k @4.4 on a Gigabyte gaming 5P motherboard.
PSU is a 650watt unit but ill replace it if needed.

Or am I asking a impossible to answer question where its completely dependant on the game......

 

[Mayh3M]

I have one 970 at the moment.

With second hand prices slowly dropping I could buy another 970 and go SLI without spending too much if I buy on ebay and take my time.

For those of you who are using it how much trouble is SLI?

I tend to want to play my games not tweak them, so I tend to use Geforce Experience to get the settings close and rarely tweak anything beyond that.

Will I need to mess about every time I buy a new game (lets presume I wait a month before buying for updated drivers and patched)
Or will "most" games just work (to a greater or lesser extent)

If it makes any difference I'm running a 5820k @4.4 on a Gigabyte gaming 5P motherboard.
PSU is a 650watt unit but ill replace it if needed.

Or am I asking a impossible to answer question where its completely dependant on the game......

Most games just work. But the cost of buying another 970, even a second hand one, should make you consider selling your own and buying a 1070 which will probably be around £350 for a decent model.

 

[Disco_P]

I have one 970 at the moment.

With second hand prices slowly dropping I could buy another 970 and go SLI without spending too much if I buy on ebay and take my time.

For those of you who are using it how much trouble is SLI?

I tend to want to play my games not tweak them, so I tend to use Geforce Experience to get the settings close and rarely tweak anything beyond that.

Will I need to mess about every time I buy a new game (lets presume I wait a month before buying for updated drivers and patched)
Or will "most" games just work (to a greater or lesser extent)

If it makes any difference I'm running a 5820k @4.4 on a Gigabyte gaming 5P motherboard.
PSU is a 650watt unit but ill replace it if needed.

Or am I asking a impossible to answer question where its completely dependant on the game......

You sound fairly similar to me. I had two titans for a couple of weeks about a year ago. After a day of running SLI I took the second card out and never put it back. I just couldn't be bothered with the wonky performance, thermals or noise,

It's fairly game dependant and the support seems to be getting worse. I had issues in GTA V and skyrim but bf3 and 4 were perfect.

 

[HACO]

You sound fairly similar to me. I had two titans for a couple of weeks about a year ago. After a day of running SLI I took the second card out and never put it back. I just couldn't be bothered with the wonky performance, thermals or noise,

It's fairly game dependant and the support seems to be getting worse. I had issues in GTA V and skyrim but bf3 and 4 were perfect.

NVIDIA is certainly putting less and less emphasis on SLI of midrange cards these days, to push people to buy higher end cards with higher margins. We should all expect SLI support to continue to get worse. NVIDIA isn't making dual GPU cards anymore because they need high performance scaling with SLI.

This is the era of fast single GPU cards.

 

[ricky1981]

Another vote to avoid SLI unless you love tinkering with drivers, settings etc (some people don't mind it but personally I'd rather spend that time playing games).

 

[Photolysis]

Another advantage with a single card is you get reduced frame times and more responsiveness. SLI effectively draws 2 different frames in (near) parallel but this has no impact on the draw time.

As another thread recently said, SLI is not bad in certain situations, but the uses are a bit situational. I've found the scaling to be quite good, but it can also be hit and miss, particularly with newer titles or those in development if you have an early access build or something.

NVIDIA is certainly putting less and less emphasis on SLI of midrange cards these days, to push people to buy higher end cards with higher margins. We should all expect SLI support to continue to get worse. NVIDIA isn't making dual GPU cards anymore because they need high performance scaling with SLI.

This is the era of fast single GPU cards.

I don't see 2x SLI going away. Remember if Nvidia can sell 2x cards, they make a lot more money than 1.

Dropping 3-4x SLI makes perfect sense because the scaling has always been bad. 2x scales fairly well.

If DX12 multi GPU support becomes a serious thing - I can see it happening since most CPUs have an iGPU, that makes 2x GPUs a very compelling upgrade, even if they're not strictly in SLI.

 

[adbee]

Another vote to avoid SLI unless you love tinkering with drivers, settings etc (some people don't mind it but personally I'd rather spend that time playing games).

What is all this tinkering about? I have had sli 670s and 970s and it either works or it doesn't. I have never been subjected to any tinkering.

 

[ricky1981]

When it doesn't work you can often use sli bits to force a profile from another game or you can try running elements from different driver packages. I'd say both qualify as tinkering and I've done both before and had success some of the time (probably 40% as a ballpark).

Edit: you can also try adjusting the rendering mode (how the frames are split between the cards) and there are various other minor settings that can take a game from unplayable to playable.

As I said, it's personal preference. When it works you can get great performance and relative value from SLI but it's certainly not as reliable as running a single card.

 

[HazardO]

I do wonder how many of the "I wouldn't touch SLI" people on this forum have actually used SLI recently. It's not scary or difficult.

I'm seriously considering upgrading my 970s to a pair of 1070s. In the worst case scenario, I'll get 980Ti like performance, and in the best case, I'll get 150% of the performance of the fastest single chip GPU available. I expect it will be the latter for most of the games I'm going to be playing.

Value wise, I should be able to get a pair of 1070 FEs for 133% of the price of a 1080 FE, but see gains of up to 150% (£800 vs £600).

The 1080Ti when it comes will probably be about the same performance, but it's not here yet, and before that we'll probably get a Titan at ~£1200 which will have similar performance (at 1440p) to a pair of 1070s.

There is no right or wrong answer to the "should I go SLI?" question, it comes down to a number of different points.

1) What resolution and frame rate you are looking for. Does the current single chip do enough for your needs? I'm looking to push average frame rates of 144fps at 1440p without compromising on quality settings.

2) What your current setup is. IMO, there's clearly not much value in upgrading from a 980Ti or 970 SLI to a 1080 for £600, so the next noticeable speed bump is either 1070SLI, 1080Ti or TitanNext

3) If considering SLI, are the cards you are choosing good enough individually to still have enjoyable gaming if a game does not support SLI, or in the unlikely event that one card fails. (If a single card user's card fails they have either nothing or intel IGP to fall back on)

4) What size case and PSU do you have. Clearly SLI is not suitable for SFF.

5) Does the *possibility* of micro stutter worry you. In my case no because of GSYNC

Each of us will have different answers to these questions, and therefore the choices will differ.

 

[adbee]

When it doesn't work you can often use sli bits to force a profile from another game or you can try running elements from different driver packages. I'd say both qualify as tinkering and I've done both before and had success some of the time (probably 40% as a ballpark).

Edit: you can also try adjusting the rendering mode (how the frames are split between the cards) and there are various other minor settings that can take a game from unplayable to playable.

As I said, it's personal preference. When it works you can get great performance and relative value from SLI but it's certainly not as reliable as running a single card.

Tinkering is fruitless. If it was that easy to activate sli support in a game Nvidia would just do it. If a game does not launch with decent SLI support, in my experience it never goes on to receive anything worthwhile.

Hmmm... If I had the choice between 970 sli or a 980 I would have the 970 sli. I would also have a better experience in the whole.

I think SLI is a bad idea when you are using two lesser cards, where one card is not really powerful enough alone. But when you are using higher end cards your second card is just adding bells and whistles.
I find that most games that actually need two 970s to Ultra tend to support SLI anyway.

 

[HazardO]

I should have added another example where SLI would be a poor choice, and that would be a PCIe gen2 system with only 2 8 way slots (Sandybridge).

A PCIe gen2 system with 2 full 16 lane slots is still fine though (SB-E).

 

[CalmB4Storm]

Hi, i'm new to the forums and just decided to register as i have been following the progress of the 1080s on here. I have run sli for the last few generations, 460s then 670s and am currently on 970s at 1440p. Personally i have had no problems at all as long as the devs impliment support for sli. For me and the main reason i have decided to go for the gtx 1080 over my 970s is because of the vram. In my experience 4gb at 1440p just doesn't allow me to have a smooth experience on ultra settings on many modern games. Hopefully the 1080 will allow me to have an uncompromised experience on ultra settings at 1440p.

 

[Reality|Bites]

I wouldn't say it's much better. A 200% increase would simply be a doubling of the frame rate, which is exceptionally rare. In fact the only game I played where I had almost double the frame rate was Dragon Age Inquisition. Most AAA games that supported SLI like The Witcher 3 gave me 60 FPS where I would get 35/40 with one card (150-170% scaling).

A lot of people who have a negative view of SLI seem as though they haven't used it recently. I'm glad I did so I got to experience it at least. From a performance standpoint, it's obviously great. From a value standpoint, it's poor (since scaling is far from 200% on average). If you're a person who plays games on release then SLI might not be a good idea. Heat and noise will always need to be taken into account also when air cooling.

Say you earned £10 an hour, if you got a 100% pay increase how much would you now earn? £20 right. a 200% increase would give you £30.

 

[HazardO]

Hi, i'm new to the forums and just decided to register as i have been following the progress of the 1080s on here. I have run sli for the last few generations, 460s then 670s and am currently on 970s at 1440p. Personally i have had no problems at all as long as the devs impliment support for sli. For me and the main reason i have decided to go for the gtx 1080 over my 970s is because of the vram. In my experience 4gb at 1440p just doesn't allow me to have a smooth experience on ultra settings on many modern games. Hopefully the 1080 will allow me to have an uncompromised experience on ultra settings at 1440p.

The VRAM is an issue in a few games at 1440p, however a 1070 would have solved that issue at a more reasonable cost. Anyway, enjoy your new card.

 

[Bigminimus]

I do wonder how many of the "I wouldn't touch SLI" people on this forum have actually used SLI recently. It's not scary or difficult.

I'm seriously considering upgrading my 970s to a pair of 1070s. In the worst case scenario, I'll get 980Ti like performance, and in the best case, I'll get 150% of the performance of the fastest single chip GPU available. I expect it will be the latter for most of the games I'm going to be playing.

Value wise, I should be able to get a pair of 1070 FEs for 133% of the price of a 1080 FE, but see gains of up to 150% (£800 vs £600).

The 1080Ti when it comes will probably be about the same performance, but it's not here yet, and before that we'll probably get a Titan at ~£1200 which will have similar performance (at 1440p) to a pair of 1070s.

There is no right or wrong answer to the "should I go SLI?" question, it comes down to a number of different points.

1) What resolution and frame rate you are looking for. Does the current single chip do enough for your needs? I'm looking to push average frame rates of 144fps at 1440p without compromising on quality settings.

2) What your current setup is. IMO, there's clearly not much value in upgrading from a 980Ti or 970 SLI to a 1080 for £600, so the next noticeable speed bump is either 1070SLI, 1080Ti or TitanNext

3) If considering SLI, are the cards you are choosing good enough individually to still have enjoyable gaming if a game does not support SLI, or in the unlikely event that one card fails. (If a single card user's card fails they have either nothing or intel IGP to fall back on)

4) What size case and PSU do you have. Clearly SLI is not suitable for SFF.

5) Does the *possibility* of micro stutter worry you. In my case no because of GSYNC

Each of us will have different answers to these questions, and therefore the choices will differ.

You also need to consider that you have to replace both cards when you upgrade. A 1 card solution is simpler.

 

[Mayh3M]

Say you earned £10 an hour, if you got a 100% pay increase how much would you now earn? £20 right. a 200% increase would give you £30.

Maths has never been my strong suit. Although that was just an oversight.