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State of SLI

FlyingScotsman

FlyingScotsman

FlyingScotsman

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I am considering upgrading to another 1080TI, but was looking for a lowdown on the state of SLI.
I recently upgraded from 2xTitan Blacks.
I game at 4K and play BF1, PCars, dirt rally and Dirt 4.

Cheers
 
Depends on the game as always, some scale decent, some crap, some not at all. For myself the games I play SLI scales decently enough, but would check around for the scaling you would see for the titles you play.
 
Radox-0 said:
Depends on the game as always, some scale decent, some crap, some not at all. For myself the games I play SLI scales decently enough, but would check around for the scaling you would see for the titles you play.
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Cheers Radox, I know Nvidia has dropped the ball with SLI recently, but like Josh mentioned 1080TI is a great card and can handle most things with ease at 4K
 
If everything you play now is running perfectly I'd say hold onto your money and enjoy what you have. If you down the line you start getting issues then Volta/Navi will be out and just go for that.
 
Molesy79 said:
If everything you play now is running perfectly I'd say hold onto your money and enjoy what you have. If you down the line you start getting issues then Volta/Navi will be out and just go for that.
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Yeah probably best Molesy, I managed to hold onto the Titan blacks for a while and resist the upgrade. They played most of my games at 4K albeit with some eye candy turned down. Plus a good SLI profile.
cheers
 
FlyingScotsman said:
Cheers Radox, I know Nvidia has dropped the ball with SLI recently, but like Josh mentioned 1080TI is a great card and can handle most things with ease at 4K
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Yup indeed, 1080Ti is a solid card and I expect most people are happy with the performance one offers.

JediFragger said:
It's ****ing dire atm, stick to the most powerful single card that you can afford.
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I agree that sticking to a single card where it offers enough performance is the way. However Is SLI really that much worse compared to past years in term's of support? Always rocked SLI and still do so and to be honest see not better or worse support then I have in past years. Its always been hit and miss and that's not changed. Being honest SLI for me, at least for games I have played has been solid.
 
Maybe it's me, but I really started to have some real issues with my 1080's about 8-9 months ago. Both with microstutter and games not getting the proper support so I dumped one til the Ti came out and now it's buttery smooth. I'll never go mGPU again tbh, at least until it gets a complete overhaul and issues are resolved.
 
In the games that do support SLI I've had no issues to be honest, no micro stutter that I've noticed and it runs silky smooth. Dirt Rally should run at 4K on a single 1080 Ti maxed out but scales very nicely with two cards. Dirt 4 for some reason doesn't support SLI at all and maxed out at 4K it definitely needs it.

I will agree SLI support has been getting worse lately, Dirt 2, 3, Rally and Showdown support SLI but Dirt 4 does not even after some game updates and Nvidia driver updates, really cheesed off with codemasters/Nvidia about that.

It's surprising Nvidia isn't really doing much about it as I thought they would like to sell as many cards as they can.

SLI/Crossfire really does need a big overhaul though.
 
Radeon85 said:
In the games that do support SLI I've had no issues to be honest, no micro stutter that I've noticed and it runs silky smooth. Dirt Rally should run at 4K on a single 1080 Ti maxed out but scales very nicely with two cards. Dirt 4 for some reason doesn't support SLI at all and maxed out at 4K it definitely needs it.

I will agree SLI support has been getting worse lately, Dirt 2, 3, Rally and Showdown support SLI but Dirt 4 does not even after some game updates and Nvidia driver updates, really cheesed off with codemasters/Nvidia about that.

It's surprising Nvidia isn't really doing much about it as I thought they would like to sell as many cards as they can.

SLI/Crossfire really does need a big overhaul though.
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Yeah have found that Dirt4 is maxed out at 4K running 50-55FPS, but is still well playable with G-sync, and being honest I don't think it's as nice graphically as Dirt Rally.
Hopefully Pcars2 is the same as the first, because that runs sweet at 4K with most of the eye candy on.
Yeah Nvidia have dropped the ball with regards to SLI, saying that the last driver I did notice had some SLI profile updates, first one I seen with that for a while.
 
Problem is the more advanced use of newer APIs developers make the more likely they will implement features that conflict with multi GPU simplistic example but if the data needed for the next frame is sitting on a different GPU to the one working on the next frame it might not be possible to transfer it fast enough to keep performance above that of a single GPU let alone see gains and there is only so much nVidia or AMD can do about that - it might be possible to force some work around in the driver or get the application developer to cooperate in using a different approach but sometimes there might not be any other way to go around implementing a given visual effect.

Developers do have the choice of using explicit multi adaptor to utilise additional GPUs in a way that works best with their application but I'm not sure the uptake on that will be that great especially if there isn't anyone leading the way.

Looks like nVidia and AMD will be looking at multi-module approaches to GPUs in the longer terms which for awhile will sidestep the constraints that saw multi GPU become popular but I'd imagine eventually the limits of that will be reached and then again it would be looking at ways of connecting clusters of GPU modules together which might come back to similar techniques as SLI and CF now.
 
The problem with 1080ti SLI on 4k @ 60fps is that you're paying North of £650 for what, an extra 5fps? Maybe 10? And that's best case scenario.

That's why SLI is turning into an irrelevance, it just isn't really required.
 
I ran sli on 3 generations of nvidia cards for 7 years before finally giving up and moved to a 1080, just isnt worth it anymore. Sli support has taken a nose dive in recent years and I had issues with sli and gsync.
 
Had 7950GX2, 8800GT SLI, GTX260-216 SLI, GTX470 SLI on my gaming PCs (and some other setups on the side i.e. 8500GT SLI for messing about with) and then gave up the writing was already on the wall by the time I moved to the 780GHz.
 
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