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Anyone considering a return to SLI?

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

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I was discussing the total lack of enthusiasm for RTX with @FlyingScotsman today, and SLI was mentioned. We both ditched it in favour of a single 1080ti last year, but given the apparent lack of upgrade path available right now a second hand 1080ti seems like an appealing move.

  • Option 1: sell 1080ti for £450 and put toward a 2080ti = £650 for 30% increase in performance
  • Option 2: buy 2nd hand 1080ti for £450 = £450 for ~70% increase in performance (where supported)

Anyone else been weighing up a return to mGPU? I swore I'd never go back, but with the 2080ti the only upgrade option it's starting to look tempting.
 
I keep seeing everyone say SLI is just so dead now and not really supported that well, i would go SLI too if it was working better.
 
Not that keen to be honest but if NVLink can put an end to microstutter and support is good in RT games, I would deffo go back to it.
 
The only problem i have with SLI atm is the Unreal engine, its very popular but rarely seems to have SLI support. I've had a couple of games recently that iv'e been looking forward to trying but as soon as i found out they were on Unreal engine i knew there would be no SLI support.
 
I’ve gone down the somewhat expensive road of two 2080ti’s... Hoping for interesting things from NVLink in the future. I had a pair of 1080s before and didn’t find the experience so bad.
 
I wouldn't bother personally.
I had two 1070 Ti's that I thought were working well until I looked closer. Turned out in one case I had Sli disabled and the game I was playing was still performing great. In two games I checked, Far Cry 5 and Prey, their utilisation dropped off a lot at 1440P and the performance gain was minimal. Note that FC5 was praised for supporting Sli on release but I found it rubbish when I checked. Others confirmed my findings too. Maybe it had been broken at some point. I now make do with one 1070 Ti until I decide what to do next. This one was meant to be moved to the spare box but decided to hold off buying another new GPU for now.
Worthing waiting now for a few weeks and I'd probably recommend keeping to the 10 series card you already have or splashing out on the 20 Ti after checking out the reviews and user reviews (forum members) and the deciding whether they're right for you, or just keep single 1080 Ti and skip the gen.
Buying used has risks too which seems less worth it IMO for an additional card.
Upgrading is never cheap. I think you'll be looking at > 30% performance from the 20 Ti as time goes by. RTX to play with, a nice bump from DLSS too. Next few weeks should reveal more info. Looking at a chart posted up in another thread, DLSS could be adding 35% so even the 2080 could be 40% faster than the old Ti in DLSS enabled games .
Cheapest option would be to make do with the good 1080 Ti for a while :)
 
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If nvidia's claimed up to 2x improvement with DLSS is true and the support list gets better then it'd be 2080ti all the way. I don't think the comparison is 1080ti SLI vs 2080ti, its sticking with a single 1080ti vs 2080ti, SLI isn't really an option unless you know the game(s) you mainly play actually support it.
 
I just moved over to SLI 1080ti Aorus Xtremes, they are unreal. I have tried about 40 games so far and had no performance issues or other general problems which is odd for SLI.
 
Is everyone now running 4K high hz monitors or something. I'm perfectly happy with one 1080ti at 3440x1440 (acer x34) and Gsync, after sacking 980ti SLI last year.

I've used SLI in various iterations for years, and I'm now a one card convert. No plans to upgrade until it's genuinely needed. Which unless I go 4K high hz, it just isn't. Is it just the usual upgradeitis?
 
I ran SLI setups from ~2005 through to 2013 and haven't really bothered with it since - still dabble from time to time with some of my older cards but my main rig is a single 1070. Back in the day with DX9 and earlier and even to an extent DX10 I could manage with some tweaking of profiles, etc. to get almost anything running on SLI with some kind of gains but with DX11 and newer there is so many shader features, etc. that either the link performance isn't there to transfer between cards if needed and/or depend on data from the other card from previous frames that it doesn't immediately have access to that has kind of gone out the window.

I'm not rushing to SLI setups these days - unfortunately as it is a fairly niche setup developers aren't putting much efforts into things like DX12/Vulkan explicit multi-adaptor which would side step many of the issues.
 
I wouldn't since a single 1080ti does fine at 3440x1440, if it was fully supported then i might consider it in the future but i doubt that will happen with an older gen card like the 1080ti.

I would save the money and then just upgrade when 3080ti (or whatever) comes out so you get atleast a 70% performance increase.
 
wunkley said:
Is everyone now running 4K high hz monitors or something. I'm perfectly happy with one 1080ti at 3440x1440 (acer x34) and Gsync, after sacking 980ti SLI last year.

I've used SLI in various iterations for years, and I'm now a one card convert. No plans to upgrade until it's genuinely needed. Which unless I go 4K high hz, it just isn't. Is it just the usual upgradeitis?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's upgradeitis. I've got the same set up as you, but I do have a budget to spend on the hobby which is why I'm looking.

I have a budget for a 2080ti but I just can't bring myself to do it, even if the reviews are positive I just don't think I'm going to be interested.

Maybe when the second hand market starts to see more 1080ti at £350 mark it would be worth a punt, but for now I think the majority opinion is stick with single 1080ti. :)
 
String said:
I was discussing the total lack of enthusiasm for RTX with @FlyingScotsman today, and SLI was mentioned. We both ditched it in favour of a single 1080ti last year, but given the apparent lack of upgrade path available right now a second hand 1080ti seems like an appealing move.

  • Option 1: sell 1080ti for £450 and put toward a 2080ti = £650 for 30% increase in performance
  • Option 2: buy 2nd hand 1080ti for £450 = £450 for ~70% increase in performance (where supported)

Anyone else been weighing up a return to mGPU? I swore I'd never go back, but with the 2080ti the only upgrade option it's starting to look tempting.
Click to expand...

Your Option 1 is false - everything we have seen officially so far (even on alpha drivers) is showing upto 55% increase in performance not 30%. With release drivers that is likely to increase in double figures.
Your Option 2 is false - I have never seen a 70% increase in performance from SLI - not even where it is supported, often the increase is as low as 20%.

So basically this just seems like another anti-2080 thread *yawn*.
 
String said:
Yes, it's upgradeitis. I've got the same set up as you, but I do have a budget to spend on the hobby which is why I'm looking.

I have a budget for a 2080ti but I just can't bring myself to do it, even if the reviews are positive I just don't think I'm going to be interested.

Maybe when the second hand market starts to see more 1080ti at £350 mark it would be worth a punt, but for now I think the majority opinion is stick with single 1080ti. :)
Click to expand...

Do it do it do it :)
 
There's a lot of SLI hate ;0. I've not run it in a long time, mostly due to significant cost increase and diminishing returns etc.

I wish they'd put a bit more effort into supporting SLI / Corssfire, but they churn out games so quickly these days, half of which aren't even fully optimised for one graphics card let alone two.

It just seems to less heartache going with a single powerful card :cool:
 
Paladine said:
Your Option 1 is false - everything we have seen officially so far (even on alpha drivers) is showing upto 55% increase in performance not 30%. With release drivers that is likely to increase in double figures.
Your Option 2 is false - I have never seen a 70% increase in performance from SLI - not even where it is supported, often the increase is as low as 20%.
Click to expand...

As far as option 1 is concerned, none of us know for sure until Nvidia lift the secret veil. I based the performance estimate on what I have read so far, you've read conflicting accounts (and added your own little exaggeration to suit your personal slant). Good for you.

As far as option 2 is concerned, I've had plenty of SLI experience in the past to know that your 20% jibe is a worst case scenario - yet you refuse to acknowledge the best case scenario. Yes, a very balanced argument - again, good for you.

Paladine said:
So basically this just seems like another anti-2080 thread *yawn*.
Click to expand...

It's not compulsory to reply you know, and in your case it would probably be best not to.
 
Paladine said:
Your Option 1 is false - everything we have seen officially so far (even on alpha drivers) is showing upto 55% increase in performance not 30%. With release drivers that is likely to increase in double figures.
Your Option 2 is false - I have never seen a 70% increase in performance from SLI - not even where it is supported, often the increase is as low as 20%.

So basically this just seems like another anti-2080 thread *yawn*.
Click to expand...

Plenty of tittles where we saw up to an 80% uplift in performance . my 970sli / 80sli and ti sli were major performers with the right profiles and games ... That's far less true for more modern tittles but still there are games out there that reach those figures with hefty CPUs in place .
 
String said:
As far as option 1 is concerned, none of us know for sure until Nvidia lift the secret veil. I based the performance estimate on what I have read so far, you've read conflicting accounts (and added your own little exaggeration to suit your personal slant). Good for you.

As far as option 2 is concerned, I've had plenty of SLI experience in the past to know that your 20% jibe is a worst case scenario - yet you refuse to acknowledge the best case scenario. Yes, a very balanced argument - again, good for you.



It's not compulsory to reply you know, and in your case it would probably be best not to.
Click to expand...

I haven't added any exaggeration, I have cited the figures from the only benchmarks we have seen so far - sure we don't have any proof the benchmarks are genuine but they do match up pretty well with official statements from Nvidia and developers (perhaps you need to read more instead of assuming that what you have read is the only information available?) and having an understanding of law (which seems to be severely lacking on this forum) I know that if Nvidia's official statements are false they are breaking the law (the FTC Act and various EU consumer laws) so I am more inclined to believe a company that knows the legal consequences from false statements could be very damaging for them (and lead to them being sued by their shareholders) than a bunch of people who seem to lack the very basic principles of objectivity required to even begin to look at this launch in a intelligent and adult fashion.

As for SLI - even in the days where it was widely supported performance was rarely over 35% - rarely. I stated in my first response that I have *never* seen a 70% performance increase with SLI (perhaps I should clarify that as 2-way SLI but since you are talking about two cards, I shouldn't need to) - so I am not refusing to accept best case scenario at all I am basing my reply on my own experience and I have *never* seen a 70% increase in performance so it is not my best case scenario, I have however seen *many* titles at 20% (and even below) improvement so my reply was entirely balanced.
 
It looks like we might need SLI for decent framerates at 1440p and higher with games supporting ray tracing, That in itself is sad as we were getting to the point where single cards had the performance available to make it so the vast majority of us don't need more than one anymore. The problem with that is that Nvidia and AMD need an excuse to make our current cards look like they're not powerful enough, enter ray tracing. My attitude to this is don't buy Turing and give it a couple more generations before even considering RT as an important feature I want to use. How different will it really make your games look?
 
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