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Is SLI dead?

ChrisD.

ChrisD.

ChrisD.

Man of Honour
Joined
20 Sep 2006
Posts
36,907
I'm considering going back to SLI with another 1080 Ti. But I remember having a few issues with 980's and a lot of games just sat using one card. How is it these days?
 
Depends on the game's largely. For most the part support is non-existent so my additional cards usually do nothing, where there is SLI support it can vary in terms of scaling, so yeah, not much change. When it does work, scaling can be nice, Shadow of tomb raider in DX12 is a recent game with reasonable scaling (though that is not SLI, rather mGPU AFAIK) I have been playing.

But I Would just sell off that 1080Ti you have to be honest and put the funds you had outlaid for the second 1080Ti and just go for a single 2080Ti, would give a nice bump across the board without need to rely on SLI etc.
 
As I thought then.

Radox-0 said:
But I Would just sell off that 1080Ti you have to be honest and put the funds you had outlaid for the second 1080Ti and just go for a single 2080Ti, would give a nice bump across the board without need to rely on SLI etc.
Click to expand...

I'm concerned about the amount of RMAs and the fact I use watercooling. I don't want to get a card, put it in the loop to then rip it all out in case of a failure. Plus, there's the cost of it, about £1400 I think with one card, not sure I'll see such a massive improvement at 3440*1440?
 
ChrisD. said:
As I thought then.

I'm concerned about the amount of RMAs and the fact I use watercooling. I don't want to get a card, put it in the loop to then rip it all out in case of a failure. Plus, there's the cost of it, about £1400 I think with one card, not sure I'll see such a massive improvement at 3440*1440?
Click to expand...

Well the 2080Ti is what 30% ahead or so across the board in terms of performance, so will certainly see a benefit at 3440 x 1440 if the GPU is the current limit to your performance requirements not being sated (which is why I would imagine / hope is the reason your looking at a second 1080Ti in the first place?) Tweaktown does have a review at 3440 x 1440: https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8738/nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-review-seriously-buy/index16.html so around 30%-40% ahead, but need to bare in mind gap may be closer under water as tweaktown benchmarks are comparing the FE 1080Ti which limits things vs the 2080Ti FE cooler.

I would rather go for a 30%-40% consistent improvement in performance then having to rely on SLI scaling (which is of course rarely perfect) and which is all over the place and non-existent in many games and this is as someone typing this on a machine with a bunch of 1080Ti's in and had SLI rigs continuously for years (I also use if for non SLI purposes hence still valuable to me)

Dont' need to specifically get a £1400 GPU, just grab whichever model comes with a -A core in it, of which the FE for £1,100 is or I believe even the few models on OC which are less if your gonna slap a GPU block on it anyways. Flash the FTW3 BIOS if you want to crank up the power.
 
I looked into fps for UW, looks like a 20fps gain on avg pushing 120ish rather than 100ish.

I had sli 1080ti. Waste of money. Sitting on a single waiting to see how things pan out with rtx then getting an aio/hybrid. Used to be all about custom loops but aio are pretty good these days so not worth the hassle for me. As you say, swapping gear with a custom loop can be a pita.
 
Have had 1080Ti SLI and I wouldn’t bother. Some games see a decent improvement but most games was a minimal difference 20fps or so at 1440p with stuttering and worse highs and lows.
Some games the same performance or worse.
 
Doug2507 said:
How you liking the rtx @tyler_jrb ?
Click to expand...
Very much so far on the performance front.

Reasonable step up from a 1080Ti but not a massive one. RTX looks awesome but too much of a performance loss at the minute to consider in bfv. Still waiting on DLSS and RTX in other games as well which i think ill be more likely to use.

But so far im happy even if it is a tad on the expensive side.
 
Radox-0 said:
Dont' need to specifically get a £1400 GPU, just grab whichever model comes with a -A core in it, of which the FE for £1,100 is or I believe even the few models on OC which are less if your gonna slap a GPU block on it anyways. Flash the FTW3 BIOS if you want to crank up the power.
Click to expand...
Well that's the thing, with the amount of these cards dying I don't really want to get an FE card, put a block on, strip my loop, fit it all and it's broken. At least if I got an OcUK tech labs card or similar I wouldn't have to worry about fitting the HSF onto it again.

That said for the outlay, I don't think the increase is worth it for the 20 or so fps I would get. Think I'm going to wait for the next cards to come out.
 
ChrisD. said:
Well that's the thing, with the amount of these cards dying I don't really want to get an FE card, put a block on, strip my loop, fit it all and it's broken. At least if I got an OcUK tech labs card or similar I wouldn't have to worry about fitting the HSF onto it again.

That said for the outlay, I don't think the increase is worth it for the 20 or so fps I would get. Think I'm going to wait for the next cards to come out.
Click to expand...

Indeed its not worth the outlay, your paying a premium to get the best around, at the higher end always starts to cost more in relation to performance you get. However SLI is largely in the same camp here in that the card is either a paperwork, and / or you get poor scaling in those few games that do support it.

Best of luck either way!
 
I just sold my GTX 970 SLI setup and replaced it with a 1070 Ti (temporary upgrade til either sensible 2080 Ti prices or next-gen). Whilst on paper 'most' games support SLI, the better question is whether most of the games you play support it. For the past 6 months I've been playing Rocket League, Monster Hunter World, PUBG, and now BFV - none of those games support SLI and it's been a considerable waste for me.
 
I am very happy with GTX 1080Ti SLi. For the short period I had my RTX 2080Ti some titles that didn't particulary scale with SLi had around a 25~30% performance advantage over a single GTX 1080Ti. But those were stille very playable even on a single GTX 1080Ti in 1440@144Hz. However in the games I play that do support SLi and those where I via nVidia inspector made a custom SLi profile the GTX 1080Ti SLi were definitely running faster than the single RTX 2080Ti.

I'd say if you go for GTX 1080Ti SLi it should only be if you can get the 2nd card for a very good price, and also invest a bit of time with Nvidia Inspector to get the most performance out of your games in SLi. It's possible to make some games that don't really support SLi and give them a nice boost nevertheless with some adjust to AFR etc.

I have run SLi permantently since 2006, and the issues I have had with SLi can be counted on one had. Albeit in 2016~2017 multiGPU support in newer games was really lackluster. In 2018 it has improved again... but there is still a long way to go, and with the prices of the current RTX cards etc, and the fact that only RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Til support nv-link SLi I am pretty sure nvidia are slowly killing of multiGPU support.
 
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