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Should NVidia drop SLI, has it had it's day ?

Without SLI and 2x 980 Ti's there is no way in hell I can run GTA 5 at 60fps 95% of the time at 3325x1871 maxed out including advanced settings (FXAA with grass very high).

Scaling on that game is extremely good and I can get 98% usage on on both cards while maintaining a silky smooth frame rate and no stutter at all.

There is no single card at the moment that could run it at the settings I want at the frame rate I want, I doubt even Nvidia's next card could do it on its own either unless they manage to double the performance or more over a 980 Ti.

I have only been using 2x cards in SLI since the 780 Ti, then 980 and currently 980 Ti. Not once have I regretted it, and as long as the game has supported it I have had no issues at all.

With DX12 on the horizon and with how easily that is supposed to use multi GPU's, multi GPU's aren't going anywhere.
 
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To further add my two cents. I find I really notice the benefits of SLI after a driver update! Every time there is an update I almost always forget to reactivate SLI. Start playing games then ponder for an hour or so, without fail why the performance is crap. Witcher 3 being a prime example of this, activating SLI again, all lovely makes me feel its worth while :p

IMO I don't ever think we will get to a stage where one GPU will be enough to Max everything for those people who love every setting maxed.
 
Purley from a selfish pov I'm going to say yes that should. Multiple graphics card support is time consuming and expensive and only benefits a tiny minority of games which means the rest of us with a single card end up paying more for our hardware to cover the cost of SLI support so the minority can benefit.
 
My personal view is SLI will be needed more than ever with the arrival of quality DX12 games. From what I understand of it game devs can use DX12 to greatly increase image quality in their games if they use all the bells and whistles available with the api. The problem with improved image quality is it will require even more GPU grunt to do it and this is where SLI will be needed even on top level cards.

Big Pascal when it arrives will not be the answer either as a single card will not be fast enough to run some of todays games maxed @2160p.

There may be an argument that there are not that many hi rez monitors about yet but this will quickly change with the availability of cheaper 1440p and 2160p screens. Then there is VR which will also place a lot of demands on the GPUs.
 
I couldn't care less, I won't be going multi gpu again until they work just like single gpu's. No point in having it when drivers are not ready for when the game is released. By the time they release drivers I am done with the game.

They won't be dropping it because people would still buy even if support got worse than it is now. As long as it works on a few big titles a year, people will buy it as it makes them feel good. Due to the dominant position they are in, they would have to be mad to drop it.

Come to think about it, even if it supported no games, people would buy it just to bench. Lol :D
 
Problem is that the hardware is ahead of the game, it's the software that holds it back plus consoles hold pc back, if consoles had two gpu chips you can bet your bottom dollar that there would be decent multi gpu support plus no doubt video game development studios would adapt their game engines to suit multi graphics card systems.
 
Howling said:
Yeah, if you ONLY play Elite Dangerous then crossfire is definitely worse.. Even though Elite only takes the power of a 1980s calculator to max out graphics, not having crossfire support is definitely a huge issue :P
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Have you tried turning SS on? :p
 
Howling said:
Yeah, if you ONLY play Elite Dangerous then crossfire is definitely worse.. Even though Elite only takes the power of a 1980s calculator to max out graphics, not having crossfire support is definitely a huge issue :P
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Have you tried gaming at 4K?
 
I've not used SLI so I can't judge it. I can say, however, that multi gpu gaming really needs to be supported if they are going to start pushing VR where framerate is going to be so important. It's going to take a lot of grunt to power and they are going to need it if they can't pull something amazing out of the bag with single cards. I'm optimistic about DX12, but being realistic we might not see tangible benefits for a few years as engines get adapted to make better use of it.
 
NEVERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!


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Let's face it I think they sort of already have. The only times SLI has been fantastic is when they have had a dual cored monster available.

Same goes for AMD too.

I'm guessing it will eventually go the way of 3Dvision. What's the point at paying devs to code for something so few people use?

It's a shame, but then like 3Dvision most of it is out of their hands. If a game dev doesn't want to spend the time and money coding it in then them bodging it doesn't really help.

Plus the days of SLI configs worth having are also gone. Nvidia and AMD have both wised up to selling a low to mid range card with enough VRAM that can be paired to give the big card a slap. The last time I can remember it being worth it on Nvidia was the GTX 460 and GTS 450. Both could give their high end counterparts a slap (GTX 480 and 470). Since then Nvidia have made all but their expensive top end cards 2gb or less, whilst the high end cards have 4gb.

So that only leaves 4k owners who want to SLI two 980tis. And let's face it, what's the point in coding for them either, given there are so few of them too?

If AMD actually release this dual cored Fury card then you can bet for a time the drivers will improve. Other than that? I really wouldn't touch either solution with a barge pole any more. Toward the end my Titan Blacks had all sorts of SLI issues, especially with things like Gsync.
 
Radeon123 said:
*snip*
With DX12 on the horizon and with how easily that is supposed to use multi GPU's, multi GPU's aren't going anywhere.
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I dont think DX12/Vulkan is going to be our saviour as such as it places more of the control/coding into the hands of the game devs. From my understanding neither NV or AMD could do a "profile" as such to add as it's entirely in the hands of said devs how the hardware is used.
 
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