SLI Advice, GPU Cooling Advice

[HuLkY]

Hi All, do you still find it useful to do SLI? I mean the performance gain is not 100% since the scaling is up to many factors but I am talking someone who owns SLI GTX980 Ti or GTX980, GTX1080 and up till now how do you find the investment on the long run? is it up to your expectations? specially for Resolutions like 2K and above pushing refresh rates above 60Hz round 120Hz or even 145Hzspecially if you had a small screen and going to a top notch 4K Uber Ultra mega configured one (or planning a BFGD one).

 

[sneekypeet]

Look at the games you like to play most and what games you plan to look and see if there is mention of SLI support for them. The sad reality is that more and more titles are not designed for it. I run a 4K with a 60Hz refresh, and in most titles my 1080ti handles the job without the need for the second. This is with most if not all of the pretties enabled too!

 

[HuLkY]

Look at the games you like to play most and what games you plan to look and see if there is mention of SLI support for them. The sad reality is that more and more titles are not designed for it. I run a 4K with a 60Hz refresh, and in most titles my 1080ti handles the job without the need for the second. This is with most if not all of the pretties enabled too!

I have been doing some research about it and found that at 2K with all game features or above, or 4K, the scaling is doing much better even if the CPU is not THAT Overclocked, so I was thinking how such build is holding for any of the members who did it before (TT put the results of FC5 on 4K and 8K even, HUGE GAIN!).

Me myself used to have a Tri SLI GTX 570 with Ci7 875K Oced in the past, but I dunno the current status of such an option.

 

[ruff0r]

If you NEED 4k with Max Details, you will not get around 1080ti SLI , If you are looking for 2k and max Details a 1080ti will work good with some overclocking.

Cooling wise if you have the money go for the Hybrid cards.

 

[Melvis]

I run SLi GTX 970s and when games do support SLi it is glorious! and I find (Depending on your cases airflow) that blower style coolers work better in this situation, Mine are blower style and they never over heat, I dont even have a fan profile just let them do there thing and they never go over 80c. I also now play at 1440P which is nice but yes it is a shame when a game doesnt support it for me anyway that I have to lower some settings at that higher res since my cards are not as powerful as the ones your listing, you will be fine at that res with any of those cards and will get good bonus FPS in the games that do support SLi.

 

[HuLkY]

I run SLi GTX 970s and when games do support SLi it is glorious! and I find (Depending on your cases airflow) that blower style coolers work better in this situation, Mine are blower style and they never over heat, I dont even have a fan profile just let them do there thing and they never go over 80c. I also now play at 1440P which is nice but yes it is a shame when a game doesnt support it for me anyway that I have to lower some settings at that higher res since my cards are not as powerful as the ones your listing, you will be fine at that res with any of those cards and will get good bonus FPS in the games that do support SLi.

Interesting, what modern games you found out that don't support SLI?

If you NEED 4k with Max Details, you will not get around 1080ti SLI , If you are looking for 2k and max Details a 1080ti will work good with some overclocking.

Cooling wise if you have the money go for the Hybrid cards.

As per the last two months ongoing GPU weird market, I ended up with a Titan Xp with ASUS PG279Q, the thing is my system is MITX and a friend of mine is going to give me his Titan Xp for a very decent price that I might flip the case and the board and get into MATX world, but just thinking the odds and worth it or not (Breaking an Oath doing so xD).

 

[silkstone]

Hi All, do you still find it useful to do SLI? I mean the performance gain is not 100% since the scaling is up to many factors but I am talking someone who owns SLI GTX980 Ti or GTX980, GTX1080 and up till now how do you find the investment on the long run? is it up to your expectations? specially for Resolutions like 2K and above pushing refresh rates above 60Hz round 120Hz or even 145Hzspecially if you had a small screen and going to a top notch 4K Uber Ultra mega configured one (or planning a BFGD one).

I'm waiting for prices to come down to get a second 1080Ti that will future proof my computer. The problem is that the 1080Ti puts out so much heat, I need a hybrid card in order to keep the temps reasonable.

I was going to get one when they were only $900, called the shop, but they lied and said it was out of stock. The next day they raised the price of the card to $1300 I was so pissed.

 

[PcForge]

I've never had sli but in my opinion unless there isn't a higher end graphics card you can purchase its not worth the money.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I was running 980Ti in SLI, but it was a while back I had them running in the same rig. I think it was about 1.5 years back I pulled the second card out. It wasn't overkill for my setup, but I don't think it was necessary by any means.

I game a lot of the time on 5760x1080 (with bezel correction it's actuall 6000x1080) and a single 980Ti works well for me. I'm not what you would call a "graphics whore" so I have no issues turning settings down to get that 50+fps on games. I could max out any game I had at that resolution when I was running both cards in SLI.

I'd have to say that the extra heat and power draw has kind of turned me away from keeping the SLI setup this time around. I've ran a total of 6 different sets of cards in SLI over the years and I've had decent results overall so the heat and power draw wasn't something new to me, but it just kind of lost it appeal.

I suppose if I was a graphics whore or just had to have something to push the best results on a 4K monitor, then I'd have stuck with SLI. If I wasn't using my 5670x1080 and just had a single 1080p monitor, I probably would have kept my GTX 570 SLI setup a lot longer because they could still run a lot of games on high settings.

 

[Melvis]

Interesting, what modern games you found out that don't support SLI.

Ummm I dont have much when it comes to modern modern games, but I know I just got Vermintide the first one and it doesnt support SLI, but I have seen the Second one does. Fortnite doesnt support SLi, DOOM by memory doesnt, Shadow Tatics doesnt, but there might be profiles out there that could make those games work in SLi but I havent looked, best bet is to just google your games and see what comes up.

This is my first SLi set up since the 8600GT's I think otherwise I have run many crossfire setups like 4870X2's, 7870s, 280x's and for the most part I have enjoyed the performance boost when its there, but the 280x's and 7870 with the none blower style cooler just ran to hot and load and the driver support at the time for the 280x's was terrible would break crossfire with each driver update, 12 in a row, so I gave up and sold them and went back to Nvidia and been happy since.

That been said I have just built a computer to sell and its running crossfire 7850's and with there latest drivers and profiles built into there software, getting crossfire to work in games that dont normally run crossfire works really well to my surprise, they have made big improvements since the 280x days.

 

[HuLkY]

I'm waiting for prices to come down to get a second 1080Ti that will future proof my computer. The problem is that the 1080Ti puts out so much heat, I need a hybrid card in order to keep the temps reasonable.

I was going to get one when they were only $900, called the shop, but they lied and said it was out of stock. The next day they raised the price of the card to $1300 I was so pissed.

I am sorry about this bad experience I also had this in mind, my friend is giving my his Titan Xp for almost less than 1/3 the price... and it puts a lot of heat but can be managed, what screen do you use or plan to use?

I've never had sli but in my opinion unless there isn't a higher end graphics card you can purchase its not worth the money.

Back in the day it was a very good way to save cash and avoid the hustle of selling then buying, you just buy a second cheap one and here you go!

Ummm I dont have much when it comes to modern modern games, but I know I just got Vermintide the first one and it doesnt support SLI, but I have seen the Second one does. Fortnite doesnt support SLi, DOOM by memory doesnt, Shadow Tatics doesnt, but there might be profiles out there that could make those games work in SLi but I havent looked, best bet is to just google your games and see what comes up.

This is my first SLi set up since the 8600GT's I think otherwise I have run many crossfire setups like 4870X2's, 7870s, 280x's and for the most part I have enjoyed the performance boost when its there, but the 280x's and 7870 with the none blower style cooler just ran to hot and load and the driver support at the time for the 280x's was terrible would break crossfire with each driver update, 12 in a row, so I gave up and sold them and went back to Nvidia and been happy since.

That been said I have just built a computer to sell and its running crossfire 7850's and with there latest drivers and profiles built into there software, getting crossfire to work in games that dont normally run crossfire works really well to my surprise, they have made big improvements since the 280x days.

I also had Tri SLI GTX 570, Dual SLI 8800GTS G92, Crossfired Dual HD7870XT, 7970 GHz, Dual R9 290X, Crossfire scaling has been so well and I recall I ran AC Blackflag on 2K with all things tuned up.



I am having a chance to have a dual Titan Xp, might upgrade my screen to 4K HDR G Sync 120Hz later, the catch is that the Titan Xp is sold for a very good price but I will have to change my Mobo and Case for this, I am thinking out with you loud guys, should or shouldn't?

 

[er557]

I run 1080 evga superclocked acx 3.0 SLI since 2016 and my rig is still future proof, great investment for the long run. Any foreseeable game in the next couple of years and current games, run great @4k ultra, If that is your goal. I am vsynced most of the time and use AA and never worry about lag or stuttering, very smooth and recommended experience. Driver support is great and sli profiles pop up always fresh with new games

 

[HuLkY]

I run 1080 evga superclocked acx 3.0 SLI since 2016 and my rig is still future proof, great investment for the long run. Any foreseeable game in the next couple of years and current games, run great @4k ultra, If that is your goal. I am vsynced most of the time and use AA and never worry about lag or stuttering, very smooth and recommended experience. Driver support is great and sli profiles pop up always fresh with new games

Sounds so promising!!! do you have an photos / videos for your Rig? My CPU is Core i7 8700K OCed to 4.9GHz, would it be a bottle neck for these cards at 4K?

 

[er557]

Your cpu will push any sli combo superbly, top of the line six core @~5ghz will cope great with any resolution or setting. My cpu setup is irrelevant here as it is complete overkill and more workstation oriented for crunching and multi tasking, actually yours would benchmark better in lower resolution benchmarks, and certainly not a bottleneck. Of course you should consider the insane prices today, and the fact that such cards are already starting to age having been released in summer 2016. However, this is my timespy result along with overclock configuration

 

[cucker tarlson]

Have a look at this babeltech review of 1070Ti SLI

https://babeltechreviews.com/the-50-game-gtx-1070-ti-sli-review/3/

2017/18 games have terrible scaling compared to older ones.

If I'm counting correctly (I'm including 4K results only), it's:

- 6 out of 19 with negative scaling (!)
-3 out of 19 with less than 50% scaling
-5 out of 19 with 50-60% scaling
-5 out of 19 with 70-90% scaling
-1 out of 19 with perfect (100%) scaling

So only 6 out of 19 get you +70% scaling. And that's with a lot of (sometimes ridiculous amount, like 8x MSAA) of antialiasing used at 4K.

 

[er557]

as far as I know everything runs smooth, I never bother with scaling and support- worst case it runs on one card- I couldn't care less- as long as I get smooth 4k ultra @vsync for the large majority of titles, plus with sli you have the special vsync methods like fast or smooth, that I sometimes enable for faster fps.

 

[John Naylor]

SLI in one big respect has been a thorn in nVidia's side for years. It made infinitekly more sense to buy 2 x70s than a single x80 because you'd get 40% more performance for the same cost. Scaling was 70% with 9xx for example in TPUs game test suite but the big AAA games were 96+%. Yes there were games with no scaling, even a slight negative sometimes but they were rare and it really didn't matter... so what if a game didn't scale when it was delivering 88 fps with just a single card, the x80 was delivering 96. So was it worth being 40% faster than the x80 on average when fps was in the 35 - 70 range because games up at 85+, no one botheresd to put in the effort to enable SLI ?

Then something big happened.... AMD had nothing to compete with from the 1060 on up. After suffering cannibalized x80 sales (where they make more margins then selling 2 x70s) , nVidia had an option... what if a pair of X70s did not beat the 1080 at same cost ... cost of x70s went up.... scaling went down ... just 18% at 1080p... 33% at 1440p ... but strangely enough, at 4k, scaling was > 50%. This essentially made the twin x70 case untenable and the x80 the smarter buy @ 1080 / 1440p. Unfortunately... the 1080 Ti is still too weak deliver the hi fps that gamers want today w/ 6 of the 20 games in TPUs test suite unable to achieve 60 fps.

And now with the imminent release of the new 100 nit, IPS, 144 Hz HDR 4k screens, I suspect we will see that 50% grow a bit as nVidia will want to be the card choice for those aching to step up to these new screens. Most folks have stayed away from 4k so far I think as they have become accustomed to playing at 144 - 165 HZ. The 15% @ 1080 p => 50 % at 4k spread makes hard to discount that there's something intentional here ..

As for cooling, I have 2 issues w/ hybrids... most vendors are pairing their hybrids with their weakest PCB. In addition, mosy hybrids are GPU only leaving the memory and VRMs to be the chokehold. If ya don't like the idea of adding a full cover block ,MSI's 1080 Ti Seahawk (w/ EK full cover water block) is the best option. For twin SLI, I recommend a Swiftech 35x2 Pump (dualie), in single loop feeding CPU water block, and splitting the lines into 2 parralell feeds to the GPU blocks then recombining. Because of the large mass of the blocks, you don't need a large flow rate ... Im seeing 39C on each GFX card and 75C on CPU at max OC under stress testing w/ 5 x 140mm of radiator.

 

[RealNeil]

I'm the resident SLI junkie, I guess.

I have 980Ti SLI, 1070 SLI, 1070Ti SLI (starting on next Monday), and 1080 SLI. All are in Intel boxes with one being an i7-6700K, two i7-7700Ks, and an i9-7900X.
The way that I see it is that I get my GPUs for way below market prices, 'cause they're used when I buy them.

Having SLI capabilities is, as one posted before me, glorious when it's working. If it isn't turned on, you still have a nice GPU to power your games.
This may seem like pretzel-logic to some, but it's what I want, so I do it.

When my grandkids come to visit, I have four or five gaming PCs up and running for LAN games.

It is bad-ass!!

 

[trog100]

I'm the resident SLI junkie, I guess.

I have 980Ti SLI, 1070 SLI, 1070Ti SLI (starting on next Monday), and 1080 SLI. All are in Intel boxes with one being an i7-6700K, two i7-7700Ks, and an i9-7900X.
The way that I see it is that I get my GPUs for way below market prices, 'cause they're used when I buy them.

Having SLI capabilities is, as one posted before me, glorious when it's working. If it isn't turned on, you still have a nice GPU to power your games.
This may seem like pretzel-logic to some, but it's what I want, so I do it.

When my grandkids come to visit, I have four or five gaming PCs up and running for LAN games.

It is bad-ass!!

count me in the resident sli junkie group as well..

the scaling might work better in some games than others but i cant say as i notice.. all i know is that at 1440 which is the resolution i use any game i want to play i can without bothering about frame rate problems..

trog

 

[Hockster]

Did someone say SLI?

 

[cucker tarlson]

Why is your rear fan mounted as intake ?
I run open case too, and with one aib card only I noticed it does make a difference, there's a lot of hot air travelling upwards that needs to be dumped out the case, whether open or closed.

 

[steen]

Why is your rear fan mounted as intake ?

It's not. Front intake, top/rear exhaust.

 

[cucker tarlson]

It's not. Front intake, top/rear exhaust.

Sorry, my brain is still asleep.

 

[Space Lynx]

@Hockster that is a beautiful build mate. I still think you would have been better off with a single 1080 ti though. then sell the 1080 ti a month or so before release of 2080 ti, and pop her in. thats my plan anyway, even if it means taking a few hundred dollars loss every year, its what i always do. I require ultimate power! ONE PUNCH MAN! GO! Minion Rider Cycles for Justice!

 

[HuLkY]

@Hockster that is a beautiful build mate. I still think you would have been better off with a single 1080 ti though. then sell the 1080 ti a month or so before release of 2080 ti, and pop her in. thats my plan anyway, even if it means taking a few hundred dollars loss every year, its what i always do. I require ultimate power! ONE PUNCH MAN! GO! Minion Rider Cycles for Justice!

Saitamaaaaaaaaaaaaa xD

That's one sick build, do we have here a thread for SLI - Cf builds?!