Thinking about SLi 1080 Ti... Opinions?

[Lagbom]

Hello everyone. I've been a lurker here for a while and I finally decided to sign up on the forums. I've been building computers as a hobby for the past 5 years and I wanna tackle an open loop water cooled PC. For a few reasons, I want to build a crazy, awesome, powerful PC. I'm sure the reference 1080 Ti board will probably have a fairly solid PCB. So I think this will open a great upgrade path for future watercooling components. I've got a Msi Lightning780 Ti with a EK Block ready to go for now, but it's just lying around right now. I wanted to use it to practice building before grabbing new components. I didn't think Nvidia would drop a Titan XP with 8 less ROPs, 11GBs of RAM, along with the slightly cut down bus for any less than $899.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Dual 1080 Tis for a beast of a PC? I know it may seem a bit nuts, but I really badly want to make this computer.

 

[johnspack]

If I had the money, I'd say Hell Ya! I hope you have a 4k monitor, or it will be a waste....

 

[Lagbom]

I currently have a quad 1080p setup, but I plan on upgrading to triple 120hz 2ks eventually. I also plan on doing Blender work soon, once I get this computer together.

 

[Hotobu]

What's the point? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but with the performance that NVidia is promising the 1080Ti should be able to run any current game at max settings even in 4K. Unless you've got a (lol) dual 4K, >60hz 4K, or a dual 144hz 2K monitor setup then you wont even be able to see the increased performance. Seems to me it'd be best to buy one and then in a year or two when you aren't able play games with the settings you prefer just buy another one. If you take into consideration the potential headache of SLI at that point it wouldn't even be worth it and you could probably sell your card and then buy the best card single card at that time which would probably give you comparable performance to what you'd get out of an SLI setup at roughly the same price.

 

[Vayra86]

What's the point? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but with the performance that NVidia is promising the 1080Ti should be able to run any current game at max settings even in 4K. Unless you've got a (lol) dual 4K, >60hz 4K, or a dual 144hz 2K monitor setup then you wont even be able to see the increased performance. Seems to me it'd be best to buy one and then in a year or two when you aren't able play games with the settings you prefer just buy another one. If you take into consideration the potential headache of SLI at that point it wouldn't even be worth it and you could probably sell your card and then buy the best card single card at that time which would probably give you comparable performance to what you'd get out of an SLI setup at roughly the same price.

No man, the Titan X can't even hold steady 60 fps in some specific games @ ultra 1440p, and if we move forward one year, there will be lots more of those.

Remember, these cards just gain 30% every new gen release, it's same old same old. My 780ti is now doing just over the perf of a 970, which is just enough to comfortably push 1080p until I throw in a late 2016 title, and see 40-50fps tops.

That being said though, I would personally stay clear of SLI altogether, and stick to a single 1080ti. From what we know of it today it doesn't seem like a bad deal, although I do have questions about the asymmetrical VRAM setup which in all honesty seems like a very artificial way of capping performance and keeping relevance towards the Titan X.

11 GB gddr5x for me was all alarm bells going off. This is the trickery we'd expect in a cost effective solution (midrange), not a halo product. All the cards with asymmetrical or a-typical memory setups are underperformers, GTX 970 included. And SLI on asymmetrical VRAM is the worst possible choice to make.

 

[ppn]

Don't do it. Save for Volta. Nvidia can and will drop stuff the same way it has been doing since GTX 280.

 

[Komshija]

Combining two very powerful GPU's makes absolutely no sense if you don't pair them with at least i7 6950X or Xeon E5 2689v4, 64GB RAM and 4K monitor or dual 144 Hz 1440p monitors, because it will be unbalanced system.

 

[Agentbb007]

I had SLI Titan X last generation and this generation went for a single 1080. SLI was great for benchmarking and some games but many games didn't even use SLI which is why I went for a single 1080 this time around. I'm going to upgrade to a single 1080 ti when the MSI Gaming 1080 ti comes out, I've got a MSI 1070 at work and 1080 at home and love how quiet and cool they run.

 

[erocker]

SLI isn't that great currently. Do you have a need for dual GPU's?

 

[Toothless]

SLI is a waste, don't do it.

 

[EarthDog]

Combining two very powerful GPU's makes absolutely no sense if you don't pair them with at least i7 6950X or Xeon E5 2689v4, 64GB RAM and 4K monitor or dual 144 Hz 1440p monitors, because it will be unbalanced system.

I'd happily push 2 Titan XP with a 7700k... why do you think more, slower cores and slightly less IPC would help?

 

[Whilhelm]

I have had dual GPU setups from both Nvidia and AMD in my past 6 GPU upgrades; X1950 Pro CF, 3870x2, 4870 CF, 6950 CF, GTX 970 SLI, GTX 980 SLI. I have been a huge supporter and optimist of the tech but I feel like multi GPU setups are becoming a thing of the past, honestly support for new games has been getting worse then it has ever been.

At this point I would say don't bother. Just get the fastest single card you can get. There are so many constant and stupid annoyances to deal with that it is not worth the headache. Right now my second 980 is basically in there to look cool because 90 percent of the time I have SLI disabled. I currently only play BF1 and SLI has been completely broken for months now with no fix in sight.

Also, if you don't have g-sync your only option is v-sync otherwise it is an image tearing nightmare with SLI on and Fastsync does not work at all with dual cards.

 

[Toothless]

I have had dual GPU setups from both Nvidia and AMD in my past 6 GPU upgrades; X1950 Pro CF, 3870x2, 4870 CF, 6950 CF, GTX 970 SLI, GTX 980 SLI. I have been a huge supporter and optimist of the tech but I feel like multi GPU setups are becoming a thing of the past, honestly support for new games has been getting worse then it has ever been.

At this point I would say don't bother. Just get the fastest single card you can get. There are so many constant and stupid annoyances to deal with that it is not worth the headache. Right now my second 980 is basically in there to look cool because 90 percent of the time I have SLI disabled. I currently only play BF1 and SLI has been completely broken for months now with no fix in sight.

Also, if you don't have g-sync your only option is v-sync otherwise it is an image tearing nightmare with SLI on and Fastsync does not work at all with dual cards.

BF1 open beta used my SLI perfectly fine.

 

[Whilhelm]

BF1 open beta used my SLI perfectly fine.

Yeah it used to work awesome, they patched it around Christmas and it totally destroyed it. Everything flickers in game and gradually gets worse and worse until you cant tell what is going on. Also everything looks like its cell shaded. I am not alone with this issue.

Dice says they don't support it and it's on Nvidia to fix and Nvidia blames Dice.

 

[ERazer]

why dont you get those monitors first before thinking doing SLI, 1080p funny.

 

[Whilhelm]

Yeah a 1080Ti and a gsync 3440x1440 ultrawide would be the perfect combo.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Yeah a 1080Ti and a gsync 3440x1440 ultrawide would be the perfect combo.

Indeed, single fast GPU + GSync is your friend.

 

[Vayra86]

I'd happily push 2 Titan XP with a 7700k... why do you think more, slower cores and slightly less IPC would help?

Because 'balance' in some people's minds means an equal budget for CPU and GPU, or something like that.

It's just random bullshit.

 

[Vya Domus]

Alternate frame rendering aka what SLI and Crossfire currently use is a dying technology , more and more games are not SLI/Crossfire compatible. Could still be useful this generation of cards , but it will be soon on it's way out and no one knows what exactly will replace it and how is it going to work on current GPU's. So basically if you plan on building this monster of a PC for futureproofing , not a good idea.

 

[qubit]

@Lagbom While I agree that you can't have too much rendering power, I don't think you should bother with SLI. There's always been issues with it and it's future is now uncertain due to them, so that's an awful lot of money to drop on this. I had SLI 780 Ti cards for a while and it was a PITA at times. It's single card only for me from now on.

 

[trog100]

i have a 980TI sli sep up.. it works fine for me except for one thing.. its like having a 500 watt room heater inside my case..

from what i am told or what i read sli support on many new games is pretty much none existent.. all the games i have play fine on the sli set up.. sli support or not which is why i say "from what i am told"..

so sli isnt problematic but it may be wasted except for good benchmark scores.. my system scores 9700 in time spy and 23000 in firestrike but probably scales very poorly in games with poor sli support.. the games play fine but that is only because they dont need two cards to play fine..

i am toying with the idea of selling my pair of room heater 980TI cards on ebay and buying a single 1080TI.. but i would probably miss my high benchmark scores.. he he

it would also cost me £300 or so after factoring in the sale of the 980TI cards.. in many ways it would be a downgrade but there would be a lot more room inside my case..

i play 1440 so for sure a single 1080TI would do the gaming job just not the good benchmarking job.. it comes down to how much you want to spend and what rocks your boat.. there is no perfect answer..

trog

 

[Frag_Maniac]

What's the point? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but with the performance that NVidia is promising the 1080Ti should be able to run any current game at max settings even in 4K.

Yeah, but according to TPU's benches on the FE 1080 Ti, there are several games it can't do 60 FPS at 4k, including some pretty shocking results, like only 37.5 FPS in Mankind Divided. Of course screen size matters too though, which OP has not mentioned yet as far as I know. Smaller screens don't look as bad if you have to drop to 1440p.

Going forward, games are likely going to get even more hardware demanding. That said, while two 1080 Tis in SLI would be more future proof on games that DO support SLI, SLI in general is also a hassle, and doesn't yield consistent results. There are also many games that either don't support it at launch, or never support it properly, if ever.

I'm considering one aftermarket 1080 Ti (EVGA or ASUS likely), and upgrading from my Panasonic 32" TV, to a Sony 43". In games like Mankind Divided I can drop to 1440p and still get the same pixel pitch I do at 1080p on my 32". Yeah I know some insist that ruins texture quality, but that has not been the case on my 32" using GPU Scaling.

 

[OneCool]

Could always wait for Vega

Come on someone had to say it

 

[jboydgolfer]

I have an even better "why don't you?"

Why don't you buy two of the 1080 TI's install one in your machine & enjoy it, then send the second one to me.

 

[trog100]

from what i read the new 1080TI is about %60 faster than one of my 980TI cards.. benchmarks apart sli scaling is rarely that good.. maybe when a decently cooled ideally 2.5 slot palit version arrives i may buy one and ditch my sli set up.. maybe.. he he

trog