SteelSwitch

Hi everyone. I originally wrote this guide over at the kbmod forums, but as it turns out that forum is as dead as Aeris in FF7. This forum is more lively and thus I figured it'd be good to copy over my guide for all to read. This is a real-world, layman's terms assessment of what SLI does and how it works. I have never used and therefore cannot say that all of these will hold true for CrossfireX. Original guide (no longer updated there) is over at http://kbmod.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6212
 
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Basically, this is a guide meant to explain the upsides and downsides of SLI. It's mainly geared toward people who have midrange or last generation cards who wonder if they should get multiple cards or simply upgrade to a stronger one. This will list pretty much everything you will ever want to know about SLI in as great a detail as I can possibly create. It WILL BE A LONG READ. Also note that I have never attempted to Crossfire any cards, so this guide is MAINLY directed toward SLI, and while most of the ups/downs will be common to both SLI and CrossfireX, THIS IS NOT A CROSSFIRE GUIDE. There are large differences and I am not in a position to explain in-depth about CrossfireX.
 
 
First, I will clear up some fairly common misconceptions about SLI. 
 
 
What can I SLI? (970 SLI issue information and potential fix)
 
 
Now that that's done, let's get into the benefits of SLI. There's some benefits I'll list that most people don't actually know.
 
 
And now here come the downsides!
 
 
Resolved and/or no-longer applicable downsides to SLI (If you have SLI, read this section to see if any of these fixes apply to you).
 
 
My thoughts and suggestions section.
 
 
The bandwidth issue
 
 
 
I wish to add that as far as performance is concerned, two GPUs will far outstrip what one GPU can do, unless you're using two entry-level midranged cards and comparing a flagship enthusiast card (for example, two 960s versus a superclocked 980Ti). I DO like SLI, but SLI isn't for everyone and with the recent terrible state of SLI support that I see in a constant decline, as well as Maxwell and Pascal's anti-multi-GPU design, I can no longer recommend it to... well... anyone, really. If the current high end GPU isn't enough performance for you, SLI is the way to go, sure. But I would take a single stronger GPU over SLI-ing two weaker GPUs as long as that single GPU is 25% or more better than one of the weaker GPUs that would be SLI'd (I.E. I'd take Card A over Card B SLI if Card A is 25%+ faster than Card B no SLI). The amount of times with recent titles (that'll actually need GPU grunt, unlike many older titles with newer cards) where the single card will simply do a lot better than the SLI setup is going to be a very high number, and there is no guarantee that SLI will even properly work with nVidia Profile Inspector bits forcing (Dead by Daylight, for example, is a popular new title that will not get positive SLI scaling without flickering characters no matter what I do). This is, I believe, more the developers' faults than nVidia's, however nVidia's readiness to discard SLI is also apparent. They know it doesn't work well and are not showing intent on fixing it, as seen with GTX 1060s being incapable of SLI, despite being stronger than GTX 970s in raw performance.
 
Further to the above bashing of the state of multi-GPU, here is a nice article's summary page for performance in multi-GPU games in 2015 and later titles, to back up the statements I make in here, since I often get people telling me I'm deluded or some other kind of nonsense when I make such claims.
 
NB: I add to the benefits or detriments lists when I remember something, discover something or technology changes to keep the guide up to date. I wish I could speak more about Maxwell, but unless someone sends me a pair of maxwell GPUs and heatsinks for my Clevo, I'm not going to be able to test much, unfortunately.
 
If you want the vRAM information or mobile i7 CPU information guides, they're in my sig!
 
Moderator note: If you believe any information found in this guide is incorrect, please message me or D2ultima and we will investigate it, thank you. - Godlygamer23

I just wanted to put this out there, so here I go:
 
It seems to me that whenever an argument happens on the Internet, it always, always turns into a flame war. Very rarely have I ever seen a civilized argument on this forum. Nearly everytime it always turns into a flame war with one person calling the other guy an idiot and saying stuff like "Why don't you get your facts before trying to make arguments that have nothing to back them up." And then the guy who was flamed at shoots back at them and proves them wrong and calls them an idiot and says the same thing back at them. And I'll admit, I'm guilty of this but now I think I'll try to change for the better and stop trying to start/continue flame wars.
 
So why is this happening? Well I'm guessing it's probably because of the Internet. The Internet lets us have a conversation with someone even if they're not face-to-face with you. This is both a good and bad thing-the good part is that it lets you communicate with others no matter how far apart you are; the bad apart is you lose all the politeness and you become very uncivilized whenever an argument starts. Because you're not face-to-face with that person, you lose all your politeness and become an uncivilized monster capable of saying mean things that you normally wouldn't say. This is also why cyber-bullying is such a big problem.
 
The only people that I have seen on this forum that seem capable of having an argument without turning it into a flame war are mods. I guess there's a reason why they're mods-mods are those people that are capable of having a civilized conversation even when they aren't face-to-face with the person they're arguing with.
 
So what am I saying? Stop becoming uncivilized people every time you start or get involved in an argument. Become civilized people. Don't start flame wars. Start being a human again.
 
Also, use happy emoji! They're there for a reason and I feel like they always make your comment so much brighter whenever you use them!  
 
Thanks for reading, and hopefully you or whoever you might send this to gets something out of this!

I plugged a 4 pin floppy connector into a CD aux connector on a sound card when I was quite young. The blue smoke that made the sound card work escaped.