Sett

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 Original guide (no longer updated there) is over at http://kbmod.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6212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

Haha that's all fine, I'm good with the technicalities. There's often a line where you simply CANNOT explain something in more depth or people just won't get it, this would be one of those things. But yeah, it doesn't make one card faster at all.

The easy way: Connect the power cord to the PSU, but keep the switch off. Touch any metal part of the cas before you touch any electronics. Done.
The careful way: keep touching the case (by your elbow, or whatever) while working. Stay away from anything plastic and don't move too much.
Tha crazy way: Wrap a piece of naked wire around your ankle and around some metal part of the case, or central heating radiator or pipe.
 
Or, you know, buy a $5 antistatic wristband...
But I never used one in 20 years and never killed anything with static.

Apples and oranges?

MSI Afterburner is a GPU monitoring/overclocking utility.
But a GPU overclok is unlikely to cause BSOD.
CPU or RAM overclock can, but if you went through the process of overclocking those, you likely know your way around system stability.
So in your case it's probably a driver error or faulty hardware. Next time it crashes on you make a note of the error code and/or device listed, that can help narrow it down a bit.

Neither. It's too noisy and take too much space on the desk, but it sucks in dust like nobody's business when sitting on the floor, so my baby Frankenstein sits ubder the the desk on old box, some 30-ish cm above the ground. Not that it helps all that much....

they aren't truly necessary anymore really, I'm sure jayz2cents did a video of him building a pc on his carpet to prove a point... if it's your first try then sure, its only $5 anyways otherwise i wouldn't bother.

The wheel is pretty old technology. I don't think it's going anywhere though.

That is ... surprisingly accurate comparison, whichever way you look at it (chicken and egg also comes to mind).
Enthusiast gamers won't buy them until there are games than make sensible use of them.
Developers will likely use it right away, but they still cannot abandon emulation until majority of people have them.
Mainstream gamers won't buy them until signifant amount of games start to look noticably worse without them, and until they become cheaper (or rather until the bump in visuals levels out with the bump in price).
nVidia won't make them any cheaper until they optimize the process which means until they are sure they can sell a crapload of them.
And round and round it goes...

You can track the bitcoins, that's the point of blockchain.
You can't track their owner, that's the point of Bitcoin.
Unless they are stupid enough to exchange them for $ in an ATM or something.

"All your secret are belong to us"