SLI or not?

[StarsMars]

I have a 1070 and was thinking about grabbing another used one.

It would be about $200usd for the card and sli bridge.

I run a 6600k so I imagine there would be a bottleneck. Will be upgrading when zen3 is available.

Power supply is 650w

 

So my question comes down to,is this a waste of time?

I want to do it for the sake of fun, playing with SLI for the first time and seeing what I can squeeze out of it.

How soon do you think two 1070's would be out matched by a single card for similar money? (200ish)

But I don't want to do it if it's completely obsolete to a single 2070 or something.

[Slottr]

It's a waste of money and time, SLI on the 10 series is an unsupported mess. If you want more performance get a single card, like what you said. Though I don't think the 1070 to a 2070 is enough of a jump to upgrade unless you really need RTX.

[StarsMars]

2 minutes ago, Slottr said:

It's a waste of money and time, SLI on the 10 series is an unsupported mess. If you want more performance get a single card, like what you said. Though I don't think the 1070 to a 2070 is enough of a jump to upgrade unless you really need RTX.

Yea, not interested in RTX currently.

It's more of a" because I can" reasoning. Kind of a project. But if I have two 1070's and they don't match up to a single 2080 I might just hold my dimes.

[Guest]

If you like wasting money then yes

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, StarsMars said:

Yea, not interested in RTX currently.

It's more of a" because I can" reasoning. Kind of a project. But if I have two 1070's and they don't match up to a single 2080 I might just hold my dimes.

The only issue is SLI compatibility. It's not so widespread, so you'll be stuck using a single GPU most of the time.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, StarsMars said:

So my question comes down to,is this a waste of time?

I want to do it for the sake of fun, playing with SLI for the first time and seeing what I can squeeze out of it.

Depends on what you want out of it. If it's just to experiment, play around with, figure out what works or not (because lots of people make assertions without backing it up), and you have the money to blow, sure, why not?

7 minutes ago, StarsMars said:

How soon do you think two 1070's would be out matched by a single card for similar money? (200ish)

It depends on the pricing and how good the generation jump was. The $200 video cards in the last few NVIDIA generations were able to compete with the $400 cards of the previous generation.

 

[Maxxtraxx]

19 minutes ago, Slottr said:

It's a waste of money and time, SLI on the 10 series is an unsupported mess. If you want more performance get a single card, like what you said. Though I don't think the 1070 to a 2070 is enough of a jump to upgrade unless you really need RTX.

agreed,

 

My take: buy a used 1080Ti and then sell your 1070

[asand1]

In some games a single 1070 will actually run better than 2 1070s. 

[Mick Naughty]

Havent played a game that sli doesn't scale greatly. If the system is ready to have another card slapped in, do it. If you don't mind selling stuff and buying something else, do that.

 

Too much work for me to sell my 1080's to get a 1080ti that isn't coming close to the performance of two 1080's.  And for the price of a working 2080ti, I can get a pair of 1080ti's assuming my midrage cpu could keep up, which I doubt. 

[stefnhawkn]

I was about to ask the same question like StarMars. I got a co worker who sold me a 1080 for cheap and has a second one for way cheap. But not same models. Both 1080s tho. And i was curious to if i should get it and will they work regardless of brand? So for example i have the gigabyte aurus and he has a evga gtx 1080 super clocked or something also to sell. Will those work as long as they are 1080/?

[StarsMars]

If they are both 1080's with the same amount of vram, to my understanding they should work. So say 1080 10gb and 1080 10gb.

Don't quote me on that.

[TahoeDust]

SLI is like the holocaust.  NEVER AGAIN.

[stefnhawkn]

 

1 hour ago, StarsMars said:

If they are both 1080's with the same amount of vram, to my understanding they should work. So say 1080 10gb and 1080 10gb.

Don't quote me on that.

Ya i think most gtx 1080s ive seen are 8 gb, So im just gonna scoop it up this coming friday. Im just curious to why some cards use 1 different connectors etc also. Figured they where all teh same board, unless they are for the extra fans etc. 

[Gix7Fifty]

What monitor/resolution/Hz will display your frames per second?

[StarsMars]

1 minute ago, Gix7Fifty said:

What monitor/resolution/Hz will display your frames per second?

Right now I have a 27' 4k samsung. 60hz

[Gix7Fifty]

Yeah your going to want to get another 1070 to keep those fps up on your 4k, provided you play triple A games. In retrospect I think a 1440p 144Hz monitor would have been more appropriate since I prefer fps over resolution, between 1440p and 4k. 

[Kalm_Traveler]

13 hours ago, StarsMars said:

I have a 1070 and was thinking about grabbing another used one.

It would be about $200usd for the card and sli bridge.

I run a 6600k so I imagine there would be a bottleneck. Will be upgrading when zen3 is available.

Power supply is 650w

 

So my question comes down to,is this a waste of time?

I want to do it for the sake of fun, playing with SLI for the first time and seeing what I can squeeze out of it.

How soon do you think two 1070's would be out matched by a single card for similar money? (200ish)

But I don't want to do it if it's completely obsolete to a single 2070 or something.

Keep in mind someone asks this exact same question on this forum pretty much every day. 

It's entirely probable that many of the people who respond with the now-typical "no it sucks" "it's a total waste" type of responses quite possibly have little to no recent experience with it on Pascal or Turing cards so their input is either outdated or out of ignorance.

 

To answer your (again asked pretty much daily here) questions: 

Nobody can tell you if something is a waste of time to you. That's like coming here and asking us what your favorite ice cream flavor is. Only you can figure that out.

 

SLI for fun on the cheap is a perfectly valid reason for wanting to do it - that was why I first tried it with 1080's (then 1080 Ti, Titan Xp and now Titan RTX). Having fun is all the excuse you need to do something you want to do.

 

Two 1070's probably won't be outmatched by something else at the $200 price point for a long time. They are already outdone by existing cards, but closer to the $600+ range even used.

 

My general advice to this daily question is always to look at SLI support for the games you play (most games have it to some degree, and many which launch without it eventually have it added - but there are definitely at least 20-30% of games which don't ever have any or at least not good SLI support). If all/most of the games you play have good SLI scaling, and you will benefit from higher FPS from going with an SLI setup (adding another identical model card in your case) then sure, decide if increased performance is worth whatever the cost is to you.

 

For people building a new rig, or who are definitely going to buy all new graphics cards/ a new card the most logical thing to do (in my opinion) is buy one of the most powerful card on the market. It will give you great performance in every game, and if you really need more FPS - after researching your games for SLI support - it might make sense to buy another matching card for SLI.

 

If you don't need higher FPS, there is literally no point in adding another card (example being if you have a 1080p 60Hz monitor and you're already able to maintain around 60fps or higher at all times with acceptable graphics detail).

[asand1]

My answer was based on a recent video by jayz2cents or Linus. Performance was literally less than the single card. In the last two years sli support has been on the decline.

[StarsMars]

20 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Depends on what you want out of it. If it's just to experiment, play around with, figure out what works or not (because lots of people make assertions without backing it up), and you have the money to blow, sure, why not?

It depends on the pricing and how good the generation jump was. The $200 video cards in the last few NVIDIA generations were able to compete with the $400 cards of the previous generation. 

 

I like this.

Either going to today or after ces

[Mick Naughty]

7 hours ago, asand1 said:

My answer was based on a recent video by jayz2cents or Linus. Performance was literally less than the single card. In the last two years sli support has been on the decline.

What video?

[i_build_nanosuits]

SLI is hit or miss...it won't work with half the games out there...and when it does work, half the time (again) it will have micro stuttering and/or artefacts that will make you prefer disable SLI

 

It's cool to play around with if you have money to burn...but I wouldn't consider a second card an ''upgrade'' per say.

 

In your shoes, sell the 1070 and get a used 1080ti....it will SLAY a 1070 SLI in at least 75% of the games

[Ebony Falcon]

I ran sli 980tis which are basically the same thing and it was great in every game I played that supported sli,

 

artifacting and stitteri g is a thing of the past with sli and anyone that says otherwise hasn’t used it recently 

 

it’s basically perfect now as far as that goes and scales anywhere from 30 to 70 percent in most games which puts u at 2080/ 1080ti performance 

 

defiantly worth it over selling ur card Andy buying a 1080ti etc 

[Mick Naughty]

I would still use sli on current gen stuff but it appears to be to taxing. 

 

The one game I actually play is a bit intensive. A pair of $200 cards get the frames I want. Doubt a $1200 card would do that but not gonna find out myself. 

 

You can actually try it and learn something and actually have an understanding of what people say when they talk about it. Or just be a parrot and say what ever Linus or Jay are saying at the time and have never tried sli yourself but feel the need to comment and spread it around.