Regret with 2080ti SLI!

[ImpulsiveTech]

Hi guys, Im new here and i wish to share my recent experience with NVlink that i had which is a total waste of money and time. 

 

Let me take you through this entire money wasting / time consuming ordeal that i experienced 

 

So i have a gaming rig with a 9900k overclocking to 5ghz with a Aorus Waterforce 2080ti that was working perfectly fine. Really good temps and performance. 

 

After selling a few old hardwares i had some spare cash and the impulsive tech addict in me awaken so i came up with the idea of NVLINK despite seeing many horror stories online. 

 

Since it was impossible to sell my Aorus 2080ti as used to get a decent price in where i am, i manage to get hooked up with a guy who was selling another 2080ti (dont wanna mention the brand) simply because i already have 2x 240mm rads and getting 1 more only mean more headache for me , so i offered a trade with his air cooled card so that i can just get another air cooled card and not have to worry about rads and a gigantic case. At this point of time i have already made a $400-500 loss just by "downgrading it" to the same value of that used air cooled card

 

Next, i purchased a brand new 2080ti of the same brand for additional $1500

 

On top of that, i had to upgrade my MATX board to a ATX one that has 3 slot space, so i choose the Aorus z390 pro. I also needed to buy a new 1200w PSU, so thats additional $500 not to mention other charges such as delivery and etc

 

So when i got all the parts together, i assembled everything and booted up. Reinstalled driver and it auto detects SLI so its enabled. 

This is where the horror starts.. 

 

Temps are freaking crazy. On gaming load the bottom card reaches 80+ almost 90 while top card stays 60-70. Because of this, my GPU was underclocked badly. Im averaging around 1400-1600mhz after like 30m of gaming even with fan set to 90% (thats the best i can tolerate) 

 

The bottom card is the card that i traded in for and bottom card is new. 

 

I thought there must be something wrong with the bottom card so i tested it with single card config by removing one, this is the sad part.. the card that i traded my expensive high end aorus 2080ti waterforce for was not only a horrible downgrade but it turned out to be a really bad card. Testing both card individually, the NEW card that i bought was maxing out at 70-75 on full furmark load while another same card that i traded instantly shoot up to nearly 90. 

 

Not only was i getting shitty temps but in games even during the first 30 minute where my boost clocks are still "high", most games that i played (on 1440p) are scaling worst or if not the same except with lots of micro stuttering. 

 

Yes i did disabled gsync and other settings that may affect SLI performance but still no difference. On Battlefield V, FPS were 30-40 higher on single card compared to SLI

 

What could be the issue? low clock speed? bad scaling? i dont know. I tried few other games as well like Insurgency Sandstorm, GTA 5 etc and FPS are the same as single card except lots of micro stuttering. 

Playing insurgency sandstorm which is my most favourite, im getting average 140fps on max settings and during intense fire fight and wide open maps, im getting around 110-120. So i thought having a SLI could get me to maintain 140-150 FPS on max while averaging around 160-170, im not expecting 100 or even 50% scaling, just some improvments but no. I am aware that UE4 does not support SLI, but thats the whole point of nvlink isnt it? since its not technically SLI 

 

Some games only utilize 1 card that is extremely hot and running at 1600mhz lmao 

 

Not only did i wasted so much money on a new mobo + cpu + gpu and download my current one in a hope to experience perfect gaming , but i have 1 faulty card to deal with + a totally bad experience.

 

If performance was any better, i could have invested in a asus workstation pro with 4 slot spacing in a hope to get better cooling and a bigger case or probably mount a nzxt g12 kraken on both card but after what i have experienced, i have lost all hope

 

So i contacted the dude who traded in the card with me and explain to him that his card was having issues and asked if we could swap it back. At this point of time i have given up on SLI and only wanted my aorus back and sell the other new card , mobo and psu to recover my losses but that dude just straight up BLOCKED me. I know ive been cheated. He probably knew the card was shit all along and im god sent to save him from his misery 

 

Luckily enough i manage to sell the hot card to a guy who sells custom water cooling pc as a loss and also sold off my "new" card at a $350 loss.

 

Out of sheer desperation / regret and seriously not giving a F*** anymore, i bought another Aorus 2080ti Waterforce lol 

 

Reinstalled my old mobo and everything else.

 

Well despite everything at least i got a pretty lucky / lottery piece. Temp was 5 degree lower than my previous aorus and i can overclock it easily to +120mhz to achieve a constant 2100-2115mhz under load and max temp around 56 degree. 

Previous card i was only manage to get +85 core clock and around 2020-2050mhz gaming anything above that and it crashes. I score way higher in Timespy too. 

 

At the end of the day, here i am back to square 1 with the same hardwares as before with nearly $1800 in losses inclusive of  the value loss from my old aorus. Now im stuck with a z390 pro mobo and psu to resell to minimise my losses 

 

All this in vain of experiencing the most powerful gpu in SLI but ended up with nothing more.

 

An expensive lesson learnt today for me and also a humbling lesson to just be contented with what i have and be happy with it. I know for most average gamers out there, 9900k + 2080ti is way off except for enthusiasts 

 

Im sorry for the long rant. I dont mean to be negative. I might have made some mistakes along the way but pardon me, its my first time and im doing it all alone without any experienced guy to advice me but i did what i feel was right and straight forward in terms of installation and config

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, ImpulsiveTech said:

Hi guys, Im new here and i wish to share my recent experience with NVlink that i had which is a total waste of money and time. 

now i dont really need to read your wall of text to know what the contents are, because multi-card setups outside the realm of benchmarks is essentially useless. that is a sad reality, but that is the reality we live in

[PopsicleHustler]

I'm sitting here trying to guess what setup are you running. Because a single 2080ti is perfectly capable of running BF5 at 1440p max settings at over 100 FPS.

 

And if that is not enough, sell your one 2080ti and get a T-Rex instead.

[ThePD]

SLI has always been a mixed bag for people. I had a Lenovo Y500 that had a 750M in it, I then got the second 750M for the other side of the laptop and ran it in SLI no problems. I saw fantastic performance with SLI on the laptop. Granted, getting SLI at that time in that lapop was 125 dollars, not 1500 dollars for a 2080ti. SLI has always been like a massive gamble, especially at the pricepoint of the RTX lineup.

[Guest]

In 2019, SLI is for ePeen and nothing (for 99% of people) else.

It was never supposed to be worth it w/ RTX from a performance standpoint lol.

[ImpulsiveTech]

1 minute ago, PopsicleHustler said:

I'm sitting here trying to guess what setup are you running. Because a single 2080ti is perfectly capable of running BF5 at 1440p max settings at over 100 FPS.

9900k and 2080ti. I dont have dx12 or ray tracing on. All on ultra on 1440p with average 140-150fps 

[ImpulsiveTech]

Damn i should have seeked advice here before pulling the trigger. I raised this same concern before on another forum but got no reply. Should have just trusted all the reviews. I thought bad scaling means same performance as single card + extra FPS depending on the scaling %.. didnt know its that shitty bad

 

Anyway thanks for the fast replies guys.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Den-Fi said:

In 2019, SLI is for ePeen and nothing (for 99% of people) else.

tbh, why arent there cases where you can hide your real card, and then just buy older cards to show of in the front?

 

id buy

[ImpulsiveTech]

4 minutes ago, ThePD said:

SLI has always been a mixed bag for people. I had a Lenovo Y500 that had a 750M in it, I then got the second 750M for the other side of the laptop and ran it in SLI no problems. I saw fantastic performance with SLI on the laptop. Granted, getting SLI at that time in that lapop was 125 dollars, not 1500 dollars for a 2080ti. SLI has always been like a massive gamble, especially at the pricepoint of the RTX lineup.

Yeap i took the gamble and lost it lol 

[Guest]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

tbh, why arent there cases where you can hide your real card, and then just buy older cards to show of in the front?

 

id buy

Sounds like a neat DIY project.

[LukeLinusFanFic]

Sell it on eBay and cut your losses. You now know not to do it again...

[Princess Luna]

10 minutes ago, ImpulsiveTech said:

NVLINK

FYI... RTX Cards still uses SLI in every single way, only the connector type was standardized between Quadros that actually do have the real NVLink technology to make things more cost effective.

[GoldenLag]

Just now, ImpulsiveTech said:

Damn i should have seeked advice here before pulling the trigger. I raised this same concern before on another forum but got no reply.

a lot of forums have active hours, and if you miss that 15min to 1 hour window on the "recent" tab. you can be missed quite often. 

 

though even then LTT forum is often active enough to have people who respond roughly 24/7.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

Sounds like a neat DIY project.

would be doable if you can get a pcie 8x or 16x cable. 

[jones177]

I have had 2 SLI rigs. 980 ti and 1080 tis. Since I have 2 RTX 2080 ti they will be Nvlinked when the next best card comes out.

 

One card will always run to hot. That is one of the reason people use water blocks. I don't go water because I only run SLI for a couple of months.

 

Card 2 alway underperforms. About 25%  less than when it is on its own.

 

Driver updated can mess up SLI setups. RTX drivers destroyed my 1080 ti SLI performance for the first couple of months. By the time I bought my second 2080 ti it was back to normal again. I was not a big deal to me because I was having fun playing with my new 2080 ti.

 

If you play a game all the time that supports SLI/Nvlink it is worth it. If like me you have more than one gaming computer it is worth it.

 

 

[jones177]

1 minute ago, jones177 said:

I have had 2 SLI rigs. 980 ti and 1080 tis. Since I have 2 RTX 2080 ti they will be Nvlinked when the next best card comes out.

 

One card will always run to hot. That is one of the reason people use water blocks. I don't go water because I only run SLI for a couple of months.

 

Card 2 alway underperforms. About 25%  less than when it is on its own.

 

Driver updated can mess up SLI setups. RTX drivers destroyed my 1080 ti SLI performance for the first couple of months. By the time I bought my second 2080 ti it was back to normal again. It was not a big deal to me because I was having fun playing with my new 2080 ti.

 

If you play a game all the time that supports SLI/Nvlink it is worth it. If like me you have more than one gaming computer it is worth it.

 

 

 

[Tristerin]

Stopped when the wall of text continued:

 

Repaste the shitty GPU with some TG Kryo, bring those temps in line, get a better case with a side intake 200mm fan (my opinion) to feed the cards fresh breath of air.  Or just sell of the bad one and chalk it up to a learning experience. 

[DildorTheDecent]

1 minute ago, jones177 said:

 

Considering that OP intentionally didn't bother reading about SLi, I think they'd rather just whine about it not working on the forum.

 

It's much easier to contribute to the "x doesn't work because I don't know what I'm doing" than actually learning about something. Such as: what are driver profiles?