4x 980Ti vs 2x 1080Ti

[i_build_nanosuits]

Just now, Cheddle said:

I assume you meant "not" trying to bullshit people.

 

yes that's what i mean't i corrected my post litteraly one second after i hit submit...so,...you're quick hehe

[Droidbot]

Just now, Cheddle said:

SLI is what it is... its not a waste of time if you do it for the fun of doing it... if you do it seeking a huge imporvment to gaming perforamnce you will have a bad time...

 

Im playing Mass Effect Andromeda at the moment, I was getting around 40-60FPS on a single 1080ti, usually 60 but there were drops, with very rare drops to 35fps - now with SLI I am locked at 60fps. Is SLI WORTH going from 45-60fps or WORTH keeping all the ultra settings enabled? NO WAY! but to be fair you can have a great gaming experience on a single GTX1050 @ 1080p... 

That's surprising - considering iirc Andromeda was based on Frostbite, same as BF1, which has issues with SLI. It's not worth it for the average person. 

[Cheddle]

2 minutes ago, jjohnthedon1 said:

Sli has worked out great for me in litterly everything 

sooo you dont play:

Doom

Just cause 3

Rainbow 6 siege

Call of Duty 

Resident Evil 7

The division

Hitman

Gears of War

Battlefield 1

Conan Exiles

99% of VR titles

...

 

Just to list a few... sure it "works" in some of those games. but they do NOT see a higher average frame rate than a single card. The best you can hope for is custom SLI profiles (these usually do work), or a driver update at a later date.

 

Its really not fair to say 'SLI is great and works really well' when it really dosn't :-P its misleading people...

 

 

[jjohnthedon1]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

That's surprising - considering iirc Andromeda was based on Frostbite, same as BF1, which has issues with SLI. It's not worth it for the average person. 

Playing on 144hz gsync monitor it's worth it because every frame is important 

[Cheddle]

17 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

That's surprising - considering iirc Andromeda was based on Frostbite, same as BF1, which has issues with SLI. It's not worth it for the average person. 

yeah BF1 SLI worked at launch and on Beta but then a game update totally borked it... im getting very balanced GPU usage in Andromeda, its almost as good as rise of the tomb raider.

 

The avergae person has a GTX970... just saying. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

[jjohnthedon1]

1 minute ago, Cheddle said:

sooo you dont play:

Doom

Just cause 3

Rainbow 6 siege

Call of Duty 

Resident Evil 7

The division

Hitman

Gears of War

Battlefield 1

Conan Exiles

99% of VR titles

...

 

Just to list a few... sure it "works" in some of those games. but they do NOT see a higher average frame rate than a single card. The best you can hope for is custom SLI profiles (these usually do work), or a driver update at a later date.

 

Its really not fair to say 'SLI is great and works really well' when it really dosn't :-P its misleading people...

 

 

Res 7, the division and bf1and it works great on all of thies for me 

 

if u don't no what ur doing with sli or no how to edit profiles then maby it's not for you but I never claimed it was plugg in and play, nor that it was simpleton friendly 

[jjohnthedon1]

3 minutes ago, Cheddle said:

yeah BF1 SLI worked at launch and on Beta but then a game update totally borked it... im getting very balanced GPU usage in Andromeda, its almost as good as rise of the tomb raider.

 

The avergae person has a GTX760... just saying. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

It's working great for me in bf1

85fps to locked 144 

 

and firse res of the tomb raider is great in dx11 and super adorable in dx12

[Cheddle]

2 minutes ago, jjohnthedon1 said:

Res 7, the division and bf1and it works great on all of thies for me 

 

if u don't no what ur doing with sli or no how to edit profiles then maby it's not for you but I never claimed it was plugg in and play, nor that it was simpleton friendly 

 

Any simpleton can google "Nvidia inspector profile for XYZ game" It requires zero intelligence - Personally I use my PC to play games, not spend an hour or two perfecting the SLI profile for every title I play.

 

I find it hard to beleive you have BF1 working properly with good scaling and no visual flickering... You should send me your profile I would love to see

 

[Cheddle]

Just now, jjohnthedon1 said:

It's working great for me in bf1

85fps to locked 144 

 

and firse res of the tomb raider is great in dx11 and super adorable in dx12

 

rise of the tomb raider is excellent in DX11 - good scaling. DX12 with Gsync gave me stutter issues. 

[Droidbot]

Just now, Cheddle said:

yeah BF1 SLI worked at launch and on Beta but then a game update totally borked it... im getting very balanced GPU usage in Andromeda, its almost as good as rise of the tomb raider.

 

The avergae person has a GTX760... just saying. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

I know, I know. *970 btw. 

 

2 minutes ago, jjohnthedon1 said:

Res 7, the division and bf1and it works great on all of thies for me 

 

if u don't no what ur doing with sli or no how to edit profiles then maby it's not for you but I never claimed it was plugg in and play, nor that it was simpleton friendly 

Then it's not 99%.. 

[NumLock21]

First question to ask yourself is, are you willing to buy a board that can support 4-way SLI? No, then don't bother with it.

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

ahhh yeah...the division:

 

Rainbow six siege...

 

 

Scalling like that? huh...no thanks.

He said if it supported SLI, not if it scaled well

[BuckGup]

1 hour ago, Droidbot said:

I meant proper SLI configs. Fallout 4, Siege and Division barely touch the second card, DOOM doesn't use it at all and they patched in poor scaling, etc..

If you meant proper then I agree but technically they do support it

[Droidbot]

2 minutes ago, SamStrecker said:

If you meant proper then I agree but technically they do support it

Look back up, I corrected myself.

[Frankenburger]

12 hours ago, Droidbot said:

Then it's not 99%.. 

True, definitely not 99%, but that does raise an interesting point I've been pondering for a long time. How can someone be willing to learn how to overclock and test for stability, but then turn around and say "fu!@ SLI, I ain't gonna troubleshoot!"? It makes no sense to me.

 

Anywho, as others have said, 2x 1080Ti would definitely be more powerful in typical scenarios. In synthetic benchmarks, 4 way 980Ti slightly edges out over 2x 1080Ti.

 

https://us.hardware.info/reviews/7270/4/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-review-incl-sli-faster-card-for-the-same-price-benchmarksn3dmark-fire-strike--extreme--ultra

 

https://us.hardware.info/reviews/6292/2/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-sli--3-way-sli--4-way-sli-review-ultra-hd-in-ultra-quality-benchmarks-3dmark-fire-strike-extreme--ultra

[linustouchtips]

sli is never supported its a waste of money

[Somnax]

2 1080 TIs should be better in games.

 

That being said, I recently used microcenter's 30 day return policy to test 1080s in SLI for myself. When it worked it was either meh, or had higher frames, but more stutters. If I used dsr, I could get really good scaling at 2880p, but then I couldn't use my desktop or read the steam overlay so I just turned off SLI and later returned the second card. Will be getting a single 1080 ti soon.

[Droidbot]

6 hours ago, Frankenburger said:

True, definitely not 99%, but that does raise an interesting point I've been pondering for a long time. How can someone be willing to learn how to overclock and test for stability, but then turn around and say "fu!@ SLI, I ain't gonna troubleshoot!"? It makes no sense to me.

I watched no videos before I overclocked

 

5 minutes, boot to BIOS, 46 mult, 1.27v and boom I'm stable

 

SLI on the other hand takes hours to conf. a game and imho that's what scares away some users. 

[Frankenburger]

6 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

SLI on the other hand takes hours to conf. a game and imho that's what scares away some users. 

To be honest, if that's what you think, then you're objectively wrong.

 

More often than not, switching the SLI compatibility bits to a more compatible bit takes literally seconds if you know what string to use. There are a number of SLI bits that work well as a go to (I frequently find myself using the Max Payne 3 bits), and if you don't know what bits to use, googling "X Game sli inspector bits" often yields positive results.

[App4that]

This is why this forum is useless.. People who don't know, try and advise.

 

SLI using 2 1080ti is silly, The reason the benches suck is you're banging off a CPU bottleneck no matter what CPU you have. Try 2 1070.

 

SLI is fantastic, I have found one game after months of use where disabling SLI is a benefit, that's War Thunder. In everything else it's a benefit to have it enabled. Draidbot, love the name btw, is just paroting old information. SLI takes seconds to enable, you don;t even have to reboot anymore. 

 

God damn it people, at least try.

[Renton577]

41 minutes ago, App4that said:

This is why this forum is useless.. People who don't know, try and advise.

 

SLI using 2 1080ti is silly, The reason the benches suck is you're banging off a CPU bottleneck no matter what CPU you have. Try 2 1070.

 

SLI is fantastic, I have found one game after months of use where disabling SLI is a benefit, that's War Thunder. In everything else it's a benefit to have it enabled. Draidbot, love the name btw, is just paroting old information. SLI takes seconds to enable, you don;t even have to reboot anymore. 

 

God damn it people, at least try.

What CPU do you think it would take not to bottleneck 2 1080Ti's as a minimum? and on that not 4 980Ti's? I would assume the 4 card setup would have a huge overhead right?

[App4that]

Just now, Renton577 said:

What CPU do you think it would take not to bottleneck 2 1080Ti's as a minimum? and on that not 4 980Ti's? I would assume the 4 card setup would have a huge overhead right?

The scaling is so piss poor on the 4 card set up any modern i7 would do fine. Never been a reason to go past 2 cards. 

[Renton577]

Just now, App4that said:

The scaling is so piss poor on the 4 card set up any modern i7 would do fine. Never been a reason to go past 2 cards. 

I agree, from personal experience with 290x's in crossfire going past 2 seems to give you quite a lot of diminishing returns. So do you think 2 1080Ti's would take a minimum of a modern i7 then?

[Masada02]

To answer the OP's question: 4x 980TI's at their max OC is going to yield more raw GPU power than 2 1080TI's at their max OC. The only time you will ever see this though is going to be in benchmarks, and even then it won't be that much faster than 2 1080 TI's.

 

In the real world, 4x 980TI's is barely going to work in any game even if it has SLI support. I actually had 4 980TI's for a short time and between the huge heat output and terrible game performance I can confidently say it is not worth it. Now if all you want to do is crush benchmarks (which is why I did it), then it will be cool, but for any other task it's pretty much useless.

 

If you must go SLI, stick with dual cards. Even 3-way SLI gives a lot more issues than 2-way.

[Frankenburger]

24 minutes ago, Renton577 said:

What CPU do you think it would take not to bottleneck 2 1080Ti's as a minimum? and on that not 4 980Ti's? I would assume the 4 card setup would have a huge overhead right?

If you're gaming at anything less than 4k, I don't think there's any CPU out there that'll provide sufficient bandwidth to the two cards for the investment to be worth it.

 

I'd seriously recommend to anyone getting 2x 1080Ti to consider supersampling or downsampling to get the most out of their cards.

 

It's not a direct reference, but to give you a rough idea of SLI scaling, here's a decent summary of SLI scaling on 2x vanilla 1080's https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_SLI/20.html