GTX 1080 Ti vs GTX 1080 SLI

[r3zoar]

So I was thinking to myself, what would be the best solution for a graphics card setup?

 

A gtx 1080 Ti 11gb, or 2 gtx 1080 8gb's in SLI.

 

Its kinda a short post but thought I would put the question out there anyways.

[Jurrunio]

A single 1080ti. 2 1080s perform better only in games with good SLI scaling, but consumes a lot more power.

[Damascus]

Some games lose performance with sli so I would just get a 1080 ti.

[SHOOK_Linus]

I would probably go with 1080 sli (power supply depending) just because that 16Gb. of VRAM vs. 11Gb.

[r3zoar]

58 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Some games lose performance with sli so I would just get a 1080 ti.

But would it be worth it for the games that do have good SLI scaling?

[Damascus]

Just now, r3zoar said:

But would it be worth it for the games that do have good SLI scaling?

Not really, sli is becoming less and less supported to the point that it isn't worth it.  I would get a 1080 ti now and then you have the option for another later.

[jarmenti]

In this day and age, the better performing single card vs any sli setup is the way to go! I've made the mistake of buyng dual gpu cards in the past (radeon 7990 etc etc)... never again! microstutter, and all the other nuances of having dual gpus just aint worth it

[MageTank]

3 minutes ago, SHOOK_Linus said:

I would probably go with 1080 sli (power supply depending) just because that 16Gb. of VRAM vs. 11Gb.

That's not how that works. In DX11 and earlier titles, 8GB + 8GB = 8GB. 

[Mooshi]

3 minutes ago, SHOOK_Linus said:

I would probably go with 1080 sli (power supply depending) just because that 16Gb. of VRAM vs. 11Gb.

That's not how it works. SLI doesn't double the vram, you still only have 8gb.

[jarmenti]

I've heard so many people that think that their gpu ram just doubles when adding cards... You still only have the amount of ram that each individual card has! They don't add up

[RadiatingLight]

9 minutes ago, MageTank said:

That's not how that works. In DX11 and earlier titles, 8GB + 8GB = 8GB. 

Does it stack in DX12?

I thought it doubled no matter what you did

[r3zoar]

This cleared up a bit of my thoughts, going to have to do a bit of research but I think I got a good idea now, thanks @Damascus and the others who replied.

[DrMacintosh]

Vega 64 Crossfire 

[Damascus]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Vega 64 Crossfire 

If you want vega get 2 64 x2 chips and run quad vega

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, Damascus said:

If you want vega get 2 64 x2 chips and run quad vega

Gotta have that Nuclear PSU tho 

[jarmenti]

4 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

Does it stack in DX12?

I thought it doubled no matter what you did

 

[Hiitchy]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Gotta have that Nuclear PSU tho 

Can't we just hack the sun with solar panels and use a $40,000 set up to power the entire build? Lolll

[Angusticlavii]

V-RAM in SLI is always mirrored.

1080 SLI = 8GB V-RAM even in DX12

[Frankenburger]

3 hours ago, r3zoar said:

But would it be worth it for the games that do have good SLI scaling?

Definitely. There's a good number of games out there that get at least 60-70% scaling depending on the settings you use. Many of the games I play gets around 80% scaling or higher, so for me, SLI is a no brainer. Currently, most of the games that don't work with SLI are UE4 games, but SLI support was patched into the engine a few months by Epic. Just gotta wait on the devs to implement it (SLI currently works with GoW4 and Hellblade).

 

Keep in mind though that the higher your FPS, the less you'll gain with SLI. Though this can easily be offset by upping the graphics and/or using DSR. Also, there are some games you'll need to tweak your drivers to either get good scaling, or to get scaling to work at all. If you want a plug and play experience, go with a single card.

[tcari394]

4 hours ago, CaptainKieseI said:

V-RAM in SLI is always mirrored.

1080 SLI = 8GB V-RAM even in DX12

Not entirely true.  Ashes of Singularity takes advantage of EMA, which does pool vram resources in DX12.  I believe this is the only game that takes advantage of this technology, though.

 

http://wccftech.com/article/ashes-singularity-dx12-updates/

 

 

[MageTank]

7 hours ago, RadiatingLight said:

Does it stack in DX12?

I thought it doubled no matter what you did

From a strictly technical stance, yes, Explicit Multi-Adapter "supports" VRAM stacking, but I've yet to see it implemented across a wide range of DX12 titles. 

 

7 hours ago, jarmenti said:

 

I don't know what the guy in that thread is talking about, but he seems to be wrong. I don't understand why he thinks your VRAM's memory bandwidth goes across the PCIe bus, but that's not how it works. The bandwidth is between your GPU core and memory interconnect on the card itself. It doesn't have to go across the bus. Even in EMA, the cards do not go across the bus to talk to each other. It essentially becomes a pooled resource to the application, and the application itself dictates what needs to be done to each card, not the GPU's talking to each other in traditional multi-GPU setups of old. 

 

I also notice a lot of people speaking of SFR in that thread doing things that it really cannot do, which tells me 2 years ago our perceptions of what SFR would be (based on DX12's promises)  was way off, lol. 

[Angusticlavii]

2 hours ago, tcari394 said:

Not entirely true.  Ashes of Singularity takes advantage of EMA, which does pool vram resources in DX12.  I believe this is the only game that takes advantage of this technology, though.

 

http://wccftech.com/article/ashes-singularity-dx12-updates/

 

 

thats no sli tho

thats directx12 multi gpu (would even work with amd cards)

[IeatConsolePeasants]

Hey Guys - I know this thread is old, but I am astonished at the level of incorrect information that is being shared here regarding VRAM Memory stacking in SLI. Now I don't know if we are talking exclusively about SLI Technologies and Nvidia cards or also including Crossfire & AMD Cards, but I can ASSURE you that even in DX11, memory stacking on MANY titles (the absolute majority of titles released in the last 5 years, and yes I can share specific titles) works perfectly in crossfired AMD Cards, such as the R9 290X. Example DX11 and GTAV. Plenty of titles right in the in game menu show my VRAM memory pool as 8gb instead of the 4GB that is on each individual card. I am able to enable graphics settings and watch the additional memory each enabled graphics setting utilizes well beyond the 4GB that an individual R9290x supports. My point is that in DX11, AMD and crossfire'd GPU's are absolutely capable of memory stacking. It is definitely on a per game basis as I have several different systems running many different versions of Window's operating systems, and some games recognize the memory total of all crossfired games, and some titles only see the max memory of one GPU. It is game dependent not OS or DX dependent, at least with AMD GPU's...

[Frankenburger]

20 minutes ago, IeatConsolePeasants said:

but I can ASSURE you that even in DX11, memory stacking on MANY titles (the absolute majority of titles released in the last 5 years, and yes I can share specific titles) works perfectly in crossfired AMD Cards, such as the R9 290X. Example DX11 and GTAV.

Wrong. DX12 EMGPU is the only way to get memory stacking. Everything else has bugged hardware reporting.

 

 

Notice how the VRAM usage is doubled with SLI enabled? That's because the game isn't reading the VRAM statistics correctly with SLI enabled.

 

If the VRAM stacked, then the VRAM usage wouldn't be doubling from 3.9GB to 7.8GB.

[O9B0666]

what 2 cards does is, one card processes the vertical frames, and the other the horizontal frames. Things get processed twice, and you only have the vram of whatever card that is weaker, or not as good.