Single 2080 ti vs 2x 2080s

[Anas Dweik]

Hi guys. 

For 4k gaming would you go for 2080 ti or nvlink 2080. And why. 

 

*away from price point 

[That_PC_Kid]

Single 2080Ti because to my knowledge SLI isn't really supported as much anymore but I may be wrong.

[TheBean]

sli sucks, its not supported very often, you often get bluescreens/crashes in game, you dont get anywhere near 100% scaling (except in select games with ~80%), its very expensive

[Princess Luna]

First of all, RTX cards uses SLI, they only standardize the connector, NVLink is Quadro only.

 

Secondly, a single 2080 Ti not only will better across the board but SLI'ing it down the road will provide noticeable more performance and bragging rights [:

[Zberg]

I can tell you this from recent first hand experience.  Go with the 2080 ti.  I just sold both my 2080's (fortunately for right what I paid for them) and put that toward a strix 2080 ti.  It is the way to go.  I have to put in context that they had some good deals online for the 2080s recently (newegg ebay for 630) and I bought one used off a buddy on the cheap, so value-wise, it wasn't terrible, esp considering the high end 2080 tis are in the 1300-1400 range still.  A few pro/cons about the 2080 SLI:

 

Pro: Great FPS in games that scale, beating the 2080 ti in FPS in games it scales mildly in, and blowing it away when it DOES scale well (I was getting a true >160 fps in tomb raider (shadow), witcher 3 in 1440p whereas the 2080 ti does well but not that well).  In anthem where it scales kinda meh, I was basically matching the framerate of a 2080 ti, sometimes beating it by just a smidge...this is really the main pro and thats about it

 

Con: ARTIFACTS!!; Anthem had 0 artifacts and actually was butter smooth despite the issues going on there, that was a suprise.  Both TR and witcher 3 would look butter smooth at times and just be amazing, and then later on I found some times it would flicker, some times it would have weird light shining on part of the screen.  I also play gears 4, and there would be all kinds of random glitches, flickering, lighting weirdness but with a super high FPS.

 

Con: HEAT!!; in a fractal define R6 case with decent airflow and some room, it got hot AF still.  The second card would heat up a good bit depending on how much it scaled and how much it was utilized, but man did the primary top card heat up.  I mean it is sitting between the CPU and a high power GPU directly under it.  Shit gets warm.  Top card tended to quickly get to 75 degrees once starting gaming, and then quickly after that sit at the 80-85 degree zone, fan going ham

 

Con: NOISE!!; going along with that heat of course was a LOT of noise.  When I had a single gigabyte 2080 it honestly was super quiet, barely heard it.  But when you put 2 beefy cards doing work in there, they get hot and those fans work.  Even after tuning the fan curve ideally to keep it reasonable without being 100% fan noise, it was still noticable and honestly that was the breaking point.  It was constantly loud when gaming, and that takes away from the experience for me

[Zberg]

So, in getting the strix 2080 ti, I did lose some FPS in the games where it scales, but the difference in how cool my case/components stay, the noise level (which between the Noctua D15 and the strix, that rig is whisper quiet, barely makes a sound under load), and not having any artifacts in games is huge.  Sometimes the artifacts were so minor it barely took away from the experience, but sometimes it was so glaring it completely ruins the scene with the SLI.  

 

So now I am hovering in the 100-140 range often in games in 1440p, but honestly, it still looks damn good, and the lack of artifacts and noise is such a delight.  I did love the 160+ fps in games (my monitor goes up to 165 hz) while it actually stayed smooth, but the lighting and artifacts that came up were just not worth it.  

 

I kept the NV link bridge for the future in case it is ever worth it again to SLI, but after this experience, I will probably only single card from here on out.

 

And seriously, I would be surprised if this set up gets over 40 db

[Stefan Payne]

2 hours ago, Anas Dweik said:

Hi guys. 

For 4k gaming would you go for 2080 ti or nvlink 2080. And why. 

 

*away from price point 

SLI just does not work with most games.

For example Ubisoft does mostly not work.

There are hardly any that do these days.