Would GTX 1080 SLI Be a Real Dumb Idea?

[The Old Myron Siren]

A coworker of mine has recently offered to sell me his GTX 1080 founders edition. I wasn't entirely interested seeing as I already have a Gigabyte GTX 1080 that has been serving me very well in my measly 144Hz 1080p gaming and light video editing. However, my interest was peaked once he told me he would do me a solid and sell me it for only 150 dollars as long as I help him build his next rig. Granted, I would have helped him regardless of the GPU, but hey, its a perk! I can spare the cash so it seems to be a no brainer, but now I'm trying to find a use doe it before committing to buying it. I previously had dual GTX 970s in SLI which worked okay for me, but I had a few issues with some games. My largest worries are:

Can the two cards work in SLI together since they're different "versions"? I ask this because I had a Zotac GTX 970 and a Windforce GTX 970 that would not work in SLI.
How unstable of a situation would this setup bed? I'm not really worried about the performance gain, I more of want to have the two running just for the hell of it. The added frames in very few cases would be nice, but if it's going to add constant instability, I'd rather not.

Does anyone have two 1080s running together in SLI? What are your opinions on it and its usage? Should I hook the two cards up anyways and just not use them in SLI and enjoy the added performance with video exporting and maybe use the other as a PhysX card? As always, thanks for the input guys!

[MrPenguinPants9]

yes. Just get an RTX 2080 or as they say, the single best card you can afford

[The Old Myron Siren]

2 minutes ago, MrPenguinPants9 said:

yes. Just get an RTX 2080 or as they say, the single best card you can afford

I'm not looking for performance, I'm not sure if you read the whole post or not. The only reason why I'm contemplating this is because I am going to already purchasing a second GTX 1080 founders edition from a friend for only 150 dollars. I'm not looking to spend 600 dollars.

[MrPenguinPants9]

2 minutes ago, The Old Myron Siren said:

I'm not looking for performance, I'm not sure if you read the whole post or not. The only reason why I'm contemplating this is because I am going to already purchasing a second GTX 1080 founders edition from a friend for only 150 dollars. I'm not looking to spend 600 dollars.

Sorry. You could always buy it then sell both and get an RTX 2070

[i_build_nanosuits]

i would try to trade them both cards for a good GTX 1080ti

[Princess Luna]

37 minutes ago, The Old Myron Siren said:

Can the two cards work in SLI together since they're different "versions"?

they should sli just fine

 

38 minutes ago, The Old Myron Siren said:

How unstable of a situation would this setup bed?

It's probably going to be more miss than hit, SLI in 2019 is not ideal at all, it will work here and there but every year that passes less games supports it

 

39 minutes ago, The Old Myron Siren said:

I'm not really worried about the performance gain, I more of want to have the two running just for the hell of it. The added frames in very few cases would be nice, but if it's going to add constant instability, I'd rather not.

regardless if you can buy the card for 150$ and thinks this is a great deal for you have in mind using it is not ideal, PhysX dedicated cards aren't a thing anymore... SLI is hardly a thing either and you're looking at doubling your power drawing, noise and heat output so there are draw backs.

 

there's no particular true appeal on a 1080 SLI nowadays like many said if you could sell both cards and get something new it'd be preferable.

[The Old Myron Siren]

8 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

they should sli just fine

 

It's probably going to be more miss than hit, SLI in 2019 is not ideal at all, it will work here and there but every year that passes less games supports it

 

regardless if you can buy the card for 150$ and thinks this is a great deal for you have in mind using it is not ideal, PhysX dedicated cards aren't a thing anymore... SLI is hardly a thing either and you're looking at doubling your power drawing, noise and heat output so there are draw backs.

 

there's no particular true appeal on a 1080 SLI nowadays like many said if you could sell both cards and get something new it'd be preferable.

Thanks for the helpful response! I might sell both of the cards down the line if it ever becomes plausible, but truth be told I kinda like the idea of keeping at least the founders edition card, has some charm to me. I also would like to expand the collection I have going of GPUs, but if something really tasty come down the pipes from either NVIDIA or AMD, I'll have to sacrifice a few. 

[Mick Naughty]

Been using sli for a decade and only had a few issues. Shitty game or a shitty pc. 

 

Lately its its kinda both. Ran two on black ops 4. Cpu intensive game and it destroyed the cpu at 1440p. But FPS doubled. Would have been a great experience though. But some maps were worse than others. Just stuck to using a single card at 1080p and put the other one in a spare rig. 

 

Would only upgrade if the pc can actually handle it. Not for the sake of it as most tend to suggest. 

 

[Froody129]

I'd buy it, sell both and buy a better single card. Or just sell it and keep the money for a future upgrade. It's not like a 1080 is a slouch at all.

[Frankenburger]

I've been running SLI since 2014, currently on SLI 1080Ti.

 

Stability really isn't an issue. Either SLI works, or it doesn't. If SLI doesn't work, then you can often get it working by changing the compatibility bits. In the rare occasion SLI causes negative scaling, and changing the bits doesn't help, you can simply disable SLI for the game's process.

 

My only recommendation would be to run games with DSR, SSAA, or with graphics mods. Of course, you don't have to, but SLI is easy to bottleneck at 1080p. Most games simply don't stress modern high end GPUs for SLI to really show its stuff until you start rendering above 1440p.

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

My only recommendation would be to run games with DSR, SSAA, or with graphics mods. Of course, you don't have to, but SLI is easy to bottleneck at 1080p. Most games simply don't stress modern high end GPUs for SLI to really show its stuff until you start rendering above 1440p.

^^^ this. Back when I mucked around with 1080 SLI, the best scaling game I found was EA's Battlefront 2015 so I ran tests in that. With my 5Ghz 8600K, it'd bottleneck at 1080p (60-70% usage or so on both cards), but using DSR to push 1440p or 4K slapped both cards to 99% and got some insane fps numbers (all ultra with no AA, 200fps flat at 1440p, 134-144fps at 4K). The rest of my games didn't scale well and I couldn't get them to behave so I sold the 1080s. Should probably try SLI again sometime if I have the cash, it's quite fun to tinker with and dual cards look gorgeous (mine were EVGA SCs, good gosh they looked damn pretty, did 2100Mhz on the core in SLI as well, I forget what on the VRAM). 

[lynno1]

tbh just sell the 1080 your friend sold you for a higher price if possible then just spend it on other stuff such as food ? or smth else

[RainingTacco]

SLI is not dumb idea, only if you have a specific game/games in mind that support SLI. If you are going to play that game exclusively and want an extra performance, then i dont see why not. SLI also has the benefit of opportunity, if you have the cash to burn. You can get additional performance in upcoming games, depending if they support sli, if not then you just run one card. Given that, it's best to pair top of the line cards, so even if you have to play with just one, you still get best performance available on the market[for example RTX 2070 SLI might give great performance, but when you have to run just one, you can get undesirable frame rates]