Is SLI worth it anymore?

[Firebird_Gaming]

Hey. I have a friend of mine who says that he wants to build the best build that he possibly can, and he wants to SLI two 2080ti's together. I continue to insist that this may not be the greatest of ideas, and he is better suited to spending the money on other aspects of his rig. Am I right? Or am I just stupid? Either way if someone could explain to me the situation with SLI at the moment I would appreciate that. 

[Fasauceome]

When it comes to the top of the top end, SLI is all you've for for better performance. usually the recommendation is that instead of two graphics cards, you just get one better graphics card, but there is no better graphics card than 2080ti aside from the Titan RTX (which is hardly better)

[dizmo]

Not worth it.

Also, putting together a build that expensive is quite often not worth it. You're better off going with a more budget build and upgrading every other year.

The 2080 Super, for example, gets 90+% of the performance of the 2080Ti at almost half the price.

 

Welcome to the forum.

[2SidedPolygon]

If you literally have money to wipe your ass with, sure, go ahead, but if not, it rarely leads to tangible gains in performance, certainly not gains that justify the cost, and can even hurt performance in many titles. Frankly, even a single 2080ti is an abysmal value. If your friend doesn't have simply unreasonable amounts of money, they should go for a 2080 (Super).

[TheGlenlivet]

In my opinion, you are right.  If your friend is wealthy and wants his system to look a certain way, or is trying to set some records in benchmarks, then sure, go for it.

It won't help in almost all games these days.

[Firebird_Gaming]

Yeah, my point is that he minus well just buy an i9 9900k and a 2080ti (if he must) or even better an i7 8700k or 9700k and a 2080 SUPER (better value) and save the extra 2500-3000 dollars for whatever else he needs in his life. But is there even a use case for SLI? I may even go as far as to say it's a dead feature, but I don't think I would necessarily know. 

[SnowyMus]

Do you mean for gaming? Many games don't even support SLI, and many of the few games that do support it don't scale very well. Otherwise, that second graphics card is going to not be doing much of anything besides restricting the airflow of the first graphics card. I guess it'll look cool while doing so, though.

 

There are many valid reasons besides gaming to get a multi GPU setup, but you don't use SLI in those cases.

[Mick Naughty]

Pair of 2080's and a 9900k. Way better than getting a 2080ti. 

[Princess Luna]

22 hours ago, Firebird_Gaming said:

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Yeah if the only thing you want to do is game an i7 9700KF with a FE 2080 Super will take you far already, you don't need two 2080 Ti in SLI to have amazing gaming experiences, just stick to 1440p ultrawide or not and remember ultra settings are meaningless, even when you are after eye candy.

 

[jones177]

If you do thousand of hours on a game that supports SLI and plan to do thousands more it is worth it but only if you are already using a top tear card.

 

I will probably put my two 2080 tis in the same computer when the next gen high end card comes out(3080 ti). I did that with the 980 ti and the 1080 ti. I will be doing it until 144hz 4k ultra wide is a thing. That is the plan anyway.