Is SLI really dead and if so...when are they going to stop making SLI motherboards?

[GuruMeditationError]

As per the title...

...I want to SLI but I'm putting it off as long as possible due to cost concerns.

I'm wondering when the last crop of motherboards that support NVLink/SLI are going to be produced and how long until we reach that point?

[TetraSky]

It's not so much the motherboards as it is Nvidia themselves killing it

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/315164-dual-gpu-gaming-gives-up-the-ghost-as-nvidia-ends-sli-support

 

They are not introducing new profiles for cards 2xxx and earlier since january 1st.

In the 3xxx series, only the 3090 even has the SLI bridge apparently (I did not verify this, maybe some partners put the bridge on lower tier cards, I dunno)

 

It's weird that they are essentially killing it off on the low end while allowing it on the high end... But I'm guessing they didn't want people buying two 3070 for cheaper than one 3090, to be getting higher performances in games that supported it.

[GuruMeditationError]

I'm wondering if and when, because of the lack of support, the manufacturers are going to stop producing boards that support SLI/NVlink...

 

...and how much longer I have left to pick up a board that support SLI before they're phased out?

[emosun]

they still make boards with usb 2.0 ports so plan on it not being phased entirely out for a while

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

With the context of your other thread in mind:

Honestly, the best thing for you to do would probably be to sell your 10600K and Titan RTX build/parts, and just get yourself a R9 5900X and 3080TI. You get a far better gaming experience for a fraction of the cost.

[manikyath]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

they still make boards with usb 2.0 ports so plan on it not being phased entirely out for a while

but the majority of peripherals out there dont need more than USB 2.0's bandwidth (or honestly, nowhere near), and it's more cost-effective to have a bunch of usb 2.0 ports than a bunch of 3.0 ports.

 

----

 

on topic: the problem with SLI is that it's a disproportionate amount of dev time to make a game behave well with SLI (or crossfire for that matter), compared to the very small percentage of people potentially running SLI.

 

so even before nvidia was "killing off" SLI, it was a top of the line enthousiast feature at best, and in modern times it's a quite ancient technology compared to the multi-GPU options in directx12.

 

as for why motherboard manufacturers keep making SLI capable boards... it's a checkbox on a spec sheet. and most of the logic behind motherboard design seems to be about checkboxes on spec sheets...

[Action_Johnson]

SLI is dead, man. Even in the 3DFX days it wasn't super awesome outside of benchmarking. 

[GuruMeditationError]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

so even before nvidia was "killing off" SLI, it was a top of the line enthousiast feature at best, and in modern times it's a quite ancient technology compared to the multi-GPU options in directx12.

Hang on, wait, what...?

....direct X 12 has a different multi-gpu solution?

I thought that the Nvidia stuff was all the same thing...? SLI and NVlink are the same thing right?

What other solutions are there? 

[manikyath]

Just now, GuruMeditationError said:

....direct X 12 has a different multi-gpu solution?

https://developer.nvidia.com/explicit-multi-gpu-programming-directx-12

 

basicly, it allows the game to directly talk to multiple GPU's, instead of having to offload that to the driver.

In theory it's more universally applicable because it isnt tied to a specific brand or type of GPU, nor limited to identical GPU's, but it shares the pain of "the game developer has to do everything for an extremely small market".

[Middcore]

4 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Hang on, wait, what...?

....direct X 12 has a different multi-gpu solution?

 

Yes, but it puts the burden even more on the developers of the individual game to make it work, and virtually no developers bother because it simply isn't worth it for them. 

[GuruMeditationError]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

https://developer.nvidia.com/explicit-multi-gpu-programming-directx-12

 

basicly, it allows the game to directly talk to multiple GPU's, instead of having to offload that to the driver.

In theory it's more universally applicable because it isnt tied to a specific brand or type of GPU, nor limited to identical GPU's, but it shares the pain of "the game developer has to do everything for an extremely small market".

Thanks, :0)

 

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Multi GPU setups are still very useful in specific circumstances. I bought the Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard specifically for it's multi-gpu support. I do 3D graphics & animation, which 100% utilizes both of my RTX 3090s. NVlink is only available on the 3090, however it actually is completely unnecessary for my workload. Most NVlink workloads don't even need a bridge except for a few exceptions.

 

The bigger question for me is not about SLI/multi GPU support, but more PCI-E lanes. Any consumer chip (Ryzen 5950x or intel equivlent) only have 20 PCIe lanes. That means that with two GPUs, your limited to at least only PCIE 8x. So, I really don't understand selling a consumer level motherboard capable of 4x GPUs when each would only be getting 4 PCIe lanes. Even over PCIE 4.0 thats going to result in worse FPS & animation performance.

 

I'm looking into upgraded to Ryzen so I could use all 128 PCIe lanes to do up to 7 cards at full 16x speed.

[HM-2]

3 hours ago, Middcore said:

Yes, but it puts the burden even more on the developers of the individual game to make it work, and virtually no developers bother because it simply isn't worth it for them. 

It shouldn't, though. It wasn't that long ago that a similar argument was made about cores- that developing multi threaded code was "too hard".  Most of the hard work is already done in the DX12 and Vulkan APIs.

 

The move away from driver based optimisation to native API support isn't what's "killed" SLI/NVLink, if anything they should have made incorporating it easier as you shouldn't need driver optimisation or profiles anymore. Most of it boils down to lazy development practices- which I think is a bit ironic given that developers spend so much time and effort incorporating things like real-time ray tracing which are much more complex to implement and still only cater for s subset of gamers.

[Mick Naughty]

Prolly still do it as its easy to do and no reason not to. 
Offered the best gaming for the longest. Just a struggle to have a cpu actually keep up with two current gen cards. 

[GuruMeditationError]

So it seems the X570 mid-tier boards no longer support SLI...it's just the high end boards now. I'd imagine it'll have to last at least one more generation because 3090's still have NVLink, but who knows...maybe it'll be totally absent from the Alder Lake boards.

I guess potentially it might stick around for prosumer or industrial applications that might need heavy compute power but, I guess it remains to be seen.