The SLI information guide

[D2ultima]

On 3/21/2020 at 10:51 PM, The-Director said:

Hello all,

 

I read the first post in the thread and then went to the latest posts and went back a few pages and I did not see my answer, so here it goes:

 

I have a 2070 super. Right now I could choose to upgrade to a 2080 ti (by selling the 2070) or I could buy another 2070 and sli link them.

 

from what I’ve found there can be a better performance boost using two 2070’s than just one 2080ti, though not all games can use this headroom.

 

Can someone confirm which would be the better/best choice? My main goal is gaming, with some secondary 3D rendering on Blender.

 

my current setup is i7 8770k. With 32gb ram. I try to play on a 4K monitor at 60 FPS.

 

bonus question, the two main games I am planning to buy this for is Star citizen and Cyberpunk. If you want to filter your answer with some hard detective work please do!

Get a 2080Ti, or wait for next gen cards and get one of those.

 

I said it multiple times in the comments, even with the bandwidth situation resolved, if you're not willing to do a lot of fiddling with Nvidia profile inspector and forcing SLI on games that don't otherwise use it, then don't bother. In this case since you are aiming for 4k 60 with current unoptimized games, the vRAM alone of the 2080Ti pushes it into better category for you.

 

Nobody can comment on unreleased games, but when I tried Star Citizen AGES ago (like 5-6 years) on my 780M SLI setup, it seemed to scale to some benefit.

[D2ultima]

On 3/25/2020 at 6:21 AM, Snowarch said:

if one card dies in an sli setup, is the oher bricked? im on linux, and plan to try a p106 sli for gaming, or at least rendering. never done an sli before so i want to make sure if the second card dies, my system will not.

 

my specs right now;

gpu: p106 and coffee lake graphics on prime

ram: 16gb (2*8gb sticks) at 2133 speed rated 2400

cpu: 8086k stock

additional note: i can get 30-45 fps on a single p106 4k in modded games, want to make it 60.

My bad for not answering both in one post, hit submit without thinking. Anyway, SLI I'm pretty sure doesn't do "rendering", you could at best give a different task to each card. The other card is NOT bricked, you will simply see weird performance as one falters. I've had a card die on me (the master, no less) and the unit still functioned albeit oddly.

[Snowarch]

well thats good to know. and i cannot sli anyways my second card was bad. i did many tests to confirm this. if i ever get another p106 for afr-sli or the one where one renders top and one bottom, i shall ask here for help on setting them up.

[D2ultima]

On 3/31/2020 at 10:13 PM, Snowarch said:

well thats good to know. and i cannot sli anyways my second card was bad. i did many tests to confirm this. if i ever get another p106 for afr-sli or the one where one renders top and one bottom, i shall ask here for help on setting them up.

AFR is the only way SLI currently works on any modern title. Scissor rendering what you're describing hasn't been used for a long time. And I don't know how many games use it on Linux. I would honestly consider getting a stronger single card instead of SLI-ing especially if non-NVLink, you can always put a gaming card in and run your extra monitors off the P106 and use it to render on your programs.

[Snowarch]

i have only one screen. i thought sli was supposed to increase single-screen performance. 

 

what do you mean gaming card and use p106 elsewhere? i get 100+ fps in 1080p easy, i just thought sli would help wth the few i get 40-ish in for an even 60 or least unstable 60. well, wine regristers my p106 as a gtx 470, so does that mean games that support sli will simply work? i plqy a lot through wine. i cannot afford a regular 1060 let alone gtx 1080

[jtp2001]

I currently have a 960 4GB and I found another one the same for sale used for $80, I'm trying to work out if it'll be worth getting for the better performance for the year or so until I plan on upgrading my computer. At the moment I'm mainly playing Rise of the Tombraider and The Crew 2, and other older games I'm not as worried about, on a 3440x1440 75hz monitor. Rise of the Tombraider and The Crew 2 both struggle to run a little at full res, would this get much better by getting the second 960? I can't afford to just upgrade my card right now though I could live with the average performance I'm currently getting. I'm in NZ so hardware prices are usually terrible

[D2ultima]

On 4/2/2020 at 9:30 PM, Snowarch said:

i have only one screen. i thought sli was supposed to increase single-screen performance. 

 

what do you mean gaming card and use p106 elsewhere? i get 100+ fps in 1080p easy, i just thought sli would help wth the few i get 40-ish in for an even 60 or least unstable 60. well, wine regristers my p106 as a gtx 470, so does that mean games that support sli will simply work? i plqy a lot through wine. i cannot afford a regular 1060 let alone gtx 1080

I'm saying you can plug one screen into one card and another into another, and you can have one card encoding and use the other to game without hindering system performance except for writing to the disk. It's not "SLI", but it is a way to make use of your P106 if you were to purchase something like a 2060.

On 4/3/2020 at 9:13 PM, jtp2001 said:

I currently have a 960 4GB and I found another one the same for sale used for $80, I'm trying to work out if it'll be worth getting for the better performance for the year or so until I plan on upgrading my computer. At the moment I'm mainly playing Rise of the Tombraider and The Crew 2, and other older games I'm not as worried about, on a 3440x1440 75hz monitor. Rise of the Tombraider and The Crew 2 both struggle to run a little at full res, would this get much better by getting the second 960? I can't afford to just upgrade my card right now though I could live with the average performance I'm currently getting. I'm in NZ so hardware prices are usually terrible

Don't even bother, just get a newer card.

[Dodge Gee]

I have had multiple SLI rigs, last with 2x 1080tis. I have recently gone to a single 2080ti as I couldnt get good runs with custom loop. When SLI works, its awesome and crushes single card, but I noticed that it only a few games that utilises them, and majority doesnt sadly. So I would hold on to the 2070 for a few more months, and wait on new AMD/Nvidia GPUs and save as much as possible to get the highest tear card if you want 4K60 ultra settings.

[Snowarch]

anyone try minecraft bsl shaders with a 1070 sli? i'm upgrading to a 1070 sli from a 1060 6gb. can only get 25 fps 1080p with my single 1060. 60-70 gps with seus same settings, but like bsl more. and are the commands below all i need for sli? i have a bridge already, that came with the motherboard. the cards are coming. i have yet to play but i have all three of the new tombraiders, will sli help even on the linux version? 

 

nvidia sli=on multigpu=on 

 

or

nvidia sli=afr multigpu=on

[D2ultima]

32 minutes ago, Snowarch said:

anyone try minecraft bsl shaders with a 1070 sli? i'm upgrading to a 1070 sli from a 1060 6gb. can only get 25 fps 1080p with my single 1060. 60-70 gps with seus same settings, but like bsl more. and are the commands all i need for sli? i have a bridge already, that came with the motherboard. the cards are coming.

 

nvidia sli=on multigpu=on

I don't know about MC using SLI, so I would ditch both 1070s and pick up at least a 2070 and just enjoy your life

[Snowarch]

 will the commands i mentioned above, is that all i need to make gta and shadow use sli? do i need to type the commands turn off then throw in card #2? will a single 1070 least get me 45 fps with bsl shaders possibly? thats 2 more vram gigs than the 1060. using drivers 384 (for mortal kombat 9) and 418 for everything else. 430 disables steam due to missing 32 bit open gl so i never use it. driver swapping doesn't ever hurt my 1060. will it hurt the sli setup? 

 

do i use =on or =afr?

 

@D2ultima

[D2ultima]

2 minutes ago, Snowarch said:

 will the commands i mentioned above, is that all i need to make gta and shadow use sli? do i need to type the commands turn off then throw in card #2? will a single 1070 least get me 45 fps with bsl shaders possibly? thats 2 more vram gigs than the 1060. using drivers 384 (for mortal kombat 9) and 418 for everything else. 430 disables steam due to missing 32 bit open gl so i never use it. driver swapping doesn't ever hurt my 1060. will it hurt the sli setup? 

 

do i use =on or =afr?

 

@D2ultima

I don't know. I haven't tried it. I don't know what a 1070, a card I don't have, will get you in modded minecraft. I don't know if forcing AFR will even allow the game to render anything.

[Snowarch]

so sli=on is what i type in my terminal instead of sli=afr? it will not let me set per game just use the commands in the os terminal. linux has no gui for sli yet. nor physx

[mldonkey]

Should I get two 2070S or a 2080S? I'm looking to do 4K60 gaming but also mostly want to use mGPU for machine learning.

[D2ultima]

On 5/8/2020 at 1:20 PM, mldonkey said:

Should I get two 2070S or a 2080S? I'm looking to do 4K60 gaming but also mostly want to use mGPU for machine learning.

I'd say 2080Ti but if you can get a 2080S at maximum then that. Or you can wait till the next set of cards, if your existing PC works "well enough" for the moment.

[Charles Lai]

hello... i have a sli question i wanna ask. my system is running

 

intel 7500+z270mb

16gb of ram

and running on gtx1070

 

so my question is. is it a good idea to sli the gpu?

my only reason for this question is about gaming. will it increase my fps?

[Haro]

14 hours ago, Charles Lai said:

hello... i have a sli question i wanna ask. my system is running

 

intel 7500+z270mb

16gb of ram

and running on gtx1070

 

so my question is. is it a good idea to sli the gpu?

my only reason for this question is about gaming. will it increase my fps?

If it does it will barely increase it and it will result in alot of tearing

Just not worth it 

[D2ultima]

On 5/13/2020 at 5:26 PM, Charles Lai said:

hello... i have a sli question i wanna ask. my system is running

 

intel 7500+z270mb

16gb of ram

and running on gtx1070

 

so my question is. is it a good idea to sli the gpu?

my only reason for this question is about gaming. will it increase my fps?

If you read the guide you'd see I stopped suggesting SLI on mainstream boards like yours, and you should upgrade the rest of your computer first, and also that buying the single strongest GPU you can get is better than SLI-ing two midranged cards.

On 5/14/2020 at 7:34 AM, TofuHaroto said:

If it does it will barely increase it and it will result in alot of tearing

Just not worth it 

If you read the guide you'd see that "barely increase" and "a lot of tearing" are not what happens, rather he simply would find many games that don't scale very well and he doesn't have a CPU properly capable of driving it.

[An4k1n]

I have GB X570 Xtreme motherboard and one GB 2080Ti Xtreme. Ordered another GB 2080Ti Xtreme - this machine primarily use for Machine Learning. I need NVlink Bridge. I found there are two variants and I am not sure which one should I ordered. For this config which one should I buy 3 Slot or 4 Slot?

[HM-2]

On 7/8/2020 at 9:53 AM, An4k1n said:

For this config which one should I buy 3 Slot or 4 Slot?

You'll need a 4 slot I think given the Extreme is a triple slot card.

[WSUTOMO]

What is SLI SYNC on the limit osd ?

 

[WSUTOMO]

Another Question. Which card should be on top slot? The faster card or slower one? I have one ASUS gtx 1080 ti ROG STRIX OC and one Palit 1080ti jetstream.. My sli bridge is asus rog hb sli bridge revision 1.0. 

 

I tried the slower card on top and the performance improved by a lot. but the slower card ran like 25c above the faster card. With faster card on top (asus) the temp are the comparable. 

 

I also get this SLi SYNC limit... what is it?

Oh one more. Have you guys seen/ heard or used HB sli bridge rev 1.01? whats the difference?

 

anyway. heres my spec (pictured)

 

 

 

 

[Elmarrr]

On 8/14/2014 at 9:37 AM, D2ultima said:

MAYBE can use mismatched cards driving extra monitors for triple monitor gaming (I do not know, so I am leaving it as a maybe. ANYBODY who can test and let me know, please do.)

Hello,

 

can anybody confirm if this is possible? Skimming through the thread, I couldn't find an answer yet.

If I were to buy an RTX 3070 or similar, which likely won't come with any DVI connectors, can I leave my current 970 in the system configured as a PhysX dedicated card in SLI to run my old 144hz in a three monitor setup?

If yes, would this also work for non-PhysX games, and would the GTX 970 draw any significant amount of power in that case?

Would this solution likely introduce lag/longer frametimes?

 

Cheers

[D2ultima]

On 8/30/2020 at 5:39 AM, Elmarrr said:

Hello,

 

can anybody confirm if this is possible? Skimming through the thread, I couldn't find an answer yet.

If I were to buy an RTX 3070 or similar, which likely won't come with any DVI connectors, can I leave my current 970 in the system configured as a PhysX dedicated card in SLI to run my old 144hz in a three monitor setup?

If yes, would this also work for non-PhysX games, and would the GTX 970 draw any significant amount of power in that case?

Would this solution likely introduce lag/longer frametimes?

 

Cheers

You can use old cards to drive monitors and afaik as PhysX cards. I do not think your 970 however will be a fast enough PhysX card for a 3070 and it might be better to leave it to the 3070 itself, but it should run extra monitors just fine.

[Elmarrr]

1 hour ago, D2ultima said:

You can use old cards to drive monitors and afaik as PhysX cards. I do not think your 970 however will be a fast enough PhysX card for a 3070 and it might be better to leave it to the 3070 itself, but it should run extra monitors just fine.

Hi D2ultima,

 

thank you for the reply. Just to be specific, I know I can use another card to run secondary monitors, but can I game on it if it's connected to another card than I would like to render on? I'm considering upgrading to a triple monitor setup and I would like to use my current XL2411T as one of the screens, and only have to buy two new ones. (The XL2411P appears to be basically the same monitor, except it has a display port connector, instead of DVI-D.)

I figured, if the 970 was connected via SLI, even if it's just as PhysX card, it might be able to display whatever the main card outputs? I don't actually care about PhysX, the games I play (mostly just iRacing) don't even support it. Do you know if the DVI port would work in this specific use case?

 

Thank you for your help!