What is everyones problem with SLI?

[Overkilled]

I don't know why it's a thing on this forum were there is a cult following of people that hate sli. Let's have the 970 sli for example, yes SLI might not work in every single game but in most games its fine and in those games the 970 sli will pretty much hand any card its ass. You can get two 970s for £500

[Octavialicious]

I notice most of the people who bash SLI have never used it, I've never had any problems with SLI and CF Just loud is all...

 

But I usually would advise against 970 SLI, as it's usually enough for a single 980Ti.

[thatguyyouknow75]

I have two 970's

[RuLeZ]

Because nobody wants to take the risk that their favorite game will be one of the "few" that doesnt work with sli nicely or at all.

[MegaDave91]

Zero issues when I ran 780 SLI. Two-way scaling was always good.

[App4that]

My problem with SLI is I don't have it

The struggle

[corbetto]

I love my sli 980tis <3. Only thing that i don't like is the extra heat output.

[wyattzx]

People hate on SLi (and Crossfire) because of the investment cost compared to returns. This varies from game to game, but is typically no more than a ~20-30% increase. Also, your graph is incredibly biased and inaccurate. 85FPS in 4K on a 295x2? That's utter bullshit.

[Maslofski]

i'm happy with my 970 SLI setup, but then there is games where it causes shadow flickering, i need to disable SLI to use blender (and remember to turn it back on...), everytime i switch i have to close my browser and i cant OC because the top card already hits 75-80ºC while the bottom card is at 55ºC.

 

but mostly positive anyways

[MegaDave91]

People hate on SLi (and Crossfire) because of the investment cost compared to returns. This varies from game to game, but is typically no more than a ~20-30% increase. Also, your graph is incredibly biased and inaccurate. 85FPS in 4K on a 295x2? That's utter bullshit.

3 and 4 way, perhaps, but 2 way is generally excellent.

[Overkilled]

I notice most of the people who bash SLI have never used it, I've never had any problems with SLI and CF Just loud is all...

 

But I usually would advise against 970 SLI, as it's usually enough for a single 980Ti.

The question is why. Even though the evidence is right there in front of you that in supported games the 970 sli is faster (and a little cheaper) do you still recommend getting one stronger card over two weaker cards?

[Godlygamer23]

There is increased heat output and increased noise. And even though you already mentioned it, having compatibility issues with certain games is a fair bit of an issue. If you spend x amount of money on a pair of cards that beat this card that costs y amount, but then decide to play this game without SLI or Crossfire support, you are down to a single card with possibly lackluster performance where you may actually regret your purchasing decision versus the other card which is a little less powerful but has no such performance issues.

[PlayStation 2]

Because nobody wants to take the risk that their favorite game will be one of the "few" that doesnt work with sli nicely or at all.

driver san francisco is the best example lol

[rafazafar]

I don't know why it's a thing on this forum were there is a cult following of people that hate sli. Let's have the 970 sli for example, yes SLI might not work in every single game but in most games its fine and in those games the 970 sli will pretty much hand any card its ass. You can get two 970s for £500

 

i love mmorpg, sli doesnt play nice. but i dont hate it. 

its just bit of hassle to get sli motherboard, good enough cpu and gpu just to sli for some.

[Overkilled]

People hate on SLi (and Crossfire) because of the investment cost compared to returns. This varies from game to game, but is typically no more than a ~20-30% increase. Also, your graph is incredibly biased and inaccurate. 85FPS in 4K on a 295x2? That's utter bullshit.

http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan_X/29.html

I got the graph on techpowerup I doubt they'd lie about the performance of the 295x2

[Overkilled]

There is increased heat output and increased noise. And even though you already mentioned it, having compatibility issues with certain games is a fair bit of an issue. If you spend x amount of money on a pair of cards that beat this card that costs y amount, but then decide to play this game without SLI or Crossfire support, you are down to a single card with possibly lackluster performance where you may actually regret your purchasing decision versus the other card which is a little less powerful but has no such performance issues.

But SLI is supported in most aaa titles.

[Godlygamer23]

But SLI is supported in most aaa titles.

But now imagine a situation where it isn't. Your performance could potentially be terrible, and now you might wish you hadn't spent money on your SLI setup, and instead went with a single GPU setup.

[App4that]

I like this video because it shows the benchmark and game performance of 970 SLI in comparison to some pretty major cards.

 

[Morgan MLGman]

People hate on SLi (and Crossfire) because of the investment cost compared to returns. This varies from game to game, but is typically no more than a ~20-30% increase. Also, your graph is incredibly biased and inaccurate. 85FPS in 4K on a 295x2? That's utter bullshit.

It's not biased, 295X2 is R9 290X that's higher clocked than the usual 290X times two, Shadow of Mordor seems to favor AMD cards despite being an Nvidia title so that performance is very possible. I get significantly more FPS in Shadow of Mordor with my 290X than I was getting with my GTX970

Not to mention that the graph is @4K where AMD cards clearly lose less performance on average than Nvidia ones

 

 

But SLI is supported in most aaa titles.

Not necessarily. Remember that a big part of AAA titles are just shitty console ports and some of them don't support SLI/Crossfire at all (looking at you Fallout 4)

[Overkilled]

But now imagine a situation where it isn't. Your performance could potentially be terrible, and now you might wish you hadn't spent money on your SLI setup, and instead went with a single GPU setup.

I guess it comes down to if you're willing to take the risk of it possibly not working for the extra performance

[Klerk]

Hate is a pretty strong word. I don't think people hate it, they just don't recommend it especially with the mid-lower end cards. Getting a single more powerful gpu is generally more recommended considering the issues related to using multi gpus. 

[App4that]

It's not biased, 295X2 is R9 290X that's higher clocked than the usual 290X times two, Shadow of Mordor seems to favor AMD cards despite being an Nvidia title so that performance is very possible. I get significantly more FPS in Shadow of Mordor with my 290X than I was getting with my GTX970

Not to mention that the graph is @4K where AMD cards clearly lose less performance on average than Nvidia ones

Not necessarily. Remember that a big part of AAA titles are just shitty console ports and some of them don't support SLI/Crossfire at all (looking at you Fallout 4)

Plenty of people run Fallout 4 in SLI.

[Octavialicious]

The question is why. Even though the evidence is right there in front of you that in supported games the 970 sli is faster (and a little cheaper) do you still recommend getting one stronger card over two weaker cards?

Because it's stupid. You're basing your observations on one game, and if you looked at 980Ti OC'd benchmarks vs 970 SLI you would see they are almost exactly the same, and the difference is not noticeable at all (not to mention the 980Ti wins a lot of the time) If you want more heat and more compatibility problems for 5% more performance in less than half the games you play, go ahead.

 

 

At 1080p sure there is a slightler larger gap, but if you buy 970 SLI for 1080p that's hillarious

[NuclearPeace]

SLI's main benefit is that SLI profiles come out much faster than AMD's Crossfire profiles. If you don't want to be left hanging with 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4th of the potential of your rig for a while, then I would go SLI. Main downside is that SLI scaling is considerably worse than CF. Also, you have to buy that SLI bridge which at this point is nothing but a dongle.

 

Crossfire preforms better, but it takes AMD more time to create Crossfire profiles. You no longer need a Crossfire bridge on most AMD cards except for the 370, but why would you crossfire the 370?

 

The two downsides that both SLI and CF share are long and many. Dual card setups need more space. A good dual card setup requires at least 5 PCI slots so that the top card can breathe, which eliminates most motherboards and mATX cases. Unless you water cool, the top card will run much hotter and might thermally throttle. Heat output massively increases which is a problem in air cooled setups, and the massively increased power consumption means that your PSU is going to have to work harder or may not be able to even handle the load to begin with. The biggest and ultimate flaw is that you are relying on developers to support SLI/CF and there will be games where you wont have support for it and you will be left with a fraction of your rig's power.

[Savir]

I don't know why it's a thing on this forum were there is a cult following of people that hate sli. Let's have the 970 sli for example, yes SLI might not work in every single game but in most games its fine and in those games the 970 sli will pretty much hand any card its ass. You can get two 970s for £500

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Yeah but then your screwed if you want to upgrade. SLI is ok when you have top of the end cards