When will SLI stop sucking?

[OnionRings]

Just wondering if it will ever work perfectly.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Not without a rework of how games get rendered. The system was made for one gpu. If we use things like dx12 well it may work well with multigpu, but thats no sli then.

[Shreyas1]

seeing as its on its way out ( according to Nvidia anyways), probably not

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Not without a rework of how games get rendered. The system was made for one gpu. If we use things like dx12 well it may work well with multigpu, but thats no sli then.

So unless developers DESIGN games to utilize SLI, it will never work correctly? OOF.

[hconverse02]

Well seeing as how volta V doesn't support it, is works the best it ever will now because it probably won't exist after (or during) volta.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

So unless developers DESIGN games to utilize SLI, it will never work correctly? OOF.

they wouldn't be making it for sli, they would be making it for multi gpu. DX12 and vulkan if used right let you mix and match gpus from different brands and speeds with good scaling and I think thats the optimal setup.

[General Winter]

never is the honest question

 

too many technical and combatility issues combined with the fact that you can just get a better single gpu in the average consumer price range (especially today with teh 10XX + series of cards) means its generally not worth developing for or adding to games that don't have

 

in addition even with working SLI you're paying double the price for around 1.5x times the performance

 

you're better off with a titan V if you truely want the "best" gpu today or you can wait for the 20XX card coming soon

 

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-ampere-ga104-gpu-geforce-gtc-2070-gtx-2080-launching-april/amp/

[Frankenburger]

SLI never worked "perfectly", and it was never advertised to double your performance. I don't understand where the misunderstanding that SLI doubles down on your GPU power, but it doesn't. However, there's plenty of SLI support out there, and that support has grown quite a bit with newer engines.

[DocSwag]

32 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

So unless developers DESIGN games to utilize SLI, it will never work correctly? OOF.

DX12 has a thing where you can split up each frame and have each GPU render part of it. However, not very many games actually use that feature... The only game I know of that uses it is Ashes, and none of the super popular titles use it.

[Frankenburger]

3 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

DX12 has a thing where you can split up each frame and have each GPU render part of it. However, not very many games actually use that feature... The only game I know of that uses it is Ashes, and none of the super popular titles use it.

Unreal Engine 4 supports it and GoW 4 implemented a MGPU patch last May that gives a pretty good performance boost.

 

 

[DocSwag]

2 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

Unreal Engine 4 supports it and GoW 4 implemented a MGPU patch last May that gives a pretty good performance boost.

Do they support the DX12 Mutli GPU thing though (that allows for even using GPUs from different manufacturers together)?

[Frankenburger]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

Do they support the DX12 Mutli GPU thing though (that allows for even using GPUs from different manufacturers together)?

Yes. That's what the GoW4 patch implemented.

 

Edit: Actually, I'm not sure if it goes as far as allowing GPUs to mix between different brands/models. But the DX12 MGPU feature is how they got SLI working.

[OnionRings]

58 minutes ago, General Winter said:

never is the honest question

 

too many technical and combatility issues combined with the fact that you can just get a better single gpu in the average consumer price range (especially today with teh 10XX + series of cards) means its generally not worth developing for or adding to games that don't have

 

in addition even with working SLI you're paying double the price for around 1.5x times the performance

 

you're better off with a titan V if you truely want the "best" gpu today or you can wait for the 20XX card coming soon

 

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-ampere-ga104-gpu-geforce-gtc-2070-gtx-2080-launching-april/amp/

Oh I'm not buying it, I was just wondering, I'll probably get a 2080 Ti or whatever the 1080 Ti equivalent will be called.

[Jumper118]

When people stop buying half arsed broken games which don't support it properly. Sli and cf work fine. It's the games that are broken. Just play crysis 3 with 3 or 4 way and you will see what a properly made game can do with massive gpu power. 

[General Winter]

16 hours ago, OnionRings said:

Oh I'm not buying it, I was just wondering, I'll probably get a 2080 Ti or whatever the 1080 Ti equivalent will be called.

2070 will be on par with 1080ti like how the 980ti is on par with the 1070

 

2080ti will likely come out about a year after the 2070 and 2080 cards like how the 1080ti did as well

 

also 3 and 4 ways sli lost support so i doubt they're going to add them into these newer cards, there is simply not even demand for both marketing and devs to implement it

 

[Frankenburger]

3 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

When people stop buying half arsed broken games which don't support it properly. Sli and cf work fine. It's the games that are broken. Just play crysis 3 with 3 or 4 way and you will see what a properly made game can do with massive gpu power. 

Right?

 

You never see anyone saying ultrawide isn't worth it, even though it's in a similar position as SLI. Kind of ironic if you ask me.

[tarfeef101]

Solution to SLI scaling issues making it not worth it for some games:

identify those games, turn SLI off, start mining on the inactive card, start game on main card.

 

profit.

[Crunchy Dragon]

17 hours ago, hconverse02 said:

Well seeing as how volta V doesn't support it, is works the best it ever will now because it probably won't exist after (or during) volta.

You mean the Titan V? That's not a real thing to go on, it was designed for deep learning according to Nvidia.

[General Winter]

2 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

Right?

 

You never see anyone saying ultrawide isn't worth it, even though it's in a similar position as SLI. Kind of ironic if you ask me.

ultrawide isn't that much more expensive vs. buying an entire seperate GPU and hoping your game doesn't have issues with SLI (which varies a lot)

 

 

 

ultrawide is also i lot easier to implement since its for the most part its just changing aspect ratios vs. implement SLI technology into every game which is much more demanding for the dev team and more often than not it isn't worth the trade off

[Jumper118]

5 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

Right?

 

You never see anyone saying ultrawide isn't worth it, even though it's in a similar position as SLI. Kind of ironic if you ask me.

Pretty much I have run multi gpu setups a lot and they are nearly always best £/performance. 

[Darkseth]

18 hours ago, OnionRings said:

Just wondering if it will ever work perfectly.

Never.

Sli (and Crossfire) has already started dying out. Nvidia/AMD started dropping support (like only supporting 2-way Multi GPU even for higher end Models), and more and more Game developer are dropping support for it.

 

Sli / Crossfire keeps getting worse and worse, as time moves on. This has started years ago, and will not get better again.

 

8 minutes ago, General Winter said:

2070 will be on par with 1080ti like how the 980ti is on par with the 1070

 

And your source for that is what?

 

Maxwell --> Pascal jump was HUGE, but that was an exception. Because of a new architecture, and a huge Shrink from 28nm to 16nm.

 

See for reference Kepler (7th gen) -> Maxwell).

Or 6th Gen -> 7th Gen.

They did only 10-30% performance gain. Just Pascal went up skyrockets there, with like 70-80% more performance. (like GTX 980 --> 1080).

 

Depending on what they do with the next gen, we will not see such a huge jump.

If they keep 16nm, we will 100% NOT see such a jump. They will have to go down to 7nm or at least 10nm ^^

If they don't spec up the Shader core count by far.

 

But i would not claim such statements, when there are Zero information about the new Gen out there - not even the Name.

They "will" nothing. This is just pure speculation. It can be 70% more performance for same Class, it can be 15% more performance, because it's just a refresh (viewing how Vega is, even Pascal doesn't have to fear anything)

[Jumper118]

1 minute ago, General Winter said:

ultrawide isn't that much more expensive vs. buying an entire seperate GPU and hoping your game doesn't have issues with SLI (which varies a lot)

 

 

 

ultrawide is also i lot easier to implement since its for the most part its just changing aspect ratios vs. implement SLI technology into every game which is much more demanding for the dev team and more often than not it isn't worth the trade off

Don't give their lazy devs a pass. Make em work and do a proper job. 

[Frankenburger]

4 minutes ago, General Winter said:

ultrawide isn't that much more expensive vs. buying an entire seperate GPU and hoping your game doesn't have issues with SLI (which varies a lot)

The cheapest 144hz 1080p ultra wide is over $500 usd. The cheapest 144hz 1440p is just over $300. You're paying about 80% more for a slightly wider aspect ratio. Then you have to worry about games having proper FOV for ultrawides, letting you select your ultrawide resolution, and the hud not being stretched.

 

Seems similar enough to me.

[Jumper118]

1 minute ago, Frankenburger said:

The cheapest 144hz 1080p ultra wide is over $500 usd. The cheapest 144hz 1440p is just over $300. You're paying about 80% more for a slightly wider aspect ratio. Then you have to worry about games having proper FOV for ultrawides, letting you select your ultrawide resolution, and the hud not being stretched.

 

Seems similar enough to me.

And hardly any video other than films are 21:9

[General Winter]

2 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

Don't give their lazy devs a pass. Make em work and do a proper job. 

make em work 10x harder for like 1% of the gaming market, great use of resources

 

unless you are a AAA studio implementing SLI is a HUGE chore and you'll be fortunate to get it at all; its not as simply as rewriting a few lines of code, they have to rework all the rendering code in order to implement SLI since SLI renders things completely differently from simply using one card

 

its very time consuming for both nvidia and devs alike, not just one side

 

especially with advancing technologies that are making single cards extremely fast, even for the most demanding gamer, it is more practical, cost effective, and realistic today to get 1 very good card vs. 2 inexpensive ones

 

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/513988/the-sad-truth-about-sli-and-crossfire-for-that-matter-/