Want to know about SLI'ability of two cards

[Shashank08]

I had my old pc with a gtx 970 in it, and play some games on it. I thought why not take advantage of the price drops in the graphics cards of the last tier and do an sli setup. So I MSI Z97 gaming 5 and a corsair vengeance 1600mhz single stick of memory and for graphics card it is an MSI GTX 970 Gmaing 4G. I saw one ASUS Strix 970 for ₹ 13000 (that's about $200) and wanted to know, whether or not would my sli setup work. Also I lost my sli bridge, so had to buy one of those for $4. Thanks for any help.

[Skiiwee29]

as long as they are the same chip, IE 2 970s like you have listed, it will work in SLI. But, SLI is a dying standard and support is not great and may not work or work well in many titles out today. Its honestly not worth the money IMO. 

[AskTJ]

SLI isn't supported in most games. It works bad and isn't worth it.

[Canada EH]

Its only worth it to brag to people who really dont know much about gaming or SLI.

[Kalm_Traveler]

1 hour ago, Shashank08 said:

I had my old pc with a gtx 970 in it, and play some games on it. I thought why not take advantage of the price drops in the graphics cards of the last tier and do an sli setup. So I MSI Z97 gaming 5 and a corsair vengeance 1600mhz single stick of memory and for graphics card it is an MSI GTX 970 Gmaing 4G. I saw one ASUS Strix 970 for ₹ 13000 (that's about $200) and wanted to know, whether or not would my sli setup work. Also I lost my sli bridge, so had to buy one of those for $4. Thanks for any help.

Yes as long as the card is the same basic model you can SLI them. 

 

Don't listen to all the misinformed people on this forum who keep parroting each other about SLI not being supported, being bad etc. 

 

The fact is that about 70% of current titles have at least a decent performance boost from SLI compared to a single card, and only a handful of games either don't work or see a performance hit. 

 

My guess is most of these people either just keep repeating each other and have no idea, or can't afford two video cards so they're just latching on to the heresay that it isnt good / doesn't work / isn't worth it 

[Loadent]

12 hours ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Yes as long as the card is the same basic model you can SLI them. 

 

Don't listen to all the misinformed people on this forum who keep parroting each other about SLI not being supported, being bad etc. 

 

The fact is that about 70% of current titles have at least a decent performance boost from SLI compared to a single card, and only a handful of games either don't work or see a performance hit. 

 

My guess is most of these people either just keep repeating each other and have no idea, or can't afford two video cards so they're just latching on to the heresay that it isnt good / doesn't work / isn't worth it 

hahhahahah I so AGREE!

[done12many2]

12 hours ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Yes as long as the card is the same basic model you can SLI them. 

 

Don't listen to all the misinformed people on this forum who keep parroting each other about SLI not being supported, being bad etc. 

 

The fact is that about 70% of current titles have at least a decent performance boost from SLI compared to a single card, and only a handful of games either don't work or see a performance hit. 

 

My guess is most of these people either just keep repeating each other and have no idea, or can't afford two video cards so they're just latching on to the heresay that it isnt good / doesn't work / isn't worth it 

 

Pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Lack of first-hand experience drives the repeated ignorant posts.  

[O9B0666]

13 hours ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Yes as long as the card is the same basic model you can SLI them. 

 

Don't listen to all the misinformed people on this forum who keep parroting each other about SLI not being supported, being bad etc. 

 

The fact is that about 70% of current titles have at least a decent performance boost from SLI compared to a single card, and only a handful of games either don't work or see a performance hit. 

 

My guess is most of these people either just keep repeating each other and have no idea, or can't afford two video cards so they're just latching on to the heresay that it isnt good / doesn't work / isn't worth it 

yeah parrots are a great term for them. Theirs tons of videos and write up with how much it helps, and not so many on hurting, which i have seen it does hurt a few. It's mostly when you go more then 2 way that things start to get impacted negatively, over 2 way.

[Mick Naughty]

I know the the 970's were very tricy when it came to matching them and working correctly. There was a list floating around showing which ones worked with which but never looked into much as I got the ssc version and tend to get the same ones.

[Kalm_Traveler]

48 minutes ago, O9B0666 said:

yeah parrots are a great term for them. Theirs tons of videos and write up with how much it helps, and not so many on hurting, which i have seen it does hurt a few. It's mostly when you go more then 2 way that things start to get impacted negatively, over 2 way.

very true - this is a good chart from January 2018 showing 51 games tested with SLI 1070 Ti's, and in those tests 80% of those games have a solid performance boost by having SLI over a single card : https://babeltechreviews.com/the-50-game-gtx-1070-ti-sli-review/3/

 

They also found that a few games take a hit to performance, and a couple won't even run which is exactly what I've always said.

At the end of the day all that matters is which games YOU will be playing, and what kind of SLI support those specific games have. 

 

The best thing to do if someone is considering SLI:

1. Can your setup benefit from higher FPS? (IE do you have a 100/120/144/165 Hz Gsync monitor but your in-game FPS is not sitting up in that 100+ range?)
2. Are you already running a higher-end card? (IE current model-wise are you using a 1080 Ti/ Titan Xp? If you have a 1070/1070Ti it might make more sense to upgrade to a 1080Ti/Titan Xp rather than buy another  1070)
3. If you meet 1 and 2, check to see if the games you play/ want to play will work with SLI. Most do, but some definitely don't.

That way you can make an informed choice. If you have a 60 Hz 1080p monitor there's no point in SLI anything, but if you have a 144 Hz 1440p monitor and you're only getting say 70-90 fps in most games with a single card, it might make a huge improvement to add another card for SLI - IF your games work well with it.

[O9B0666]

2 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

very true - this is a good chart from January 2018 showing 51 games tested with SLI 1070 Ti's, and in those tests 80% of those games have a solid performance boost by having SLI over a single card : https://babeltechreviews.com/the-50-game-gtx-1070-ti-sli-review/3/

 

They also found that a few games take a hit to performance, and a couple won't even run which is exactly what I've always said.

At the end of the day all that matters is which games YOU will be playing, and what kind of SLI support those specific games have. 

 

The best thing to do if someone is considering SLI:

1. Can your setup benefit from higher FPS? (IE do you have a 100/120/144/165 Hz Gsync monitor but your in-game FPS is not sitting up in that 100+ range?)
2. Are you already running a higher-end card? (IE current model-wise are you using a 1080 Ti/ Titan Xp? If you have a 1070/1070Ti it might make more sense to upgrade to a 1080Ti/Titan Xp rather than buy another  1070)
3. If you meet 1 and 2, check to see if the games you play/ want to play will work with SLI. Most do, but some definitely don't.

That way you can make an informed choice. If you have a 60 Hz 1080p monitor there's no point in SLI anything, but if you have a 144 Hz 1440p monitor and you're only getting say 70-90 fps in most games with a single card, it might make a huge improvement to add another card for SLI - IF your games work well with it.

best write up on the forum i've seen regarding this question. You like sli, but point out why not going sli can help, unlike most of these tools floating around saying sli is dead, itll hurt performance etc etc. In most cases it helps, and in some cases you can take two lesser cards, both being less to purchase then a 1080ti and they will perform as well, almost as well or better then 1 1080 ti. there's videos of this, it just depends on the card.

[Lathlaer]

7 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

very true - this is a good chart from January 2018 showing 51 games tested with SLI 1070 Ti's, and in those tests 80% of those games have a solid performance boost by having SLI over a single card : https://babeltechreviews.com/the-50-game-gtx-1070-ti-sli-review/3/

Haha, they finally managed to make Witcher 3 and GTAV working

 

Here is a chart from the same site but from March last year:

 

https://babeltechreviews.com/gtx-1080-ti-sli-performance-25-games/3/

 

When I first saw their numbers I was wtf, I know for a fact that those games have better scaling.

 

[Kalm_Traveler]

6 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Haha, they finally managed to make Witcher 3 and GTAV working

 

Here is a chart from the same site but from March last year:

 

https://babeltechreviews.com/gtx-1080-ti-sli-performance-25-games/3/

 

When I first saw their numbers I was wtf, I know for a fact that those games have better scaling.

 

Yeah - they point out in the beginning of the article that many people will test SLI support when the game is brand new and never check it again - which is silly because it's very possible that as the game is updated, SLI support could be added if it was absent, or be improved if it was not very good initially.

 

Funny side note since you mention Witcher 3, that is one of the games I play and oddly I am getting the highest FPS I've ever had with it right now with two Titan V's in the system (they are not SLI'd since I never could get NVLink to work). It's mainly running on the first one, but the Nvidia control panel automatically set the 2nd one to PhysX duty (it is on an 8x slot in case anyone cares).

 

IIRC with 1 1080 Ti I was getting around 50-60 FPS at 3440 x 1440, with SLI 1080 Ti's I was getting about 60-73 fps, and with this Titan V setup I'm getting 93-110 fps. And people say that the Titan V is not much better than a 1080 Ti... 

[Lathlaer]

11 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Yeah - they point out in the beginning of the article that many people will test SLI support when the game is brand new and never check it again - which is silly because it's very possible that as the game is updated, SLI support could be added if it was absent, or be improved if it was not very good initially.

This might be the case in general but in this specific example I have my doubts - Witcher 3 is a 2015 game, I can't believe that they tested it in 2017 and got such poor scaling and somehow in 2018 the scaling got so much better. 

 

Either they somehow decided to optimize it for SLI 3 years after premiere (but not 2) or there was something wrong with their setup and/or settings.

[Mio85]

17 hours ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

Yes as long as the card is the same basic model you can SLI them. 

 

Don't listen to all the misinformed people on this forum who keep parroting each other about SLI not being supported, being bad etc. 

 

The fact is that about 70% of current titles have at least a decent performance boost from SLI compared to a single card, and only a handful of games either don't work or see a performance hit. 

 

My guess is most of these people either just keep repeating each other and have no idea, or can't afford two video cards so they're just latching on to the heresay that it isnt good / doesn't work / isn't worth it 

I used both SLI 1070's and 1080's for a while with a hard bridge, and tbh it isn't worth the money. Most games only increased fps by like 30% on average.

[Kalm_Traveler]

2 minutes ago, Mio85 said:

I used both SLI 1070's and 1080's for a while with a hard bridge, and tbh it isn't worth the money. Most games only increased fps by like 30% on average.

So in other words what you mean is that for the games you play (whichever those are), you don't care about a 30% (allegedly) higher average fps.

 

This is part of why people start parroting heresay. 

 

You should list your system specs, screen specs, which games you're testing, and single card fps vs SLI if you want to offer helpful info to the community. 

 

Simply posting things like 'it's not worth it' or "it's not that good' doesn't help anyone because there is zero data or factual reasoning behind those types of statements. 

 

It's fine to share your negative experiences or opinions but to be helpful you need to include data so that people trying to decide if they want to go SLI or not can compare your total setup and games to their own in order to make an informed decision. 

[Mio85]

7 minutes ago, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

So in other words what you mean is that for the games you play (whichever those are), you don't care about a 30% (allegedly) higher average fps.

 

This is part of why people start parroting heresay. 

 

You should list your system specs, screen specs, which games you're testing, and single card fps vs SLI if you want to offer helpful info to the community. 

 

Simply posting things like 'it's not worth it' or "it's not that good' doesn't help anyone because there is zero data or factual reasoning behind those types of statements. 

 

It's fine to share your negative experiences or opinions but to be helpful you need to include data so that people trying to decide if they want to go SLI or not can compare your total setup and games to their own in order to make an informed decision. 

At the the time I was using an i7 4790k with 16gb of ram. And I should mention that I was playing in 4k. CPu bottlenecking was not the issue. I tried GTA 5, Metro Last light, Far Cry 4, CSGO, Battlefield 4, and a few other games.

If I'm remembering correctly, GTA 5 was the only one that I experienced good scaling in.

[matus177]

Hey man!

 

I would rather sell the current card for ~200 and buy single 1070(ti) for ~400 (used... which is definitely possible)

Would not SLI 970s nowadays as they are quite old cards.  With single 1070(ti) you can have similar performance, simple setup, lower power consumption, newer card ... probably even with warranty and other benefits.