Bottleneck and sli

[rfcokilljoy]

I run an i5 7600k at 5.2ghz, with 3200mhz 16,17,17,36 ram. I can either get a 1080ti or another 1070ti (preferably another 1070ti)

 

Will either of those be bottlenecked? I use a 3440x1440 100hz monitor. Some places say no I wont be bottlenecked some say yes i will.

 

Some opinions on it would be nice.

[Skiiwee29]

you will be more bottle necked with the poor performance of SLI and poor support from Nvidia and game developers. You would be so much better off with a Single 1080ti over SLI 1070ti. 

[Frankenburger]

SLI will be bottlenecked, but only slightly. I'd say you'd see about 70% scaling on average at 3440x1440. Some games more, some games less. It really depends on the settings you're using.

 

Also, what games do you primarily play? Have you checked whether or not they are compatible SLI either officially or unofficially?

[agello24]

personally i would say yes the i5 7600k would bottleneck 2 cards in sli.  in single card mode, i would say their would be a small bottleneck. the i5 7600k does not have HT to supply the extra date to the cards in sli and barely enough in single card mode for either the 1070 or t he 1080. this is just my personal belief.

[rfcokilljoy]

16 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

SLI will be bottlenecked, but only slightly. I'd say you'd see about 70% scaling on average at 3440x1440. Some games more, some games less. It really depends on the settings you're using.

 

Also, what games do you primarily play? Have you checked whether or not they are compatible SLI either officially or unofficially?

I play a very wide range of games. From shadow of war to rottr/sottr to battlefield 1(and V when its launched)

[Frankenburger]

13 minutes ago, rfcokilljoy said:

I play a very wide range of games. From shadow of war to rottr/sottr to battlefield 1(and V when its launched)

You should see some pretty good scaling then. BF1 has about 50% scaling IIRC, while Shadow of War has about 90% (if you use FXAA). RotTR and SotTR has almost perfect scaling, around 95% or so. The only game that currently does not have official compatibility is BFV, but players in the beta managed to get SLI working by mirroring BF1's driver settings. That said, it should be officially supported on release. If not, it should be easy to find a manual fix.

[rfcokilljoy]

9 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

You should see some pretty good scaling then. BF1 has about 50% scaling IIRC, while Shadow of War has about 90% (if you use FXAA). RotTR and SotTR has almost perfect scaling, around 95% or so. The only game that currently does not have official compatibility is BFV, but players in the beta managed to get SLI working by mirroring BF1's driver settings. That said, it should be officially supported on release. If not, it should be easy to find a manual fix.

That was extremely informative. Thankyou. What do you think about the state of my cpu? Too weak? It is running at a high overclock. I could put it to 5.3ghz 

[Frankenburger]

5 minutes ago, rfcokilljoy said:

That was extremely informative. Thankyou. What do you think about the state of my cpu? Too weak? It is running at a high overclock. I could put it to 5.3ghz 

You're welcome

 

I don't see much issue with the CPU in general. I was running SLI 1080Ti's on my old 5820k at 4.2GHz with little issue. The 7600K is better for gaming due to better IPC and higher clock speeds, despite having 2 less cores. The only potential problem I can see is running into PCI-E limitations, since the 7600K only has 16 lanes. Each card requires 8 lanes minimum. If you install anything that uses PCI-E lanes in addition to your video cards (including m.2 NVME SSDs), there's a chance SLI won't work.

[rfcokilljoy]

5 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

You're welcome

 

I don't see much issue with the CPU in general. I was running SLI 1080Ti's on my old 5820k at 4.2GHz with little issue. The 7600K is better for gaming due to better IPC and higher clock speeds, despite having 2 less cores. The only potential problem I can see is running into PCI-E limitations, since the 7600K only has 16 lanes. Each card requires 8 lanes minimum. If you install anything that uses PCI-E lanes in addition to your video cards (including m.2 NVME SSDs), there's a chance SLI won't work.

Well I deffo wont buy any pcie cards then! I have got to admit that on bf1 the framrate will drop into the 70s due to the cpu... but this is limited to conquest. Quite annoying that a £200 (when i bought it) cpu cannot handle that game.

[partymarty]

54 minutes ago, agello24 said:

personally i would say yes the i5 7600k would bottleneck 2 cards in sli.  in single card mode, i would say their would be a small bottleneck. the i5 7600k does not have HT to supply the extra date to the cards in sli and barely enough in single card mode for either the 1070 or t he 1080. this is just my personal belief.

At that resolution a 7600k won't bottleneck a 1080 ti. The lower the resolution the higher the change to be bottlenecked by your cpu.

[Frankenburger]

7 minutes ago, rfcokilljoy said:

Well I deffo wont buy any pcie cards then! I have got to admit that on bf1 the framrate will drop into the 70s due to the cpu... but this is limited to conquest. Quite annoying that a £200 (when i bought it) cpu cannot handle that game.

Yeah, games like that are always a pain. Worst part is there's not much that can be done, and the stagnating CPU improvements aren't helping much. I often see games either maxing out a thread or hitting some other sort of bottleneck. They're mostly open-ish games though like BF, PUBG, GTAV, etc. For games like that, IMO, it's best to configure the game with a target of around 80 FPS in mind. Upping the rendering resolution or using DSR is ideal for SLI when working around a CPU bottleneck.

 

Funny thing is those are the kinds of games that people see lower than expected SLI scaling and immediately think it's a SLI issue rather than a bottleneck issue, hence the "SLI doesn't scale" stigma.

[rfcokilljoy]

20 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

 

Funny thing is those are the kinds of games that people see lower than expected SLI scaling and immediately think it's a SLI issue rather than a bottleneck issue, hence the "SLI doesn't scale" stigma.

Thankyou so much for your advice. Extremely helpful and made me feel better about my cpu ? I think a 60fps cap in bf1conquest would do me very nicely. And I'll be looking into another 1070 ti if I see one at a good price.

 

Thankyou so much again.

[Frankenburger]

Just now, rfcokilljoy said:

Thankyou so much for your advice. Extremely helpful and made me feel better about my cpu ? I think a 60fps cap in bf1conquest would do me very nicely. And I'll be looking into another 1070 ti if I see one at a good price.

 

Thankyou so much again.

You're welcome and good luck

[Frankenburger]

9 minutes ago, SnowWolf370 said:

I had two 1070's in SLI and it was my most horrible hardware experience in my entire life.

Not to belittle your experience or anything, but most of what you explained is extremely abnormal. I've been running SLI since 2014, from GTX 980, GTX 1080, to GTX 1080Ti and never had any of the issues you're talking about. The only "issue" I've seen that you touched up on is with MMOs, but that's because of CPU bottlenecking more than anything else. While in areas with a large number of players (dense cities, raids, PvP etc), SLI is never worse than compared to a single GPU, but has a much higher GPU overhead.

 

Mind you, this is all moot since you no longer use SLI. But my experience with SLI (heck, even CrossFireX) is the complete opposite of what you witnessed. Odds are there was an underlying issue that SLI was exposing rather than causing.

[Mick Naughty]

Guess it depends on whats available to you. 

Because I can get 1080ti's cheap, Ill be getting two of those.

But if I had a 1070ti, id get another only if I was ready to upgrade the cpu with it not keeping up in games. 

I see BF and cod ruining that cpu in sli. 

[rfcokilljoy]

It is said all over everywhere that SLI is a nightmare, is that just from people who don't want to spend a few minutes fixing the bugs or messing in nvidia inspector? Or really is it ONLY supported SLI titles that are good with it?

[Mick Naughty]

Its normally from people who watch youtube and parrot what they see based on popularity. 

Most cant and wont try it. Given the average pc user, they cant even afford it or trouble shoot basic stuff.

1 minute ago, rfcokilljoy said:

It is said all over everywhere that SLI is a nightmare, is that just from people who don't want to spend a few minutes fixing the bugs or messing in nvidia inspector? Or really is it ONLY supported SLI titles that are good with it?

 

[rfcokilljoy]

1 minute ago, Mick Naughty said:

Guess it depends on whats available to you. 

Because I can get 1080ti's cheap, Ill be getting two of those.

But if I had a 1070ti, id get another only if I was ready to upgrade the cpu with it not keeping up in games. 

I see BF and cod ruining that cpu in sli. 

At some point I do see myself upgrading to a 7700k. It's just hard to seen as I'd want a similarly binned one to my 7600k... and that's hard to come by

[Frankenburger]

1 hour ago, rfcokilljoy said:

It is said all over everywhere that SLI is a nightmare, is that just from people who don't want to spend a few minutes fixing the bugs or messing in nvidia inspector? Or really is it ONLY supported SLI titles that are good with it?

It's probably a combination of a few things

 

1. People who want plug and play with zero effort and maximum efficiency
2. People who don't want to tweak settings
3. People with hardware issues and blaming it on SLI
4. People who have 0 experience and parrot bad information

It can be frustrating if in the future you have a game you're sinking a lot of time into that doesn't support SLI. But that holds true with a lot of enthusiast level features. Ultrawides aren't 100% guaranteed, 144 FPS isnt 100% guaranteed, not even 4k is 100% guaranteed. If a game doesn't support any of those features, you need to tweak/edit things to get said feature working, assuming it's even possible to get working properly. SLI is no different, yet ironically people blame SLI when it's not compatible with a certain game, but they don't blame any other niche feature. No ultrawide support? It's the dev's fault. No 144 FPS? It's the dev's fault. No 4k? It's the dev's fault. No SLI? It's SLI's fault. They will hastily seek out 3rd party tools for FPS, FOV, and resolution fixes, but will turn their nose up at SLI fixes using Inspector.

 

People seem to forget that SLI is niche and meant for enthusiasts, not mainstream users. Gotta take it for what it is. Niche products are in a perpetual state of "early adopter syndrome". Fortunately, SLI is statistically compatible with 3 out of 4 games using stock settings, and the level of compatibility is expanded when you use Nvidia Inspector. Granted, not every game is guaranteed to work, and largely depends on each person's library. Right now, I'm sinking a lot of time into Monster Hunter World and currently, there's no official or unofficial support. I've gotten close to finding a fix, but nothing solid yet. That said, I don't regret buying 2 1080Ti's, because many of my other games do support it, and MHW isn't going to be my primary game forever.

 

That's just my take on the matter though.

[reptileexperts]

SLI is a very niche product. I was looking at going from 1070 SLI to 1080ti SLI or 2080 TI - when benches came out - I decided to go with 2080 SLI Putting a single 2080 through the motions right now to make sure its the direction I want to head, but I enjoyed running SLI. It gets warmer, thats for sure! It looks way better than a single card system IMO, and if you learn it it woks well. 

 

That being said - PUBG never supported SLI - still doesn't. Going to a single 2080 made me get 170 FPS in certain areas, and 90 FPS in really detailed areas for a brief moment, but averaged around 130 FPS at 1440p which actually keeps me happy. Having said this, SLI speeds up video rendering tremendously because it can offload very effectively. SO for everyone it will be a different story. For me, I'm looking forward to SLI2080 for a long time to come. 

[Frankenburger]

1 minute ago, reptileexperts said:

That being said - PUBG never supported SLI - still doesn't.

Actually, with the 388.59 and older drivers, SLI was officially supported in PUBG. The catch is it didn't work with TAA and Effects set to Medium or higher. I did a pre-release benchmark using the replay system and uploaded it here to give an idea for SLI scaling.

 

 

Even though SLI was removed from newer drivers, you can easily re-add it. Simply set the DX11 bits to 0x080000F1, and set both the SLI GPU count and SLI rendering mode to auto and profit. Interestingly enough, using this manual fix with newer drivers and the current build of PUBG, TAA works and you can leave Effects at high. Regardless, I still recommend leaving Effects at Low, since it has a huge performance hit for little gain in image quality.

 

https://i.imgur.com/lfI2mr4.png - Single GPU - High Preset 120% Resolution Scale - 87 FPS

https://i.imgur.com/ZSE6bWI.png - Single GPU - Effects Low 120% Resolution Scale - 96 FPS

https://i.imgur.com/9akbg1G.png - Manual SLI Fix - High Preset 120% Resolution Scale - 131 FPS

https://i.imgur.com/jC2HO2r.png - Manual SLI Fix - Effects Low 120% Resolution Scale - 168 FPS

[Mick Naughty]

Pubg does support it. Has since the beta. Only 20% of my second card gets used but it’s still an increase. And that’s default. 

[reptileexperts]

10 hours ago, Mick Naughty said:

Pubg does support it. Has since the beta. Only 20% of my second card gets used but it’s still an increase. And that’s default. 

 My second card always set around 5% utilization. . . Good to know the work around above though for when I return to 2080 SLI. The 2080 already demolishes PUBG though at 1440p with every setting maxed. 

[rfcokilljoy]

@Frankenburger

 

Do you think a 6700k will perform better than my i5 7600k?

 

Say the 6700k gets to 4.8ghz, will this be better than my 7600k at 5.2ghz?

 

It hurts to not have the 5ghz target within sight but if itll perform better in bf1/bfv itll be worth it for me.

[Frankenburger]

26 minutes ago, rfcokilljoy said:

@Frankenburger

 

Do you think a 6700k will perform better than my i5 7600k?

 

Say the 6700k gets to 4.8ghz, will this be better than my 7600k at 5.2ghz?

 

It hurts to not have the 5ghz target within sight but if itll perform better in bf1/bfv itll be worth it for me.

I personally don't think so. What will hold you back more is your available PCI-E lanes than hyper threading. Also, the fact it's still a 4 core CPU doesn't do any favors. If you wanted to upgrade your CPU, I'd aim for something with 6 cores and at least 32 PCI-E lanes.

 

I say this because most Intel CPUs perform about the same when looking at basic tasks and gameplay. However, when running SLI with Pascal, more PCI-E bandwith is better. Running two cards in 16x/16x vs 8x/8x helps a lot.

 

When I went from a 5820k to a 6850k, I did some comparison benchmarks and posted the results here.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/8hkmvl/sli_benchmark_5820k_42ghz_16gb_2133mhz_16x8x_vs/

 

Mind you, this is also with upgrading my RAM from 2133MHz to 3200MHz, but considering how little RAM affects performance in some games, it should help give a decent idea. Here are some other user benchmarks that test by simply changing PCI-E lane speeds through the BIOS.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NNSCJHfggM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HchSu5peIoc

https://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=10903162&postcount=2085

https://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=11134401&postcount=2323

https://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=11059897&postcount=2261

 

Not only will it help your average FPS, but it will also help your 1% lows, which determines stutter. The reason why this is such a big deal for Pascal is because the cards are so powerful, but the SLI interlink doesn't provide enough bandwidth to let the cards really stretch their legs. This is the reason why less powerful cards like the Kepler series didn't see much difference between 8x/8x and 16x/16x.

 

Mind you, this is not to say you'll have a bad experience with 8x/8x as long as you're mindful of your system resources. But going from a 16 lane CPU to another 16 lane CPU won't provide much value for a high end SLI system.

 

You can probably find a used i7-5930k or i7-6850k for around $250-$300. You'll obviously need a new motherboard, but X99 boards don't really cost as much as they used to. The ASRock X99 Extreme 4 allows for 2 cards in 16x/16x configuration, and can be had for around $150. Even though you'll be sacrificing IPC, which will lower your maximum FPS in CPU bound areas, you'll be gaining 2 extra CPU cores, Hyper Threading, better 1% lows, and giving your cards more legroom.