GTX 1080 SLI or single 1080 and wait for the TI?

[shonik09]

Hi guys,

My question is pretty much as the title states - I'm contemplating getting a 1080 SLI combo, but not sure if the gains are worth it over buying a single 1080 and upgrading to the 1080TI when that is released?

I'm building a rig to handle 4K at 60FPS, and obviously one I want to last 4-5 years minimum. It'll be paired with an i7 6850k overclocked. Just not sure getting two 1080's is worth it, thinking it may be better to take 30FPS with one 1080 for now, with the possibility to move to SLI or 1080 TI later.

I've also seen some games have issues with SLI, also making me wonder if the investment would really be worth it at the moment...

The PC will be used for gaming, some big data/GPU analysis, and possibly game dev.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[expired56k]

If you're expecting to play all games at max in 4K 60fps, there's currently no single card that can do that. Not even the Pascal Titan X which is a $1200 card. 1080 ti will likely sell close to $1K given the big MSRP bump of new Titan. If you're expecting to have a high end game worthy rig for several years then having SLI from top tier card is probably the way to go. Personally, I'd look at benchmarks of games YOU want to run and see how each card fares. So it's a tough call. I've been getting one step from top of the line cards in SLI for a number of years and can easily last 3 generations until I feel upgrade is due. It just all depends on your budget and software you run.

Regarding GPU analysis and such, you should probably list some programs. Many scientific software don't support SLI or run much better on Quadro due to double precision performance and drivers optimizations. If you're sort of on budget or that is a big concern then list the games/software you wish to run. Otherwise just get the best single card solution, then perhaps double up down the road if needed.

 

[jackinyrsax]

well I built my rig in the last few months with 2 strix 1080's in sli.

I have a gsync predator 4k monitor and then 3 1440p 21:9 monitors beneath with thin bezels. I game generally on the 3 1440p in nvidia surround and the 2 gtx 1080s demolish everything..and i mean everything. you can get away with no aa at 4k so immediately nearly all games are well above 60fps at 4k. its silly that all the 4k benchmarks are run while aa is maxed because its just not needed.

I realize this thread is old but its still unsolved so hopefully you went ahead and got the 1080's. the only game i've ran into issue with is rainbow six siege as its sli support was broken a few months back in an update which was very disappointing. other then that no problems.

 

[shonik09]

Just thought I'd update this thread. I actually did try out the 1080s in SLI, but was a bit frustrated with some of the microstuttering issues in some games, let alone in some others SLI didn't work at all. In the end I sold them and got a Titan XP which I am now watercooling, and tbh am much happier, as I don't really like the idea that in some games I will have a £600+ deadweight, or others have a high framerate but still not actually feel smooth. With the Titan XP I can game in pretty much every game at 4K 60FPS, as I don't mind turning down the AA in some games to hit it, and not have any microstuttering. Anyways, thanks for the info guys.