Gtx 960 Sli?

[ryryduffduff]

Hello I have a Gtx 960 and was wanting to take it to the next level. Is Sli worth my time or is it still not very good? I know the basics of Sli how it works, but I don know in depth if its compatible with games such as Arma 3, Csgo, ect

 

[CTurbo]

I would not bother SLIing two 960s. Do you have the 2GB or 4GB one? What resolution?

 

[jdcranke07]

Hello I have a Gtx 960 and was wanting to take it to the next level. Is Sli worth my time or is it still not very good? I know the basics of Sli how it works, but I don know in depth if its compatible with games such as Arma 3, Csgo, ect

If you want more performance then go with a single GTX 980. It would be a better setup than going with two 960s. And it is more powerful and cooler (temp wise) than using two 960s anyways.

 

[photonboy]

Performance in frame rates (FPS) and frame times (which contributes to perceived smoothness) varies a lot.

If you have a 2GB card then raising the quality of games also raises the VRAM usage thus you may have issues with not enough video memory for some titles. When you SLI you still only have 2GB for the frame buffer since the data is CLONED between cards.

There have been many articles on this. If you didn't already have the card I'd flat out say don't do it. If you have an SLI capable motherboard as well as a reasonably good CPU (to minimize CPU bottleneck) then it's harder to say.

Here's some useful help: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/

There will always be titles that have no SLI support at all.

Summary:
My advice is keep the card for now, then buy a single much better GPU card when budget permits. I have a GTX680 that's only slightly better and I'm very happy with it.

I'm also very good at TWEAKING and often force on Adaptive VSYNC for titles, then adjust the settings until I rarely get any screen tearing (when frame rate drops below the target such as 60FPS).

 

[royalcrown]

Once DX 12 games hit it may be worth SLI'ing your card, IF you don't mind the nonexistant privacy with windows 10.

Windows "effectively" adds GPU memory together under DX 12 ( in theory). We'll see.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html

Part of this new feature set that aids multi-GPU configurations is that the frame buffers (GPU memory) won't necessarily need to be mirrored anymore. In older APIs, in order to benefit from multiple GPUs, you'd have the two work together, each one rendering an alternate frame (AFR). This required both to have all of the texture and geometry data in their frame buffers, meaning that despite having two cards with 4 GB of memory, you'd still only have a 4 GB frame buffer.

DirectX 12 will remove the 4 + 4 = 4 idea and will work with a new frame rendering method called SFR, which stands for Split Frame Rendering. Developers will be able to manually, or automatically, divide the texture and geometry data between the GPUs, and all of the GPUs can then work together to work on each frame. Each GPU will then work on a specific portion of the screen, with the number of portions being equivalent to the number of GPUs installed.

As for privacy tradeoffs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cortana-is-watching,29791.html

 

[ryryduffduff]

thanks guys always appreciate the help

 

[jdcranke07]

Once DX 12 games hit it may be worth SLI'ing your card, IF you don't mind the nonexistant privacy with windows 10.

Windows "effectively" adds GPU memory together under DX 12 ( in theory). We'll see.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html

Part of this new feature set that aids multi-GPU configurations is that the frame buffers (GPU memory) won't necessarily need to be mirrored anymore. In older APIs, in order to benefit from multiple GPUs, you'd have the two work together, each one rendering an alternate frame (AFR). This required both to have all of the texture and geometry data in their frame buffers, meaning that despite having two cards with 4 GB of memory, you'd still only have a 4 GB frame buffer.

DirectX 12 will remove the 4 + 4 = 4 idea and will work with a new frame rendering method called SFR, which stands for Split Frame Rendering. Developers will be able to manually, or automatically, divide the texture and geometry data between the GPUs, and all of the GPUs can then work together to work on each frame. Each GPU will then work on a specific portion of the screen, with the number of portions being equivalent to the number of GPUs installed.

As for privacy tradeoffs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cortana-is-watching,29791.html

I'll believe it when I see it, until then it is still a mythical unicorn. Although it would be a nice one to have if it was real.

 

[royalcrown]

thanks guys always appreciate the help

All the guys gave you good advice, i'd say it depends on what you want to play and whether or not you can get a 960 dirt cheap. A 980 is still 600 bucks and i'd try SLI if I could get another card for 100 -140 bucks because I could sell it if I did not like SLI and go buy the 980.

 

[ryryduffduff]

I think ill just bite the bullet and get the 970 as a happy medium

 

[royalcrown]

I hear you on that, but considering creative labs did it around 2000 or so with their AFR cards, I could see MS updating this and calling it "NEW"

Once DX 12 games hit it may be worth SLI'ing your card, IF you don't mind the nonexistant privacy with windows 10.

Windows "effectively" adds GPU memory together under DX 12 ( in theory). We'll see.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html

Part of this new feature set that aids multi-GPU configurations is that the frame buffers (GPU memory) won't necessarily need to be mirrored anymore. In older APIs, in order to benefit from multiple GPUs, you'd have the two work together, each one rendering an alternate frame (AFR). This required both to have all of the texture and geometry data in their frame buffers, meaning that despite having two cards with 4 GB of memory, you'd still only have a 4 GB frame buffer.

DirectX 12 will remove the 4 + 4 = 4 idea and will work with a new frame rendering method called SFR, which stands for Split Frame Rendering. Developers will be able to manually, or automatically, divide the texture and geometry data between the GPUs, and all of the GPUs can then work together to work on each frame. Each GPU will then work on a specific portion of the screen, with the number of portions being equivalent to the number of GPUs installed.

As for privacy tradeoffs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cortana-is-watching,29791.html

I'll believe it when I see it, until then it is still a mythical unicorn. Although it would be a nice one to have if it was real.

 

[jdcranke07]

I hear you on that, but considering creative labs did it around 2000 or so with their AFR cards, I could see MS updating this and calling it "NEW"

Once DX 12 games hit it may be worth SLI'ing your card, IF you don't mind the nonexistant privacy with windows 10.

Windows "effectively" adds GPU memory together under DX 12 ( in theory). We'll see.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-directx12-amd-nvidia,28606.html

Part of this new feature set that aids multi-GPU configurations is that the frame buffers (GPU memory) won't necessarily need to be mirrored anymore. In older APIs, in order to benefit from multiple GPUs, you'd have the two work together, each one rendering an alternate frame (AFR). This required both to have all of the texture and geometry data in their frame buffers, meaning that despite having two cards with 4 GB of memory, you'd still only have a 4 GB frame buffer.

DirectX 12 will remove the 4 + 4 = 4 idea and will work with a new frame rendering method called SFR, which stands for Split Frame Rendering. Developers will be able to manually, or automatically, divide the texture and geometry data between the GPUs, and all of the GPUs can then work together to work on each frame. Each GPU will then work on a specific portion of the screen, with the number of portions being equivalent to the number of GPUs installed.

As for privacy tradeoffs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cortana-is-watching,29791.html

I'll believe it when I see it, until then it is still a mythical unicorn. Although it would be a nice one to have if it was real.

If they can get it down without being as buggy as the last 2.5 operating systems, then I don't really care if they call it new lol. But, I'm not going to be holding my breath for it.

 

[ryryduffduff]

while were on the topic of the 970 do you think that it will be fine with a Amd fx6300 on a PCIe x16 2.0 lane?

 

[jdcranke07]

while were on the topic of the 970 do you think that it will be fine with a Amd fx6300 on a PCIe x16 2.0 lane?

Yes, it wouldn't hurt to upgrade though.

 

[ryryduffduff]

I know I would love to get an i5 4690k and new mother board but thats around $400. Thats why the 960 Sli came up for me cause I could upgrade gradually So you think that I could definitely use the 970 without any bottle necks?

 

[jdcranke07]

I know I would love to get an i5 4690k and new mother board but thats around $400. Thats why the 960 Sli came up for me cause I could upgrade gradually So you think that I could definitely use the 970 without any bottle necks?

You will be fine for now at least. Save to upgrade the mobo and CPU and then. As far as bottlenecking, I wouldn't worry about it.