nVidia GTX 960 SLI: Worth it?

[Kritonios]

Hello there, I'm planning to build a computer and I 'm probably going with the gtx 960 as I don't really like AMD products (I've heard very bad things about processors and from MY experience with its gpus I don't think they are any good). Also, I amd not going with gtx 970 because I can't afford it and I have heard about this problem with its vram (BTW Is it true??). So as you have guessed from the title I plan to sli in the future. My questions are:
A. Can a triple sli cable work with only 2 cards
B. I have heard about the problem with the 4 GB version in which the card can't use all of its memory. My question is if I add a second card will the 4gb version be worth it? (I'm thinking that because someone was saying that the problem is the processor of the card and not the bits, which means that (with his logic) the graphics will be able to fully benefit from 4gb.

 

[plaintuts]

No,
A single more powerful gpu is always better, especially in driver support.

Going sli or crossfire is only advisable if for example,.. One year later you found a great deal for a 960 with half the price of your first one.

Or you bought a 980ti now and still have more money..

 

[RobCrezz]

Only plan to go SLI if you get 4gb versions. Tripple SLI cable should work, but the 960 is only capable of 2 way sli. Make sure your motherboard supports SLI first.

 

[geofelt]

I think it is poor strategy to plan a new build on sli.

Here is my canned rant on planning for dual cards:
-----------------------------Start of rant----------------------------------------------------
Dual graphics cards vs. a good single card.

a) How good do you really need to be?
A single GTX750t1 or R7-265 can give you decent performance at 1920 x 1200 in many games.
Yes, you may need to be satisfied with less than high settings.

A single GTX970 or R9-390X will give you excellent performance at 1920 x 1200 in most games.
Even 2560 x 1600 will be OK with lowered detail.
A single GTX980ti is about as good as it gets for a single card.

If you are looking at triple monitor gaming, or a 4k monitor, sli/cf will be needed for excellent frame rates.
A single GTX980ti or Furyx will give good frame rates in many games.
Next year, it looks like single card performance will go up by 50%

b) The support costs for a single card are lower.
You require a less expensive motherboard; no need for sli/cf or multiple pci-e slots.
Even a ITX motherboard will do.

Your psu costs are less.
A card as good as a R9-FURY or a GTX980ti will need only a 620w psu.
When you add another card to the mix, plan on adding 200w to your psu requirements.
75w for the slot, 75w for an extra 6 pin connector or possibly more.
Here is a chart:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

Case cooling becomes more of an issue with dual cards.
That means a larger and possibly expensive case with more and stronger fans.
You will also look at more noise.

c) Dual gpu's do not always render their half of the display in sync, causing microstuttering or screen tearing. It is an annoying effect.
The benefit of higher benchmark fps can be offset, particularly with lower tier cards.
Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995.html

d) dual gpu support is dependent on the driver. Not all games can benefit from dual cards.

e) dual cards up front reduces your option to get another card for an upgrade. Not that I suggest you plan for that.
It will often be the case that replacing your current card with a newer gen card will offer a better upgrade path.
-------------------------------End of rant-----------------------------------------------------------

On GTX970, 3.5 vs 4gb vram fud:
Nvidia engineers opted to use 3,5gb fast vram and 0,5 gb slow vram fto meet a price/performance objective.
Actually, I think it was a clever innovation of implementing a vram hierarchy.
The only real objection might have been advertising implying that all rvram was fast.

VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, so there may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

My suggestion:
Since GTX960 is what your budget permits, go with that,
Do buy a quality psu in the 600-650w range which will permit a future gpu upgrade to a graphics card as good as a GTX980ti, or a future Pascal card.

When the time comes for more graphics horsepower, sell the GTX960 in favor of a significantly better card.

And... if you today forgo the extra costs of preparing for sli, you may well be able to justify a GTX970 in the first place.

 

[jonathan1683]

I have 2 GTX 660s in sli and have handled any game i have played even games that are not supported like fallout4. Runs on ultra settings you just have to force sli to render mode2 and it will work in games that dont support it.

 

[Finkledbody]

I have 2 GTX 660s in sli and have handled any game i have played even games that are not supported like fallout4. Runs on ultra settings you just have to force sli to render mode2 and it will work in games that dont support it.

Hmm. Two 660's running fallout 4 on ultra settings? Are you playing at 1080p?

Now I don't own Fallout 4 yet, but Far Cry 4 is a good comparison. My spare computer packing: i7-2600 @ 3.9ghz, 16 gbs @ 2133mhz, two 660 ti's... Can't even run Far Cry 4 with playable framerates at high settings, let alone ultra.

Are you sure you aren't blowing some smoke?

 

[jonathan1683]

nope I didn't play much of the game only about an hour because i could not rebind the keys, but the FPS in fraps was locked at 60 FPS. The only thing I lowered was godrays to medium, but considering my fps never dipped I could have probably put it higher I only lowered it because I read on a forum to. I have never played far cry.

 

[Finkledbody]

Wow that's absolutely awesome. Fall out 4 must be well optimized. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[jonathan1683]

I thought so as well it was running very smooth, can't wait till they fix the keybinding issue so I can get back into it.

here is where I read it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s5ldy/how_to_get_sli_working_in_fallout_4/

 

[Kritonios]

No,
A single more powerful gpu is always better, especially in driver support.

Going sli or crossfire is only advisable if for example,.. One year later you found a great deal for a 960 with half the price of your first one.

Or you bought a 980ti now and still have more money..

Really? I mean I didn't know you need other drivers for sli. Anyways, thank you!

 

[Mousemonkey]

No,
A single more powerful gpu is always better, especially in driver support.

Going sli or crossfire is only advisable if for example,.. One year later you found a great deal for a 960 with half the price of your first one.

Or you bought a 980ti now and still have more money..

Really? I mean I didn't know you need other drivers for sli. Anyways, thank you!

You don't need different drivers for SLi and SLi doesn't have even half the issues that some people "claim" it has, Crossfire on the other hand...

 

[Kritonios]

Ok, thanks for your advice. From the benchmarks I saw gtx 970 = approxemately gtx 960 sli. I don't what I will do but in case I go with gtx 960 what version would you recommend me. I think asus is a trustworthy brand and I like the direct cu cards but I also like the evga one with the 3 fans. What do you think?

 

[Kritonios]

I think it is poor strategy to plan a new build on sli.

Here is my canned rant on planning for dual cards:
-----------------------------Start of rant----------------------------------------------------
Dual graphics cards vs. a good single card.

a) How good do you really need to be?
A single GTX750t1 or R7-265 can give you decent performance at 1920 x 1200 in many games.
Yes, you may need to be satisfied with less than high settings.

A single GTX970 or R9-390X will give you excellent performance at 1920 x 1200 in most games.
Even 2560 x 1600 will be OK with lowered detail.
A single GTX980ti is about as good as it gets for a single card.

If you are looking at triple monitor gaming, or a 4k monitor, sli/cf will be needed for excellent frame rates.
A single GTX980ti or Furyx will give good frame rates in many games.
Next year, it looks like single card performance will go up by 50%

b) The support costs for a single card are lower.
You require a less expensive motherboard; no need for sli/cf or multiple pci-e slots.
Even a ITX motherboard will do.

Your psu costs are less.
A card as good as a R9-FURY or a GTX980ti will need only a 620w psu.
When you add another card to the mix, plan on adding 200w to your psu requirements.
75w for the slot, 75w for an extra 6 pin connector or possibly more.
Here is a chart:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

Case cooling becomes more of an issue with dual cards.
That means a larger and possibly expensive case with more and stronger fans.
You will also look at more noise.

c) Dual gpu's do not always render their half of the display in sync, causing microstuttering or screen tearing. It is an annoying effect.
The benefit of higher benchmark fps can be offset, particularly with lower tier cards.
Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995.html

d) dual gpu support is dependent on the driver. Not all games can benefit from dual cards.

e) dual cards up front reduces your option to get another card for an upgrade. Not that I suggest you plan for that.
It will often be the case that replacing your current card with a newer gen card will offer a better upgrade path.
-------------------------------End of rant-----------------------------------------------------------

On GTX970, 3.5 vs 4gb vram fud:
Nvidia engineers opted to use 3,5gb fast vram and 0,5 gb slow vram fto meet a price/performance objective.
Actually, I think it was a clever innovation of implementing a vram hierarchy.
The only real objection might have been advertising implying that all rvram was fast.

VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, so there may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

My suggestion:
Since GTX960 is what your budget permits, go with that,
Do buy a quality psu in the 600-650w range which will permit a future gpu upgrade to a graphics card as good as a GTX980ti, or a future Pascal card.

When the time comes for more graphics horsepower, sell the GTX960 in favor of a significantly better card.

And... if you today forgo the extra costs of preparing for sli, you may well be able to justify a GTX970 in the first place.

Dude, thanks for the big answer it answered me a lot of questions. And this site with the power each card needs is very useful.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Ok, thanks for your advice. From the benchmarks I saw gtx 970 = approxemately gtx 960 sli. I don't what I will do but in case I go with gtx 960 what version would you recommend me. I think asus is a trustworthy brand and I like the direct cu cards but I also like the evga one with the 3 fans. What do you think?

I'm running Palit 960's because they were the cheapest, having tried many different manufactures cards over the years I have come to the conclusion that it makes ah heck all difference in the grand scheme of things. The last Palit cards I had (GTX560Ti's) lasted three years before the fans died and my Asus Direct CU's 660Ti's that I replaced them with have recently been retired due to fan failure after three years, shocker! IMHO just get the cheapest mate.