News Nvidia To Support NVLink Only for RTX 3090

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
ScrewySqrl said:
IMHO this is proof that SLI is basically dead
Click to expand...

There's plenty of people that will insist it's not dead, but the trend I've seen myself over the years while running an SLI setup up until very early this year, is that support for it has been rapidly diminishing over time. More and more games for me have either needed an inordinate amount of time to get the configuration right to actually make use of the second GPU, a bunch of tweaks to prevent graphic artifacts, work but scale abysmally, or just straight up will not run with a second GPU.

I'm guessing that the lack of support pushes people away from using it, causing developers to want to put less effort in supporting a setup that a minority of gamers will use anyway, which leads to even fewer people wanting to run multi-GPU, and thus the vicious cycle continues. The fact that single GPU setups can hold their own pretty well these days also sinks it deeper into obsolescence in my mind.

It's only an anecdotal experience, but it's more than enough for me to know which direction I'm going for future upgrades.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate here. There are plenty of games of the current generation that support SLI and have huge improvements, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which most struggled to run on max settings at 4k with a 2080Ti getting a solid 60fps. I'm a little shocked the author didn't even acknowledge the new flight simulator 2020 which can't even be played at max settings without 2080Ti's in SLI. Back in the day, it was true that you could easily overwhelm a single card, but that's because developers pushed the envelope. Without SLI, developers will be skittish to do anything outside of what a solid single card can handle. Besides, what if we have people who really do want to game at 8k in a few years with max settings enabled?

NVLINK shouldn't be dead IMO. I see ray tracing as something that could easily advance in games to overwhelm these cards and lets not forget trying to play VR titles in this way.

I have a 2080Ti NVLINK setup and it saved my having to tune down settings in a number of games. Try maxing out red dead redemption 2 on a 4k machine with your 2080TI. You can't. It's not even playable without SLI.

Yes it's nuts for most people buying 2 cards and no I don't think NVLINK has a place in mainstream, but it also serves the purpose of inspiring developers to go over the top and I think we should all be trying to push the envelope here.

If you're worried about the current state of VR or CPU bottlenecking, just imagine how Intel is going to respond in the coming months and year to AMDs Ryzen. I bet another round of next gen VR headsets are around the corner too.
 
This article is wrong and full of nonsense , First the scaling s very good when the game supports SLI can be upto 90%

... Second , no one will use SLI and game on FULL HD , SLI is for 4K experience and 8K <--- experience the Writer ignored altogether , CPU bottleneck will not happen .

Also , The Writer ignored all together Multi Screen setups !!! 4K each ! which are great for Flight simulators and racing games.

Nvidia RTX 3090 has NVlink and the RTX 3080 does not for one reason : Marketing .

For dual RTX 3080 will be at least 50% faster upto 90% faster , while the RTX 3090 is only 20% faster for more than double the price of RTX 3080 ...

Also you wont experience lower fps in some game if they dont support SLI , all what you have to do is disable SLI for such games.

The right thing to write is : If the games you play supports SLI and you want to game on 4K or 8K OR Mutlipe 4K monitors , with the same experience we have now on FHD (in the 120+fps range) , then SLI is sure for you.

And Nvidia : Plase release RTX 3080 with NVLINK ! OR reduce the price of the RTX 3090 to $1200
 
Last edited:
nofanneeded said:
This article is wrong and full of nonsense , First the scaling s very good when the game supports SLI can be upto 90%

... Second , no one will use SLI and game on FULL HD , SLI is for 4K experience and 8K <--- experience the Writer ignored altogether , CPU bottleneck will not happen .

Also , The Writer ignored all together Multi Screen setups !!! 4K each ! which are great for Flight simulators and racing games.

Nvidia RTX 3090 has NVlink and the RTX 3080 does not for one reason : Marketing .

For dual RTX 3080 will be at least 50% faster upto 90% faster , while the RTX 3090 is only 20% faster for more than double the price of RTX 3080 ...

Also you wont experience lower fps in some game if they dont support SLI , all what you have to do is disable SLI for such games.

The right thing to write is : If the games you play supports SLI and you want to game on 4K or 8K OR Mutlipe 4K monitors , with the same experience we have now on FHD (in the 120+fps range) , then SLI is sure for you.

And Nvidia : Plase release RTX 3080 with NVLINK ! OR reduce the price of the RTX 3090 to $1200
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. Although, Nvidia can't release the 3080 with nvlink as you just said. This is the only way they got their price points correct. All of those prices from the 3070 to the 3090 are only possible without nvlink. Otherwise, the 3090 is back up to 2400 dollar territory and the 3080 is over 1000 again to keep the cannibalism low. Remember, the price is what's going to beat AMD not the top end NVLINK capability. If they swapped price for NVLINK support on the lower cards, AMD could zero in on a single card and beat it in terms of performance per dollar.

The article seamed very narrowly minded, ignoring tons of facts on the current games and success of NVLINK hitting 90% gains. They also didn't even seem to understand the business motivations of this dropping NVLINK on the lower cards.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nofanneeded
cirdecus said:
I'm going to play devils advocate here. There are plenty of games of the current generation that support SLI and have huge improvements, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which most struggled to run on max settings at 4k with a 2080Ti getting a solid 60fps. I'm a little shocked the author didn't even acknowledge the new flight simulator 2020 which can't even be played at max settings without 2080Ti's in SLI. Back in the day, it was true that you could easily overwhelm a single card, but that's because developers pushed the envelope. Without SLI, developers will be skittish to do anything outside of what a solid single card can handle. Besides, what if we have people who really do want to game at 8k in a few years with max settings enabled?

NVLINK shouldn't be dead IMO. I see ray tracing as something that could easily advance in games to overwhelm these cards and lets not forget trying to play VR titles in this way.

I have a 2080Ti NVLINK setup and it saved my having to tune down settings in a number of games. Try maxing out red dead redemption 2 on a 4k machine with your 2080TI. You can't. It's not even playable without SLI.

Yes it's nuts for most people buying 2 cards and no I don't think NVLINK has a place in mainstream, but it also serves the purpose of inspiring developers to go over the top and I think we should all be trying to push the envelope here.

If you're worried about the current state of VR or CPU bottlenecking, just imagine how Intel is going to respond in the coming months and year to AMDs Ryzen. I bet another round of next gen VR headsets are around the corner too.
Click to expand...
RDR2 is not fast paced, anything over 30fps is good for me. RDR2 is playable with my oced 2080 Ti I get 46-48fps maxed in the benchmark 4K but I get your point, future games will be more demanding so SLI can help. I like AMD's dual GPUs, I had an HD5970, it was a monster and the fastest at the time. It maxed Crysis over 60fps. AMD days are over though. I also agree that there shouldn't be a limit and developpers should work on dual GPUs but I guess its expensive to develop multigpus support.
 
Last edited:
That's right because knowing the price, I would be interesting to check 2x 3080 with NvLink versus 3090! The reason is that you can start with 3080 and when it would be not enough you can buy a second even at a lower price at the end you will have perhaps the same performance at lower price (and only when you feel that it's necessery.)

EDIT:
I would be curious to know benchmark with 2x 2080 TI NvLink vs 3080 because if you already bought a 2080 TI, and if the price drops, it worth to check
 
Last edited:
nofanneeded said:
This article is wrong and full of nonsense , First the scaling s very good when the game supports SLI can be upto 90%

... Second , no one will use SLI and game on FULL HD , SLI is for 4K experience and 8K <--- experience the Writer ignored altogether , CPU bottleneck will not happen .

Also , The Writer ignored all together Multi Screen setups !!! 4K each ! which are great for Flight simulators and racing games.

Nvidia RTX 3090 has NVlink and the RTX 3080 does not for one reason : Marketing .

For dual RTX 3080 will be at least 50% faster upto 90% faster , while the RTX 3090 is only 20% faster for more than double the price of RTX 3080 ...

Also you wont experience lower fps in some game if they dont support SLI , all what you have to do is disable SLI for such games.

The right thing to write is : If the games you play supports SLI and you want to game on 4K or 8K OR Mutlipe 4K monitors , with the same experience we have now on FHD (in the 120+fps range) , then SLI is sure for you.

And Nvidia : Plase release RTX 3080 with NVLINK ! OR reduce the price of the RTX 3090 to $1200
Click to expand...
"For dual RTX 3080 will be at least 50% faster upto 90% faster , while the RTX 3090 is only 20% faster for more than double the price of RTX 3080 ..."

I agree 100%, its only marketing so you pay much more for a 3090. Otherwise ppl would get 2x3080 for the price of a 3090 and have much more performance.
 
Olivier_00 said:
That's right because knowing the price, I would be interesting to check 2x 3080 with NvLink versus 3090! The reason is that you can start with 3080 and when it would be not enough you can buy a second even at a lower price at the end you will have perhaps the same performance at lower price (and only when you feel that it's necessery.)
Click to expand...
2x3080 is significantly faster and cheaper than 1x3090. Nvidia just wants your money lol
 
Multi GPU in GPU compute and massive 3D Rendering is still viable.

Multi-GPU in Gaming is not, both because of microstutter that cannot be permanently solved and game developers moving away from even bothering to support it.

SLI/Crossfire is going the way of PhysX
 
NVLink is actually super important for folks using these cards for Redshift 3D rendering. It allows you to pool the VRAM across the cards. So two 24GB cards with NVLink will present 48GB of usable VRAM to Redshift. That's a good thing for folks in Media and Entertainment who are more likely to jump straight to the 3090 to begin with.
 
neojack said:
i don't really like how the article is hyping about performance results of cards that aren't available or tested.
feeding the buzz
Click to expand...
For the 3080 at least, we have actual performance numbers from Digital Foundry who have a card and posted results. 60-80% faster than a 2080 in rasterized, 90%+ in pure raytracing. As posted in another thread, in game footage of Doom performance has been posted as well.
 
Nvdia know that if Person want to have sli he is ready to pay douple the $1500. This Also means that future games don`t support sli. Only those that has been released so far. Nvidias highend Gaming gpu is 3080 according to Nvidia and 3090 is enthusiast gpu, and that means iMHO that the end of new sli Gaming tittles is near, but we most likely see sli support to productive work Also in the future!
 
neojack said:
obviously because they want pro users to buy the most expensive cards ?
Click to expand...
Considering that some people, to this day, still argue that SLI is dead/not dead, maybe it isn't so obvious.
So far, within this thread, I see:
-SLI is dead: 4 posts
-SLI isn't dead: 4 posts
Hmm, maybe the above is too broad...

-Multi-gpu is dead for gaming: 4
-Multi-gpu is not dead for gaming: 4
Yeah, I think this is a little more accurate.
 
hannibal said:
Nvdia know that if Person want to have sli he is ready to pay douple the $1500. This Also means that future games don`t support sli. Only those that has been released so far. Nvidias highend Gaming gpu is 3080 according to Nvidia and 3090 is enthusiast gpu, and that means iMHO that the end of new sli Gaming tittles is near, but we most likely see sli support to productive work Also in the future!
Click to expand...

You are totally wrong because in the past even mid range GPU had SLI , fro xx60 to xx80 ...

and dont worry much , SLI and Crossfire will continue to exist , actually they will come back , because Intel Xe Graphics GPU works by tiles , that is adding the same GPU and connect them inside the chip , this is similar to SLI ... Intel Xe graphics will bring back parallel GPU .. call it what you want to call it , SLI/Crossfire/Xe tiles
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom