One GeForce GTX 970 vs Dual GTX 970 in SLI

[Justice2K]

Hey all,

My gaming rig will be one year old next week, and I'm sporting an i-7 with a GeForce GTX 970, factory overclocked. It's handled most games well at Ultra settings, but someone planted a seed a few days ago that has me wondering about putting another 970 in there.

I'm wondering what kind of REAL performance boost I would get from that. Is it worth doing? If so, is the SLI process a complicated one? (My current build is my first ever)

Thanks!

 

[bzboy]

I think you can expect about a 30-50% increase in frame rates running sli on average. but that varies game to game.Just understand that sli does not mean double frame rates. as for running sli its easy. just install and connect the sli bridge. then go into your nvidia settings and enable.

 

[Derza10]

Eh SLI is closer to 80% performance increase not 30-50%. You need to make sure you have a PSU that can support two cards though. What is your PSU make/model?

 

[bignastyid]

The performance boost depends on the game, some scale well others dont, some dont support it at all. Before you get a 2nd card make sure your board supports SLI and the psu is capable of powering 2 cards.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

The performance boost depends on the game, some scale well others dont, some dont support it at all. Before you get a 2nd card make sure your board supports SLI and the psu is capable of powering 2 cards.

+1 most games now actually scale pretty well but don't always expect 90% scaling usually about 50+ on average.

some games also wont run well at all with sli or xfire , all depends on the games you want to play

 

[CalebTheEternal_]

It's a decent performance boost. I'm not sure what resolution you are using or will be using later on. I have an i7 5820K and SLI 970s and it runs great. I was running triple 1080p but I picked up another monitor and it was 1440p 144Hz so couldn't do multi monitor gaming. Works great either way. Can't always get 144 FPS maxed out on games but close sometimes. Just an example is CoD BO3 I get 130-140 FPS maxed out. Hopefully this helps. Not sure if it will. I can't get anymore FPS results at the moment because I'm on the road. SLI Is very easy to setup. Make sure your motherboard is SLI ready and you have an SLI bridge. After that it's all in the NVIDIA control panel. Don't expect a 90% performance increase. It depends on the game. Some games don't even use SLI.

 

[Justice2K]

My build...can I do it:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 Ghz)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H LGA 1150 Z97 Ultra Durable UEFI DualBIOS ATX Motherboard

Optical: LG Electronics Optical DVD Drive GH24NSB0B

SSD: Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT512MX100SSD1

Power Supply: Corsair CX750 Builder Series ATX 80 PLUS Bronze Certified Power Supply

Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4GB GDDR5 PCiE Video Graphics Card GV-N970G1 GAMING-4GD

HD: Seagate Desktop 3 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 7200 RPM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST3000DM001

RAM: Patriot 8GB(2x4GB) Viper III DDR3 1866MHz (PC3 15000) CL9 Desktop Memory With Red Gaming Heatsink- PV38G186C9KRD

Case: Corsair Carbide Series Black 300R Windowed Computer Case (CC-9011017-WW)

 

[bignastyid]

Motherboard supports sli. Psu is technically able to power 2 970s but is low quality and likely wont run them for long, so you may want to look into getting a higher quality 750w (or larger) psu.

 

[Justice2K]

Is it more worth it to buy an extra card for SLI or just upgrade the card I HAVE to a better card (980 or something)? And if I do that, is there a decent aftermarket for used GPUs? I still have the original box and everything.

 

[bignastyid]

What resolution do you play at?

 

[Justice2K]

1842 x 1048 on a 60-in Samsung TV

 

[bignastyid]

Wow, thats an odd resolution. I'd just stick with a single 970 and save your money for an arctic islands or pascal due out next year.