[SOLVED] SLI PNY RTX 2080 TI Blower edition or another EVGA 1080 TI FTW3?

[shen.matt92]

Ive an EVGA GTX 1080 TI FTW3 with triple fan iCX cooling. The base is 1569 and boost 1683 with 11GB memory OC to 1873 with Precision XOC software. On eBay this card is $600 used. Right now I can't afford to buy an RTX 2080 TI with cash so if I do get one it'll be the PNY Blowers edition with my Dell credit.

The PNY edition on Dell is $1600 and the base clock is only 1350, while the base of my 1080 is 1569. In my understanding, the higher the base clock the higher you can OC, correct? So that low speed concerns me. Even my brothers RX 580 can't play certain games at ultra and its 1430MHz.

So for $1600 that speed seems unacceptable. Also, on EVGA the triple fan iCX 2080 TI with a higher clock is only $1300 but its out of stock.

I've seen becnhmarks that two 2080s are definitely better than two 1080s, but will that still be true with the lower base clock?

And even if they are better, spending $3200 (tax not included) for dual 2080 TIs may not give enough performance gain over two 1080s for an extra $2600 since the FTW3 1080 on eBay is $600.


Ive a feeling Im going to go with the second 1080. But what I dont want to do is get the 1080, then change my mind and realize I shouldve went the 2080 route and end up spending more than 3200.

I also have BestBuy credit but they don't have any 2080 TIs. Would this Nvidia brand 2080 for only $800 with an 1800MHz boost clock be a better solution than the PNYs? I could get two for the price of just one PNY card. And how does it stack against dual 1080 TI? I know there are many benchmark videos and articles but with all these different clock speeds and editions its hard to know exactly. The Nvidia brand one I know has less CUDA cores than even my 1080 along with 4GB less memory. But Nvidia does say their new Turing tech is 6X faster. Super confused.

I really need an experts advice.

Current specs:
i7 8700K @ 4.7 GHz using EZ OC in BIOS
16GB RAM @ 3000MHz
ASRock Z370 PRO 4
EVGA GTX 1080 TI FTW3 iCX

 

[feelinfroggy777]

My advice, stick with what you have. Dont do 1080ti SLI. I have run it and found that most of the time I have to turn SLI off more than leave it on because of negative scaling. Unless you have a 144hz/4k monitor, dont get a 2080ti. It is way to expensive and a 1080ti can push 4k/60hz just fine. If you are not playing at 4k, then you dont need a 2080ti.

Dont get a 2080, performance is similar to the 1080ti.

As a 8700k and 1080ti owner, I will wait till ray tracing is actually in a game before I drop 1K or more on a GPU (especially if I were to put it on credit). At least wait till a game comes out with RTX in it to see if it is worth the cost.

Nvidia's marketing with Turing is skewed. While it is 6x faster at ray tracing, that does not mean you will get 6x the fps. It just means it is better at ray tracing (which no game has at the moment). So wait, wait, wait.

 

[izoli]

Either stick with single 1080 ti or go SLI 2080 ti, I wouldn't get a 2nd 1080 ti. 2080 ti shows the same 20-30% average performance gain over previous gen with quite the price hike isn't really worth it per se, but the SLI scaling has been shown to do much better on average. So if your goal is to run 1440p 144hz or 4k with SLI setup it may be in your interest to spend the big bucks for that 2080 ti SLI setup.

 

[chemmajorp53]

Nvidia's turing tech is 6X faster at RAY TRACING, which there aren't even any games for yet. Buying a 2nd new 1080 ti and buying SLI 2080 tis would both be almost literally lighting money on fire in my opinion. With a used 1080 ti you can at least resell it for roughly what you bought it for if you don't need it, which there's a very solid chance you won't.

Buying the 2080 ti for raytracing right now is kind of like someone offering you a $100 gift card to a store that doesn't exist yet for $150 cash on the hope that the store will soon exist and you can use what you paid for.

Why anyone wants to buy the 2080 ti for $1200+++ right now is completely baffling to me. You can just wait for raytracing games to come out and see if it's worth the price premium and buy then if you think it's worth it.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Nvidia's turing tech is 6X faster at RAY TRACING, which there aren't even any games for yet. Buying a 2nd new 1080 ti and buying SLI 2080 tis would both be almost literally lighting money on fire in my opinion. With a used 1080 ti you can at least resell it for roughly what you bought it for if you don't need it, which there's a very solid chance you won't.

Buying the 2080 ti for raytracing right now is kind of like someone offering you a $100 gift card to a store that doesn't exist yet for $150 cash on the hope that the store will soon exist and you can use what you paid for.

Why anyone wants to buy the 2080 ti for $1200+++ right now is completely baffling to me. You can just wait for raytracing games to come out and see if it's worth the price premium and buy then if you think it's worth it.

^^^^ This dude said it all. Best advice I have seen all day.

 

[shen.matt92]

Well the reason I want SLI so badly is because actually not all my games do well even at 1080p. I have a 4K 60hz display and Rise of the Tomb Raider consistently does 60fps at everything ultra smaax4 @ 1080p but in few instances it drops to 55 and stutters. I actually fixed this by getting a HDMI 2.1 with 48Gbps bandwidth and now it drops to 59 only. I wasn't satisfied with that because there was still some noticeability of stutter so I eventually reduced the resolution to 720p. I feel like the 1080 TI is just enough to play at 720p HD with guaranteed 60fps in ALL game scenarios. Literally all, for example:

With 1080 TI FTW3 in Fallout 4, its 60fps mostly @1080p ultra but in this mission called "bunker hill" its so intense that frames drop to 51-53, at 4K as low as the 40s. I fixed this by turning on XMP for my RAM and now it doesn't dip below 57 @1080p.

I disagree that the 1080 can do 4K. In my experience and in benchmarks 4K at ultra in any game doesn't even come close to 60fps consistently. Even Bioshock from 2007 when the 9800GT was the best card still stuttered for me here and there at 4K.

I use Vsync, don't like unlocked frames.

But I have seen many bench videos of 1080TI scaling quite well in SLI, then again its YouTube and Im not actually there to see it on screen. When you guys say it doesn't scale well do you mean the frames are higher but it micro stutters still? How come I never really witness stuttering in benchmark videos?

So from these responses it sounds to me like the 2080 TI SLI is off the table for now.
So I guess the question is single 2080 TI or dual 1080 TI?

The way I see it, the used FTW3 1080 TI is only $600. For 20 more fps (what I usually see in benchmarks) it seems promising. But Im still not quite understanding the problems with SLI. Is the main issue stutter? Or that the second card just doesn't add that many more frames? If its the latter, Im totally fine if the second card only adds even 5 frames. That's really all it takes to get my fps consistently 60 without the 55fps noticeable stutter, lol.

But I really like that store gift card analogy. But that's weird, I thought Shadow of the Tomb Raider had ray tracing? I kept seeing it whenever Nvidia would advertise ray tracing. I thought ray tracing was simply a method of light rendering, so as long as a game has detailed lighting effects it will simply use a different method to render it. I didn't think a game had to have ray tracing.

 

[chemmajorp53]

As far as I know, they only have a ray tracing demo for tomb raider right now and the full ray tracing patch will be shipped at a later date. If you're having trouble running anything at 1080p 60fps on a 1080 ti then something is wrong, you should be massively CPU bottlenecked at that resolution so the gpu shouldn't even matter. At 4k, I would suggest turning down a couple settings, you won't notice the difference. Keep all the textures and stuff, but settings like anti-aliasing make almost no difference at that res because the pixels are already so small. I used to play games like Far Cry 3 and 4 at 4k with medium-high settings and no AA on a GTX 970 and it held 60fps pretty easily, still looked fantastic.

 

[izoli]

Should just ignore ray tracing right now, still too early for anything of that. sli stability and scalability has been shown to do better with the rtx2080 ti nvlink if you feel like sli is a must for you. Still not really worth the money, but for some people it's simply a requirement regardless of whats the best price to performance ratio.

At 1080p a single 1080ti really should be able to easily maintain 60fps ultra. Get a gsync monitor with higher refresh rate and disable vsync. 1440p 144hz it'll struggle to stay over 100fps on ultra and sli would be good to utilize. 4k 120hz you will absolutely have to use sli to have a chance at playing in high settings.

All sli configurations have the same issues to different degrees. Microstutters, poor scaling, sometimes even negative scaling, games crash.

When I had 580s in sli these were commonplace. I now have 1080s in sli and the stuttering and crashing is much less common, but there are still games that do not scale well and some that actually perform worse with sli. 2080s from benchmarks ive seen scale very well most of the time.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3366-nvlink-benchmark-rtx-2080-ti-pcie-bandwidth-x16-vs-x8

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Well the reason I want SLI so badly is because actually not all my games do well even at 1080p. I have a 4K 60hz display and Rise of the Tomb Raider consistently does 60fps at everything ultra smaax4 @ 1080p but in few instances it drops to 55 and stutters. I actually fixed this by getting a HDMI 2.1 with 48Gbps bandwidth and now it drops to 59 only. I wasn't satisfied with that because there was still some noticeability of stutter so I eventually reduced the resolution to 720p. I feel like the 1080 TI is just enough to play at 720p HD with guaranteed 60fps in ALL game scenarios. Literally all, for example:

With 1080 TI FTW3 in Fallout 4, its 60fps mostly @1080p ultra but in this mission called "bunker hill" its so intense that frames drop to 51-53, at 4K as low as the 40s. I fixed this by turning on XMP for my RAM and now it doesn't dip below 57 @1080p.

I disagree that the 1080 can do 4K. In my experience and in benchmarks 4K at ultra in any game doesn't even come close to 60fps consistently. Even Bioshock from 2007 when the 9800GT was the best card still stuttered for me here and there at 4K.

I use Vsync, don't like unlocked frames.

But I have seen many bench videos of 1080TI scaling quite well in SLI, then again its YouTube and Im not actually there to see it on screen. When you guys say it doesn't scale well do you mean the frames are higher but it micro stutters still? How come I never really witness stuttering in benchmark videos?

So from these responses it sounds to me like the 2080 TI SLI is off the table for now.
So I guess the question is single 2080 TI or dual 1080 TI?

The way I see it, the used FTW3 1080 TI is only $600. For 20 more fps (what I usually see in benchmarks) it seems promising. But Im still not quite understanding the problems with SLI. Is the main issue stutter? Or that the second card just doesn't add that many more frames? If its the latter, Im totally fine if the second card only adds even 5 frames. That's really all it takes to get my fps consistently 60 without the 55fps noticeable stutter, lol.

But I really like that store gift card analogy. But that's weird, I thought Shadow of the Tomb Raider had ray tracing? I kept seeing it whenever Nvidia would advertise ray tracing. I thought ray tracing was simply a method of light rendering, so as long as a game has detailed lighting effects it will simply use a different method to render it. I didn't think a game had to have ray tracing.

If your a 8700k and a 1080ti cant hold a stable 60fps at 1080p then either there is something wrong with your system, or there is something wrong with the game. If there is something wrong with your system, I would start by looking at your CPU temps. There are many PC games that are very poorly optimized. If the game is poorly optimized, it does not matter the hardware, you will still have frame drops.

Playing at 720p has nothing to do with the GPU and framerate. At that low resolution all of the bottleneck is on the CPU because the GPU does not have to work nearly has hard. Playing at 720p with a 1080ti is ludicrous. Its like driving a Ferrari in a school zone all day and complaining that there is not enough room in the car. The ONLY reason to test a game at 720p is to test your CPU.

You can disagree about the 1080ti not being a 4k card, but here are the actual benchmarks.

https://www.pcgamer.com/geforce-gtx-1080-ti-review/

In the 17 games tested at 4k, the stock 1080ti averaged 65 fps at Ultra settings. There were 3 games that is averaged below 60 fps and those were GR Wildlands (36), Deus Ex (43), and Witcher 3 (57). Wild Lands and Deus Ex are both so poorly optimized, that it does not matter what hardware you have, they don't run well. The Wicher 3 is a very demanding (and very good) game that has pushed hardware. But with a few tweaks, you can get it above 60 fps (hair works for one). Additionally, for better performance in 4k you should disable AA as it is very taxing on the GPU and does not benefit at high resolution for 4k.

New games will come out that will push hardware further. Monster Hunter World is a good example and the 1080ti wont get 60fps at 4k without dropping settings to high. But that is one game. For me, I would never spend $1600 to play one game at Ultra than High, but that is just me.

If you want to spend your money on something that will make your games look better, then go with a better monitor. The Acer Predator XB32 is probably the best 4k/60hz monitors in the world. I have one and it is glorious. You were complaining about framerate drops in some of your games, this is where you need gsync. Gsync will keep your gaming butter smooth without creating lag.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dwqPyc
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dwqPyc/by_merchant/

Monitor: Acer - XB321HK BMIPHZ 32.0" 3840x2160 60Hz Monitor ($959.84 @ Amazon)
Total: $959.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-29 09:12 EDT-0400

Lastly, you are complaining about frame drops. Mainly, about frame drops in single player RPG games. I can understand significant frame drops in quick twitch first person shooters such as CS:GO, but for single player RPG you are falling into some type of fps hype. With gsync, it would not even noticeable. Fallout 4 will have frame drops and those drops will happen with the 2080ti, because it is not a very well optimized game. The 2080ti is about 30% faster than the 1080ti. Therefore, the low 40 fps drop you get with the 1080ti in the few minutes of the bunkerhill mission, the 30% faster 2080ti will get 12 more fps than a 1080ti. So it will be at the low 50's instead of 40's which is still below your 60fps. Again, this is a short drop in fps in an optimized single player game.

In the end, I don't care what you do. It is your money and you can spend it (or borrow the money in your case) however you want regardless of how stupid it is.

 

[xxxlun4icexxx]

Ive an EVGA GTX 1080 TI FTW3 with triple fan iCX cooling. The base is 1569 and boost 1683 with 11GB memory OC to 1873 with Precision XOC software. On eBay this card is $600 used. Right now I can't afford to buy an RTX 2080 TI with cash so if I do get one it'll be the PNY Blowers edition with my Dell credit.

The PNY edition on Dell is $1600 and the base clock is only 1350, while the base of my 1080 is 1569. In my understanding, the higher the base clock the higher you can OC, correct? So that low speed concerns me. Even my brothers RX 580 can't play certain games at ultra and its 1430MHz.

So for $1600 that speed seems unacceptable. Also, on EVGA the triple fan iCX 2080 TI with a higher clock is only $1300 but its out of stock.

I've seen becnhmarks that two 2080s are definitely better than two 1080s, but will that still be true with the lower base clock?

And even if they are better, spending $3200 (tax not included) for dual 2080 TIs may not give enough performance gain over two 1080s for an extra $2600 since the FTW3 1080 on eBay is $600.


Ive a feeling Im going to go with the second 1080. But what I dont want to do is get the 1080, then change my mind and realize I shouldve went the 2080 route and end up spending more than 3200.

I also have BestBuy credit but they don't have any 2080 TIs. Would this Nvidia brand 2080 for only $800 with an 1800MHz boost clock be a better solution than the PNYs? I could get two for the price of just one PNY card. And how does it stack against dual 1080 TI? I know there are many benchmark videos and articles but with all these different clock speeds and editions its hard to know exactly. The Nvidia brand one I know has less CUDA cores than even my 1080 along with 4GB less memory. But Nvidia does say their new Turing tech is 6X faster. Super confused.

I really need an experts advice.

Current specs:
i7 8700K @ 4.7 GHz using EZ OC in BIOS
16GB RAM @ 3000MHz
ASRock Z370 PRO 4
EVGA GTX 1080 TI FTW3 iCX

I would honestly just wait and get a decent 3rd party 2080ti. They are becoming more available now. The day I got my zotac it was in stock for quite a bit. I'd just wait and get one. At 4k, it is 100% completely worth it. Great framerates at 4k ultra settings across the board.

Only downside is yeah it's expensive. To me the money is worth it just because I've been trying to get 60fps/4k forever now. With a 1080ti, you're close, you're pretty much right on the edge.

 

[shen.matt92]

I just picked up an ASUS DUAL RTX 2080 TI for only $1239 brand new at my local PC store!!! My local store accepts Dell credit as a payment option so I went with that. Its very similar to the EVGA Ultra version, they take up 3 slots for better cooling. The boost clock is on par with the higher end 2080 TIs. Whew...cant believe I was actually about to get the PNY edition for $400 more when it has a lower clock and only one fan. BestBuy has the Founders Edition but that was recently reported to have serious issues.

My GTX 1080 TI Im just giving to my brother who desperately needs a new GPU. His RX 580 can barely play AC: Odyssey.

 

[chemmajorp53]

I don't understand what the point of making this post was if you were going to ignore what people who responded to it said anyways, but enjoy your new card

 

[shen.matt92]

I don't understand what the point of making this post was if you were going to ignore what people who responded to it said anyways, but enjoy your new card

Most people said keep the 1080, I already knew that wasn't what I wanted. That wasn't one of my choices in my question, I asked 1080 SLI or 2080 TI. When going by the question the only people who had any advice relevant to my two choices was the last responder who advised waiting for a 2080 TI. This is what I knew I wanted, but at the time my only option was the PNY one. And I just learned yesterday that my local store had an ASUS version with good specs and features for $400 less than PNY, and they accept Dell credit. This was an unexpected miracle as my local PC store along with BestBuy are the only two online retailers that still have ANY in stock. I don't want to name my store because they only have 2 left and theres a small chance I may want NVLink lol.

But most of all everyone who says the 1080 TI should be able to max out at 1080p with 60fps doesn't fully understand what Im saying. I even mentioned how my PC DOES consistently do 60 fps on max in most games 90% of the time, but there are those very few moments where it hiccups and doesn't. I can achieve 60fps constantly if I play on 2560x1440p with AA off. But I really wanted AA maxed out on DX12, so 720p achieved this with 60fps and it was at least still 16:9 HD. For example, in Fallout 4 on max settings, 1080p, I can do 60 fps 99% of the time. But in the quest bunker hill, if you go into the corner of this little shack inside bunker hill, your frames will drop at least 10. Its just a little empty wooden shack and for some reason it performs worse than when youre outside fighting 10 people at once in an open area. Thats what I don't like about benchmark tests. Itll tell you your PC can do better than it really can. The only way to know for sure is to sit on your butt for 10 hours straight playing a game and go into every crevice and corner firing as many shots possible while violently turning the camera.

I really appreciate the responses. That's the point of asking though, you can either take or leave the advice. In the complex and pricey world of computers it can be difficult to make a good decision. But Im glad I did what I did in the end it all factors in to the decision Ive made.