What happened to 3 and 4 way SLI?

[fordongreeman]

I remember the old days when it was possible to have three or four graphics cards running in tandem.

Today, the maximum is only two.

What happened?

 

[WildCard999]

Lack of gaming support and even two-way SLI is losing support although you can still use 3-4 cards for video production work.

 

[kerberos_20]

bandwith needed got insane, its cheaper to not support it since not many used it anyway
and dx12 can render on multiple gpus without sli

 

[13thmonkey]

each additional GPU added such little extra capability whilst adding a lot of complexity, heat and power requirements that it was not worth it.

 

[templarklimek]

I'm running 3 980ti's. Nothing can still touch this setup. However it took a expensive cpu and MB capable of supporting all the PCI lanes needed. Sadly a few new games screen tear/texture as another said sli's aren't really being supported as much anymore. I will upgrade to 1 2280ti and use 1 980ti for physx support and call it a day.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I'm running 3 980ti's. Nothing can still touch this setup. However it took a expensive cpu and MB capable of supporting all the PCI lanes needed. Sadly a few new games screen tear/texture as another said sli's aren't really being supported as much anymore. I will upgrade to 1 2280ti and use 1 980ti for physx support and call it a day.

Sell the 980ti and don't even waste the time with Physix. New games haven't supported an external Physix card for years.

 

[templarklimek]

ouch, I thought nvidia made them with organic driver support. In GPU control center it lists dedicate one to such. Thoughts Sir? Thank you for your council.

 

[Rogue Leader]

ouch, I thought nvidia made them with organic driver support. In GPU control center it lists dedicate one to such. Thoughts Sir? Thank you for your council.

You can still do it but the game needs to support it for it to work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

As you can see only ONE game in 2017 was released with GPU PhysiX support and 6 in 2016. Its dead.

 

[USAFRet]

I remember the old days when it was possible to have three or four graphics cards running in tandem.

Today, the maximum is only two.

What happened?

Over time, not all things work out the way they did initially.
Multi-GPU is one of those things.

Games need to be written to take care of those very few people who would do that. $$$
You need big cases and motherboards. $$$
Lots of $$$ for minimal actual gain.

 

[templarklimek]

Thank you. That blows though. ;-)