What's the state of SLI right now?

[dzsonni]

So I am faced with a very difficult choice.

SLI 970 or a single 980.

Cost 870$ sli MSI Gaming vs 660$ Gigabyte g1 gaming 980.

I will be gaming 1440p on 60 fps for now(upgrade somewhere next year to a Gsync monitor). I am not interested in 4k for now and probably wont be with these cards.

My question is regarding the state of sli support and problems, I have 2 290s and I can't say I'm perfectly happy with cf annoyances, it's not bad it's just that it has more problems then I would like to see.

How is Nvidias SLI support?

 

[ArnoBaes]

Pretty good. But nevertheless I would go single 980 because 970 SLI is very good for 4k, the think you aren't particulary interested in

 

[M0j0jojo]

So I am faced with a very difficult choice.

SLI 970 or a single 980.

Cost 870$ sli MSI Gaming vs 660$ Gigabyte g1 gaming 980.

I will be gaming 1440p on 60 fps for now(upgrade somewhere next year to a Gsync monitor). I am not interested in 4k for now and probably wont be with these cards.

My question is regarding the state of sli support and problems, I have 2 290s and I can't say I'm perfectly happy with cf annoyances, it's not bad it's just that it has more problems then I would like to see.

How is Nvidias SLI support?

There are always going to be more problem with SLI and CF then just going with a Single, the more cards the more the problem you might have to deal with. I say just just get a Single 970 for now when you money to get a 4K display add in another 970.

 

[sincreator]

Well your CPU will hold back the SLI 970's in CPU bound games, and then there is no guarantees that SLI will work for every game either, so my vote goes to the GTX980.

Eg: Farcry 3 and 4 do not run right with sli/xfire. I've read that there are issues with the latest Assassins Creed as well. This is probably more of a game engine issue though. They are all Ubisoft games.

PS: He has an FX-8350 for any one wondering.

 

[dzsonni]

Well your CPU will hold back the SLI 970's in CPU bound games, and then there is no guarantees that SLI will work for every game either, so my vote goes to the GTX980.

Eg: Farcry 3 and 4 do not run right with sli/xfire. I've read that there are issues with the latest Assassins Creed as well. This is probably more of a game engine issue though. They are all Ubisoft games.

PS: He has an FX-8350 for any one wondering.

Oops, sorry that is a very old config 😛 I now have a 4790k, I will update it now

 

[Mousemonkey]

I have been running SLi rigs for years and have never had half the issues that folk here say always occur with SLi, Crossfire is not SLi and just because Crossfire has problems does not mean that SLi has or will suffer the same problems.

 

[sincreator]

I have been running SLi rigs for years and have never had half the issues that folk here say always occur with SLi, Crossfire is not SLi and just because Crossfire has problems does not mean that SLi has or will suffer the same problems.

In some cases it does 😛 : https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/526088/fc3-crash-multiplayer-sli-enabled-/ This was never fixed, and still exists in Farcry 4. There were also problems in AC Unity, but I think those issues are resolved now. I know it is only from one publisher, but they are still AAA titles, and in the case of one of them the problem even spilled over to the next game in the franchise.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I have been running SLi rigs for years and have never had half the issues that folk here say always occur with SLi, Crossfire is not SLi and just because Crossfire has problems does not mean that SLi has or will suffer the same problems.

In some cases it does 😛 : https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/526088/fc3-crash-multiplayer-sli-enabled-/ This was never fixed, and still exists in Farcry 4. There were also problems in AC Unity, but I think those issues are resolved now. I know it is only from one publisher, but they are still AAA titles, and in the case of one of them the problem even spilled over to the next game in the franchise.

Those issues are with the games not the tech, badly coded software will have problems anyway and that is not the fault of the tech. Crossfire has issues that SLi doesn't suffer from and it's at the hardware/software level, you appear to be of the opinion that SLi has issues because of poorly coded games and I disagree.

 

[dzsonni]

Those issues are with the games not the tech, badly coded software will have problems anyway and that is not the fault of the tech. Crossfire has issues that SLi doesn't suffer from and it's at the hardware/software level, you appear to be of the opinion that SLi has issues because of poorly coded games and I disagree.

I'm sorry but what issues are you talking about with Crossfire(the technology)? I have been using it for almost a year now and just as you said the problem is only with the software being run. So I don't see the point of your argument, sure the computer works with both SLI and CF but what I am interested in is day to day annoyances and problems, the way I have read neither of these technologies have any major defects.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Those issues are with the games not the tech, badly coded software will have problems anyway and that is not the fault of the tech. Crossfire has issues that SLi doesn't suffer from and it's at the hardware/software level, you appear to be of the opinion that SLi has issues because of poorly coded games and I disagree.

I'm sorry but what issues are you talking about with Crossfire(the technology)? I have been using it for almost a year now and just as you said the problem is only with the software being run. So I don't see the point of your argument, sure the computer works with both SLI and CF but what I am interested in is day to day annoyances and problems, the way I have read neither of these technologies have any major defects.

I have seen posts where Crossfire has issues getting both cards to work, especially if the motherboard has an x16 and an x4 slot. There have also been quite a few times when had similar issues with getting SLi to work but that usually turns out to be because a non SLi motherboard is being used. I myself have not had any of those issues and I find that SLi is reliable and stable, sure it may not work with every single game that has ever been released but I don't see that as a fault with SLi itself as others seem to do.

 

[dzsonni]

Well thanks for your input all, for now I will go with a single 980. Although the 2 970 should beat it in terms of sheer performance, I want a hassle free life with my new gpu 😛

Maybe for xmas I will get a second one.

 

[loki1944]

I have SLI 780TIs and Xfire 290Xs both systems work great; I think Warband was the only issue I had and that was with my SLI rig. Crysis 3 and modded Skyrim run much better benchmark-wise on my SLI rig, but still phenomenal on myXfire rig.