[SOLVED] Which SLI bridge should I get?

[lance88]

Hi, I have a Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X mobo and Asus Turbo 1070 Ti 8GB. I am thinking to upgrade to Gigabyte Z590 Gaming X mobo (along with Intel 11th Gen) and purchase another 1070 Ti 8GB (most likely a Zotac Amp or Mini) to use SLI. I am wondering if:
1) Gigabyte Z series Mobo seems to only indicate AMD Crossfire in the specification, do they support SLI? If it does not support, is there any mobo that does to recommend?

2) I did some research and SLI of same GPU core but from different manufacturer are possible. Since they are of different length (the SLI bridge portion will also be of different alignment?), does it mean I can only get the Flexi (Standard) SLI bridge instead of the higher end LED bridge or High-Bandwidth (HB) bridge? Wont that impact the performance?

3) Does it make sense to do SLI now, as I read somewhere that only certain games support them.

I understand SLI is dead but getting a 3 series card now is just too costly, even a 3060 cost 2x than what it used to at 700USD and 3070 Ti at 1150USD hence the idea to do an SLI.

 

[Wolfshadw]

1) Gigabyte Z series Mobo seems to only indicate AMD Crossfire in the specification, do they support SLI? If it does not support, is there any mobo that does to recommend?

No. These boards only support AMD CrossfireX. AMD Crossfire can use the PCI-Ex16 (x4) secondary slot, but NVidia SLI requires both PCI-Ex16 slots to be running at least x8 throughput.

2) I did some research and SLI of same GPU core but from different manufacturer are possible. Since they are of different length (the SLI bridge portion will also be of different alignment?), does it mean I can only get the Flexi (Standard) SLI bridge instead of the higher end LED bridge or High-Bandwidth (HB) bridge? Wont that impact the performance?

The SLI bridge connector placement should be standard for every card manufacturer. You should be able to use any SLI bridge.

3) Does it make sense to do SLI now, as I read somewhere that only certain games support them.

It does not. Multi-card support is all but dead. Even at it's peak, performance returns were not always that great. Given the diminishing support, I'd consider it a waste, especially since your current board doesn't support SLI.

I understand SLI is dead but getting a 3 series card now is just too costly, even a 3060 cost 2x than what it used to at 700USD and 3070 Ti at 1150USD hence the idea to do an SLI.

SLI is not an option on your current motherboard. You'd need a new motherboard to use your current 1070Ti in an SLI set up (added cost) or you'd need to sell your 1070Ti for two AMD cards to use with your current motherboard (also added cost).

IMO, stick with your current set up until things (hopefully) normalize in a year or five.

-Wolf sends

 

[faalin]

On top of what Wolfshadow said, you also would need to look at your PSU, 2 1070 ti is recommended a 775W PSU, the GPUs will also generate about 2/3 more heat as the second card will double the heat output and with little airflow going to the top card it will generate more heat as well vs a single card.