I have a 2-way SLI with GTX 770 (2GB version) card.
I recently got another one from a friend who had recieved it as a gift and never used it.
I am wondering -- should I try to sell it and use the money for other upgrades (like increasing ram to 32GB from 16)
or would adding a 3'rd card actually be beneficial?
I ask because 2 way SLI already has a lot of problems with games and from what I've read on other forums apparently 3way SLI is pointless and makes no performacne difference?
any opinions? they'd be greately appreciated.
I am playing GTA 5 so if another card would boost performance I'd slap it in.
I have a 2-way SLI with GTX 770 (2GB version) card.
I recently got another one from a friend who had recieved it as a gift and never used it.
I am wondering -- should I try to sell it and use the money for other upgrades (like increasing ram to 32GB from 16)
or would adding a 3'rd card actually be beneficial?
I ask because 2 way SLI already has a lot of problems with games and from what I've read on other forums apparently 3way SLI is pointless and makes no performacne difference?
any opinions? they'd be greately appreciated.
I am playing GTA 5 so if another card would boost performance I'd slap it in.
I'm playing with this scenario right now in GTA5 using dual 690s, for Quad-SLI. Two card SLI (single 690) works great, giving me a giant boost in performance). 4 card SLI cuts the frame rate in half instead, and is totally broken somehow.
In Metro 2033, I get all 4 cards active in 3D. Frame rate jumps from 55 fps to 185 fps. I'll be trying the different stages to see, but it was definitely scaling in Metro 2033.
Another option is you can set the third card as PhysX specific, so it would't be a total waste, but only a few games would be helped by dedicated PhysX. That would still help more than 32G of RAM. You'll never use the extra RAM.
Before you would sell it though- definitely experiment, give it at try. Let us know what you see. Assuming your motherboard can accept a third card for SLI. Not all can. For 3D specifically, I don't think we know for sure.
@Siberian: Please, more info? What games did you try?
I'm playing with this scenario right now in GTA5 using dual 690s, for Quad-SLI. Two card SLI (single 690) works great, giving me a giant boost in performance). 4 card SLI cuts the frame rate in half instead, and is totally broken somehow.
In Metro 2033, I get all 4 cards active in 3D. Frame rate jumps from 55 fps to 185 fps. I'll be trying the different stages to see, but it was definitely scaling in Metro 2033.
Another option is you can set the third card as PhysX specific, so it would't be a total waste, but only a few games would be helped by dedicated PhysX. That would still help more than 32G of RAM. You'll never use the extra RAM.
Before you would sell it though- definitely experiment, give it at try. Let us know what you see. Assuming your motherboard can accept a third card for SLI. Not all can. For 3D specifically, I don't think we know for sure.
@Siberian: Please, more info? What games did you try?
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607 Latest 3Dmigoto Release Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
Hi bo3b,
I moved one from Tri-sli when I had 3 480's. However, i remember something about the Metro developer going the extra mile in SLI support. That might be the one game that works the way we all want it to.
I moved one from Tri-sli when I had 3 480's. However, i remember something about the Metro developer going the extra mile in SLI support. That might be the one game that works the way we all want it to.
4770k @ 4.2 Water cooled
32 Gigs DDR 3 2400
GTX Titan X SLI
Obsidian 800D
EVGA 1300 watt
1 Terabyte SSD raid 0
ASUS 27 inch 3D monitor 3D vision 2.
Before considering a 3rd card of any sort (Tri-SLI or PhysX), you need to make sure that your motherboard can handle 3 cards without throttling any of the PCIe slots to x4 speed. Chances are that it can't, in which case using a 3rd card could do more harm than good to your framerates.
I have a 3 card system (2 Titans in SLI and a 650ti for PhysX - I love my dedicated PhysX card btw), but I needed to get a new mobo to keep them going in x8/x8/x8.
Bob's right about the RAM, if all you use it for is games. I regularly use over 90% of my 32GB in Photoshop, but games use a fraction of that. For games, you won't need more than 16GB for another few years yet.
Do you have a SSD for your OS? With enough space (or, preferably, a separate SSD) for some selected games? (especially open world ones like GTA5 that are constantly loading stuff). If not, that's a very worthwhile upgrade.
Or, you could sell all three cards and get a more beastly single GPU. 2GB of VRAM is going to get increasingly constricting with contemporary games, no matter how many GPUs you have.
Before considering a 3rd card of any sort (Tri-SLI or PhysX), you need to make sure that your motherboard can handle 3 cards without throttling any of the PCIe slots to x4 speed. Chances are that it can't, in which case using a 3rd card could do more harm than good to your framerates.
I have a 3 card system (2 Titans in SLI and a 650ti for PhysX - I love my dedicated PhysX card btw), but I needed to get a new mobo to keep them going in x8/x8/x8.
Bob's right about the RAM, if all you use it for is games. I regularly use over 90% of my 32GB in Photoshop, but games use a fraction of that. For games, you won't need more than 16GB for another few years yet.
Do you have a SSD for your OS? With enough space (or, preferably, a separate SSD) for some selected games? (especially open world ones like GTA5 that are constantly loading stuff). If not, that's a very worthwhile upgrade.
Or, you could sell all three cards and get a more beastly single GPU. 2GB of VRAM is going to get increasingly constricting with contemporary games, no matter how many GPUs you have.
Hi Volnaiskra,
I'm not sure the lanes matter too much, especially if its PCIe 2.0 +
The image below is a good indicator:
[img]http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/images/perfrel_3840.gif[/img]
Wow, very good info guys!
I shall try the 3'rd card and see how it affects my GTA5 performance.
And yes, I do have an SSD for my OS/one game (gta5) and an HDD for the rest.
Also, here is my Motherboard:
-- SUS MAXIMUS VI HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
will that support 3 way SLI?
[quote="ibnlanizi"]Wow, very good info guys!
I shall try the 3'rd card and see how it affects my GTA5 performance.
And yes, I do have an SSD for my OS/one game (gta5) and an HDD for the rest.
Also, here is my Motherboard:
-- SUS MAXIMUS VI HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
will that support 3 way SLI?[/quote]
I'm pretty sure that board will only support 2x SLI.
[quote="ibnlanizi"]Wow, very good info guys!
I shall try the 3'rd card and see how it affects my GTA5 performance.
And yes, I do have an SSD for my OS/one game (gta5) and an HDD for the rest.
Also, here is my Motherboard:
-- SUS MAXIMUS VI HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
will that support 3 way SLI?[/quote]
I'm interested in seeing your results with a 3-way SLi so have taken the liberty of looking at your board's instruction manual.
You should be able to run a 3-way SLi in theory, but it's not officially supported - the caveat being that the other 3 smaller pcie x1 slots will be disabled - I hope you don't have anything in there.
So you will be running:
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 4x PCIE 2.0
Which from the graph above, shows that it'll work just fine without any noticeable performance loss.
The 4x will be linked through the chipset instead of directly to the CPU but it doesn't really impact performance.
I shall try the 3'rd card and see how it affects my GTA5 performance.
And yes, I do have an SSD for my OS/one game (gta5) and an HDD for the rest.
Also, here is my Motherboard:
-- SUS MAXIMUS VI HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
will that support 3 way SLI?
I'm interested in seeing your results with a 3-way SLi so have taken the liberty of looking at your board's instruction manual.
You should be able to run a 3-way SLi in theory, but it's not officially supported - the caveat being that the other 3 smaller pcie x1 slots will be disabled - I hope you don't have anything in there.
So you will be running:
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 4x PCIE 2.0
Which from the graph above, shows that it'll work just fine without any noticeable performance loss.
The 4x will be linked through the chipset instead of directly to the CPU but it doesn't really impact performance.
Windows 10 64-bit, Intel 7700K @ 5.1GHz, 16GB 3600MHz CL15 DDR4 RAM, 2x GTX 1080 SLI, Asus Maximus IX Hero, Sound Blaster ZxR, PCIe Quad SSD, Oculus Rift CV1, DLP Link PGD-150 glasses, ViewSonic PJD6531w 3D DLP Projector @ 1280x800 120Hz native / 2560x1600 120Hz DSR 3D Gaming.
RAGEdemon is right here for that motherboard. It's the same one I run. It officially supports Quad-SLI, but that is through two dual GPU cards.
I agree that tri-SLI should run at least with the pci config that RAGEdemon shows. The last outside slot will run at 4x PCI 2.0 which is unlikely to be become a bottleneck. Having noted that, it's always possible that a config like this will do something weird, or the software will misbehave because it doesn't like seeing them mismatched. There is a lot of complexity.
The other caveat there is that the middle card will be starved for air, because there is no gap for the outside slot, so the bottom two cards will be adjacent. Keep an eye on your temps for that middle card.
Not a config you'd buy another card for, but since you have one free for testing, I think it'd be interesting to play with.
I've been experimenting with a lot of games in quad and tri-sli, and it's interesting to note that the cards are active. In Metro LL for example, with Quad-SLI enabled, I will only see 3 cards actually active. But it's 3 cards, not two like you'd expect for 3D. I see this with GTA5 too, but it's not as good a test case because it's so new and stuff can be broken.
Nothing has so far translated into actual higher performance though, just less GPU load as more GPUs come into play.
So, at first blush here, that suggests that when running in 3D, that we rapidly hit a _CPU_ bottleneck, and that is why we don't see scaling for Tri-SLI. Don't take that as a sure answer, I'm still experimenting. I've just found it interesting that Tri-SLI is actually active, the third GPU is running.
RAGEdemon is right here for that motherboard. It's the same one I run. It officially supports Quad-SLI, but that is through two dual GPU cards.
I agree that tri-SLI should run at least with the pci config that RAGEdemon shows. The last outside slot will run at 4x PCI 2.0 which is unlikely to be become a bottleneck. Having noted that, it's always possible that a config like this will do something weird, or the software will misbehave because it doesn't like seeing them mismatched. There is a lot of complexity.
The other caveat there is that the middle card will be starved for air, because there is no gap for the outside slot, so the bottom two cards will be adjacent. Keep an eye on your temps for that middle card.
Not a config you'd buy another card for, but since you have one free for testing, I think it'd be interesting to play with.
I've been experimenting with a lot of games in quad and tri-sli, and it's interesting to note that the cards are active. In Metro LL for example, with Quad-SLI enabled, I will only see 3 cards actually active. But it's 3 cards, not two like you'd expect for 3D. I see this with GTA5 too, but it's not as good a test case because it's so new and stuff can be broken.
Nothing has so far translated into actual higher performance though, just less GPU load as more GPUs come into play.
So, at first blush here, that suggests that when running in 3D, that we rapidly hit a _CPU_ bottleneck, and that is why we don't see scaling for Tri-SLI. Don't take that as a sure answer, I'm still experimenting. I've just found it interesting that Tri-SLI is actually active, the third GPU is running.
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607 Latest 3Dmigoto Release Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
[quote="Volnaiskra"]Or, you could sell all three cards and get a more beastly single GPU. 2GB of VRAM is going to get increasingly constricting with contemporary games, no matter how many GPUs you have[/quote]
Unless DX12 is a magic bullet and allows SLI to stack VRAM on all existing games without the need for patching, this is a good point. 2GB will start to be restrictive really soon if it isn't already for some of the newer titles, specially if you want to start gaming at higher resolutions at any point. For all the GPU power, it would be a shame for the VRAM to become the limiting factor.
I would look at the possibility of a bigger single card with the option of adding another at a later date if necessary.
Volnaiskra said:Or, you could sell all three cards and get a more beastly single GPU. 2GB of VRAM is going to get increasingly constricting with contemporary games, no matter how many GPUs you have
Unless DX12 is a magic bullet and allows SLI to stack VRAM on all existing games without the need for patching, this is a good point. 2GB will start to be restrictive really soon if it isn't already for some of the newer titles, specially if you want to start gaming at higher resolutions at any point. For all the GPU power, it would be a shame for the VRAM to become the limiting factor.
I would look at the possibility of a bigger single card with the option of adding another at a later date if necessary.
I recently got another one from a friend who had recieved it as a gift and never used it.
I am wondering -- should I try to sell it and use the money for other upgrades (like increasing ram to 32GB from 16)
or would adding a 3'rd card actually be beneficial?
I ask because 2 way SLI already has a lot of problems with games and from what I've read on other forums apparently 3way SLI is pointless and makes no performacne difference?
any opinions? they'd be greately appreciated.
I am playing GTA 5 so if another card would boost performance I'd slap it in.
4770k @ 4.2 Water cooled
32 Gigs DDR 3 2400
GTX Titan X SLI
Obsidian 800D
EVGA 1300 watt
1 Terabyte SSD raid 0
ASUS 27 inch 3D monitor 3D vision 2.
In Metro 2033, I get all 4 cards active in 3D. Frame rate jumps from 55 fps to 185 fps. I'll be trying the different stages to see, but it was definitely scaling in Metro 2033.
Another option is you can set the third card as PhysX specific, so it would't be a total waste, but only a few games would be helped by dedicated PhysX. That would still help more than 32G of RAM. You'll never use the extra RAM.
Before you would sell it though- definitely experiment, give it at try. Let us know what you see. Assuming your motherboard can accept a third card for SLI. Not all can. For 3D specifically, I don't think we know for sure.
@Siberian: Please, more info? What games did you try?
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607
Latest 3Dmigoto Release
Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
I moved one from Tri-sli when I had 3 480's. However, i remember something about the Metro developer going the extra mile in SLI support. That might be the one game that works the way we all want it to.
4770k @ 4.2 Water cooled
32 Gigs DDR 3 2400
GTX Titan X SLI
Obsidian 800D
EVGA 1300 watt
1 Terabyte SSD raid 0
ASUS 27 inch 3D monitor 3D vision 2.
I have a 3 card system (2 Titans in SLI and a 650ti for PhysX - I love my dedicated PhysX card btw), but I needed to get a new mobo to keep them going in x8/x8/x8.
Bob's right about the RAM, if all you use it for is games. I regularly use over 90% of my 32GB in Photoshop, but games use a fraction of that. For games, you won't need more than 16GB for another few years yet.
Do you have a SSD for your OS? With enough space (or, preferably, a separate SSD) for some selected games? (especially open world ones like GTA5 that are constantly loading stuff). If not, that's a very worthwhile upgrade.
Or, you could sell all three cards and get a more beastly single GPU. 2GB of VRAM is going to get increasingly constricting with contemporary games, no matter how many GPUs you have.
I'm not sure the lanes matter too much, especially if its PCIe 2.0 +
The image below is a good indicator:
Windows 10 64-bit, Intel 7700K @ 5.1GHz, 16GB 3600MHz CL15 DDR4 RAM, 2x GTX 1080 SLI, Asus Maximus IX Hero, Sound Blaster ZxR, PCIe Quad SSD, Oculus Rift CV1, DLP Link PGD-150 glasses, ViewSonic PJD6531w 3D DLP Projector @ 1280x800 120Hz native / 2560x1600 120Hz DSR 3D Gaming.
I shall try the 3'rd card and see how it affects my GTA5 performance.
And yes, I do have an SSD for my OS/one game (gta5) and an HDD for the rest.
Also, here is my Motherboard:
-- SUS MAXIMUS VI HERO LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
will that support 3 way SLI?
I'm pretty sure that board will only support 2x SLI.
4770k @ 4.2 Water cooled
32 Gigs DDR 3 2400
GTX Titan X SLI
Obsidian 800D
EVGA 1300 watt
1 Terabyte SSD raid 0
ASUS 27 inch 3D monitor 3D vision 2.
I'm interested in seeing your results with a 3-way SLi so have taken the liberty of looking at your board's instruction manual.
You should be able to run a 3-way SLi in theory, but it's not officially supported - the caveat being that the other 3 smaller pcie x1 slots will be disabled - I hope you don't have anything in there.
So you will be running:
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 8x PCIE 3.0
1x 4x PCIE 2.0
Which from the graph above, shows that it'll work just fine without any noticeable performance loss.
The 4x will be linked through the chipset instead of directly to the CPU but it doesn't really impact performance.
Windows 10 64-bit, Intel 7700K @ 5.1GHz, 16GB 3600MHz CL15 DDR4 RAM, 2x GTX 1080 SLI, Asus Maximus IX Hero, Sound Blaster ZxR, PCIe Quad SSD, Oculus Rift CV1, DLP Link PGD-150 glasses, ViewSonic PJD6531w 3D DLP Projector @ 1280x800 120Hz native / 2560x1600 120Hz DSR 3D Gaming.
I agree that tri-SLI should run at least with the pci config that RAGEdemon shows. The last outside slot will run at 4x PCI 2.0 which is unlikely to be become a bottleneck. Having noted that, it's always possible that a config like this will do something weird, or the software will misbehave because it doesn't like seeing them mismatched. There is a lot of complexity.
The other caveat there is that the middle card will be starved for air, because there is no gap for the outside slot, so the bottom two cards will be adjacent. Keep an eye on your temps for that middle card.
Not a config you'd buy another card for, but since you have one free for testing, I think it'd be interesting to play with.
I've been experimenting with a lot of games in quad and tri-sli, and it's interesting to note that the cards are active. In Metro LL for example, with Quad-SLI enabled, I will only see 3 cards actually active. But it's 3 cards, not two like you'd expect for 3D. I see this with GTA5 too, but it's not as good a test case because it's so new and stuff can be broken.
Nothing has so far translated into actual higher performance though, just less GPU load as more GPUs come into play.
So, at first blush here, that suggests that when running in 3D, that we rapidly hit a _CPU_ bottleneck, and that is why we don't see scaling for Tri-SLI. Don't take that as a sure answer, I'm still experimenting. I've just found it interesting that Tri-SLI is actually active, the third GPU is running.
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607
Latest 3Dmigoto Release
Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
Unless DX12 is a magic bullet and allows SLI to stack VRAM on all existing games without the need for patching, this is a good point. 2GB will start to be restrictive really soon if it isn't already for some of the newer titles, specially if you want to start gaming at higher resolutions at any point. For all the GPU power, it would be a shame for the VRAM to become the limiting factor.
I would look at the possibility of a bigger single card with the option of adding another at a later date if necessary.
i7 4790k @ 4.6 - 16GB RAM - 2x SLI Titan X
27" ASUS ROG SWIFT, 28" - 65" Samsung UHD8200 4k 3DTV - Oculus Rift CV1 - 34" Acer Predator X34 Ultrawide
Old kit:
i5 2500k @ 4.4 - 8gb RAM
Acer H5360BD projector
GTX 580, SLI 670, GTX 980 EVGA SC
Acer XB280HK 4k 60hz
Oculus DK2