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Why is SLI "Dead"

30K views 269 replies 86 participants last post by  Juub 
#1 ·
Why is there so much doom and gloom around SLI? I mean, back in the middle of last year, Nvidia announced that they wont be supporting 3 way SLI anymore and to focus solely on 2 way SLI. IMO, that decision was pretty reasonable. 3 way was always hit or miss but for the most part, 2 way has always been pretty good on AAA titles.

Does it have to do with the way Direct 12 handles multi GPU? Multi GPU support has always been somehwat up to the developers and it's video card companies like Nvidia that are pushing for support - think Nvidia's slogan: "The Way It's Meant to be Played". If it weren't for Nvidia's involvement in the development process, we'd probably never get any SLI support at all.

SLI has always been a niche market but as a SLI user, I don't understand why the attitude towards SLI changed drastically over the last 8 to 12 months. Nvidia even released a HB SLI bridge last year with the introduction of the 1080. It doesn't seem to me that Nvidia is leaving SLI for dead...
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#2 ·
X user has no issues because they play games A, B, and C.

Y user has all sorts of issues because they play games D, E, and F.

This is the argument I see every time. Some people have minimal issues and fully understand what they are getting themselves into. If you want the absolute best performance possible on every title, you SLI the one of the top cards to make it worthwhile.

Also, the only people I see consistently complain about SLI/Crossfire other than users here that had issues and left the technology are Reddit users....so that's not saying a whole lot.

EDIT:

inb4 'microstutter' arguments
 
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#3 ·
I think a large part of it is the fact that SLI was released 13 years ago for Nvidia. And in those 13 years it still seems like a feature in it's infancy.

-Games supporting it are never a guarantee
-Games that do support it usually have a poor implementation off the bat
-Usually takes many months to get a decent experience on a new game
-AAA games are not supporting it as quickly as they once used to and forget about most smaller devs

I can go on. This applies to AMD's crossfire as well of course.

I also strongly believe the rise of SFF / ITX gaming and the wanting of less power hungry rigs is also pushing SLI to the sidelines. People are moving away from the full size tanks of yesteryear. This and the fact that the single gpu simply offers the most trouble free, smoothest experience with consistent performance no matter the game.

Assuming two gpu's were $500 each and they out performed a single $1000 gpu by a little, would SLI be worth it? Not when you look at the issues listed above. This is why you see so many people just going for the most expensive single gpu they can afford.
 
#4 ·
If you're buying new, & plan to SLI from the start, it only makes sense with the top end card. Anything less, & often better off buying the next level up single card, since it's guaranteed to work with everything, instead of only being supported by a small subset of games. If you're using an older card, there's an argument to be made that buying a second one used & going SLI is worth it over spending more for a newer card, but with NVidia having limited SLI to only high end cards, that's not going to be an option for a large segment of the population.

I've personally only had limited experience with SLI, but it left me underwhelmed. My cousin & I both have GTX 1070s, but she has a 4K monitor (I'm on 1080p or VR). I brought my GTX 1070 over to her house to see what kind of benefit she would get from SLI now or that I might get in the future. We found that the games she had that could benefit from SLI didn't support it, & the ones that supported it were already running well enough that they didn't need it. I would assume that with a larger games library we would have found a few games that would make it worth having, but it really didn't make a strong case for why we should care.

In theory, it has potential, but the price/performance argument just isn't there. It's the same problem with custom water cooling loops. They look awesome, & do allow for somewhat higher overclocks, but for the money you have to spend, you're typically better off just buying a more powerful piece of hardware first if you can.
 
#5 ·
well i don't think it is dead i just got another 1080 for my 4k tv and tried like 7 games from which only one didn't give a good experience , doom every thing else did amazing and finally could max out games at 4k 60 with a bit of aa as well, something that is not even possible by the most powerful single gpu to date ...
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by invincible20xx View Post

well i don't think it is dead i just got another 1080 for my 4k tv and tried like 7 games from which only one didn't give a good experience , doom every thing else did amazing and finally could max out games at 4k 60 with a bit of aa as well, something that is not even possible by the most powerful single gpu to date ...
thats the problem people now days dont really need sli unless they wanna play at 4k a single 1070/1080 can do most everything else no problem.
 
#8 ·
I don't think it's dead. It's always been an enthusiast type of thing anyway. Not sure why the doom-sayers arguments carry so much weight. I can usually debunk all of them pretty easily.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdstock76 View Post

I don't think it's dead. It's always been an enthusiast type of thing anyway. Not sure why the doom-sayers arguments carry so much weight. I can usually debunk all of them pretty easily.
Well back in the day you could get great perf at a decent/great price sometimes saving 200-300usd and almost near or better perf then the best single card. Like right now 2 1060 6gigs will cost you around 500-600 and 1 single 1080 8gig will cost you around 550-650 more memory and no hassles with any games not supporting sli.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bal3Wolf View Post

Well back in the day you could get great perf at a decent/great price sometimes saving 200-300usd and almost near or better perf then the best single card. Like right now 2 1060 6gigs will cost you around 500-600 and 1 single 1080 8gig will cost you around 550-650 more memory and no hassles with any games not supporting sli.
I didn't try SLI for the first time till 2012-2013 when the 660ti hit the market but back then I was getting better numbers than the Titan for $400 cheaper. Anything before that I wouldn't have knowledge on but it seems to reason that technology has only gotten better. I can't imagine many game "supported" SLI over the last 10-12 years compared till now. But like I said I can't speak to anything SLI related before that time.
 
#11 ·
You guys are all missing the more important factors:

Vulkan / DX12 are the future of gaming, and neither supports "SLi". Yes, they both support multi-GPU, but on a wholly different level that much be programmed by the game developer, not the GPU manufacturer. This alone means SLi is dead. Things like SLi might yet live, but not SLi itself.

That said, developers have much less incentive, and fewer resources, to develop multi-GPU solutions for their games. This leaves multi-GPU systems like SLi in a pretty rough spot as well. Only the future will prove if multi-GPU ever becomes a major feature in gaming.
 
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#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zero4549 View Post

You guys are all missing the more important factors:

Vulkan / DX12 are the future of gaming, and neither supports "SLi". Yes, they both support multi-GPU, but on a wholly different level that much be programmed by the game developer, not the GPU manufacturer. This alone means SLi is dead. Things like SLi might yet live, but not SLi itself.

That said, developers have much less incentive, and fewer resources, to develop multi-GPU solutions for their games. This leaves multi-GPU systems like SLi in a pretty rough spot as well. Only the future will prove if multi-GPU ever becomes a major feature in gaming.
Exactly this.

Even AAA DX12 games don't support multi-GPU. DX11 games still benefit.
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zero4549 View Post

You guys are all missing the more important factors:

Vulkan / DX12 are the future of gaming, and neither supports "SLi". Yes, they both support multi-GPU, but on a wholly different level that much be programmed by the game developer, not the GPU manufacturer. This alone means SLi is dead. Things like SLi might yet live, but not SLi itself.

That said, developers have much less incentive, and fewer resources, to develop multi-GPU solutions for their games. This leaves multi-GPU systems like SLi in a pretty rough spot as well. Only the future will prove if multi-GPU ever becomes a major feature in gaming.
This right here. It really puts the few of us that lived by sli systems in a bind. I miss my old tri sli days butter smooth
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I hate to think in a few years we won't even have a need for plx chips and high-end motherboards
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#14 ·
I had two 970's in SLI for a bit playing at 4K. sold the pair and bought a single 980ti and haven't looked back. My game selection just doesn't have much SLI support.

As it has been mostly said, SLI is only really viable for complete overkill systems that have two of the best GPU you can buy. That way for games that don't support SLI, you are still getting the best experience possible. For game that do support it, you are also getting the best experience possible.

Buying two lower end cards to get the similar performance of a single better card is really just not applicable anymore IMO.
 
#15 ·
Multi GPU will only be popular when we can no longer getting a faster single GPU. (much like single core CPU)
 
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#16 ·
Honestly I wish SLI was dead and since Nvidia gave that ability to the game developers so it's guaranteed only a matter of time. Can't complain about smaller & cheaper cases, motherboards, psu's, etc. Your wallet will thank you when you can get max settings out of 1 GPU instead of 2 or previously 4.
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seyumi View Post

Honestly I wish SLI was dead and since Nvidia gave that ability to the game developers so it's guaranteed only a matter of time. Can't complain about smaller & cheaper cases, motherboards, psu's, etc. Your wallet will thank you when you can get max settings out of 1 GPU instead of 2 or previously 4.
Yeah this isn't going to happen. For those of us pushing a lot of megapixels at high frame rates, 1 card is not enough. It's not like nvidia is holding something back because of SLI. If someone wants to run 4K at 80+ fps, it's gonna take more than any given flagship can muster.
 
#18 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by littledonny View Post

Yeah this isn't going to happen. For those of us pushing a lot of megapixels at high frame rates, 1 card is not enough. It's not like nvidia is holding something back because of SLI. If someone wants to run 4K at 80+ fps, it's gonna take more than any given flagship can muster.
Actually, both card manufacturers and game developers DO make inferior products because of the existence of multi-GPU.

Why optimize your game to squeeze out every last frame per second when you can just get it good enough that it will run on most people's systems, and tell your consumers to buy better and more hardware if they desire more performance?

Same argument for the card manufacturers, albeit to a lesser degree.

Neither side is going to bother putting more effort into their products when they can just sell more performance.

As for the argument that one card can't be enough - ever notice that, for the most part, games can always be maxed out on release, as long as you have the right hardware? It isn't because the right hardware just happens to be powerful enough, it is because the game is made for that hardware. If multi-GPU didn't exist, games would be made for the best single card solutions of their day, just like they used to be made before multi-GPU emerged.

You might have one single generation where graphics don't seem to progress very much, during the transition from multi-GPU existing to multi-GPU not existing, but then it will be back to business as usual.
 
#21 ·
SLI works fine for me on my y510p.

That said Ill still prefer a better single GPU for the sole reason that emulators dont support mGPU in the slightest. However beyond that I never had any issues with SLI as far as utilization goes, like microstutter.

There were sure games that flat out didnt support SLI and the one that always comes to mind is Arma 2, never forget that one when I had my TriSLI GTX 470 system back in the day.

Even works well in Rainbow 6 Siege and I dont believe it even officially supports SLI, that said people play differing titles and thus have differing experiences.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by 8051 View Post

Someone recently posted a thread about a game that supported DX12 and multi-GPU that worked well. Sniper Elite? Something like that.
Even Sniper Elite 3 had amazing SLI scale-ability. Worked wonders for 1080s in SLI @ 4K.
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Syan48306 View Post

Why is there so much doom and gloom around SLI? I mean, back in the middle of last year, Nvidia announced that they wont be supporting 3 way SLI anymore and to focus solely on 2 way SLI. IMO, that decision was pretty reasonable. 3 way was always hit or miss but for the most part, 2 way has always been pretty good on AAA titles.

Does it have to do with the way Direct 12 handles multi GPU? Multi GPU support has always been somehwat up to the developers and it's video card companies like Nvidia that are pushing for support - think Nvidia's slogan: "The Way It's Meant to be Played". If it weren't for Nvidia's involvement in the development process, we'd probably never get any SLI support at all.

SLI has always been a niche market but as a SLI user, I don't understand why the attitude towards SLI changed drastically over the last 8 to 12 months. Nvidia even released a HB SLI bridge last year with the introduction of the 1080. It doesn't seem to me that Nvidia is leaving SLI for dead...
headscratch.gif
3dfx got multigpu long time ago, named SLI, Ngreedia bought it all. Instead of making SFR they made AFR, 3dfx used Scan-Line Interleave alternating horizontal lines of pixels composing a frame, which I think was SFR.
This AFR is subpar and SFR was never really brought back.

Modern APIs support mGPU, there is no need for SLI or CX let alone a long time for some silly cables and bridges like Ngreedia is still trying to sell.

Because they do not want to innovate SLI anymore they are cutting it's support down in hardware to slowly phase it out IMHO. To keep up with higher resolutions and bandwidth demands on modern cards they've killed 3+ SLI and are using the extra 2nd bridge for 2 SLI, meaning 2 bridges for 2 cards are used.

On the other hand you have CX which needs no such gimmicks and runs via PCIe no problem for a long time. It also runs on any decent AMD GPU pretty much, not just the top tier few.
As long as they keep doing AFR I wouldn't touch any mGPU at all because stutter.
 
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