Am I the only person in 2022 still gaming in sli?

lucasj1974 · Feb 16, 2022

I had 2 - 980's. The best thing recently about SLI is that you could sell one and still have a working rig! LOL!

I am finally done with SLI.....so sad though, I really liked the concept

UltraMega · Feb 16, 2022

PharmingInStyle said:
I may soon go that way with two 3090 if needed for 8k gaming. Want a bigger screen but don't want the lower resolution for games. So a big screen like 65" will have a nice high ppi at 8k. Many are going to disagree with my reasoning but a few agree with it so I'm ok with that.

What size screen do you have now? I have a 65inch 4K TV that I use for gaming. If I had the money to burn on an 8K TV and the GPU(s) to push it, there are probably a few other things I would do with my PC first before I'd look at 8K. What are you hoping to achieve with an 8K screen that a 4K screen doesn't give you?

Brodda-Syd · Feb 16, 2022

dagget3450 said:
Has Nvidia locked out SLI on 3xxx RTX cards exclusively for dx12? Like AMD did with RDNA2?

It like ruined my high resolution gaming experiments

Basically AMD & nVidia only cater for 1080p gamers, for 4K gamers sli & X-Fire were killed off far too soon!!!

Brodda-Syd · Feb 16, 2022

UltraMega said:
What size screen do you have now? I have a 65inch 4K TV that I use for gaming. If I had the money to burn on an 8K TV and the GPU(s) to push it, there are probably a few other things I would do with my PC first before I'd look at 8K. What are you hoping to achieve with an 8K screen that a 4K screen doesn't give you?

I have a 65 inch LG TV, but I have never gamed on it, I just don't feel comfortable gaming on my couch with a controller.
It has an nVidia Shield connected, so one day I may try game streaming from my PC.
I game on my 32 inch 4K monitor only.

PharmingInStyle · Feb 17, 2022

UltraMega said:
What size screen do you have now? I have a 65inch 4K TV that I use for gaming. If I had the money to burn on an 8K TV and the GPU(s) to push it, there are probably a few other things I would do with my PC first before I'd look at 8K. What are you hoping to achieve with an 8K screen that a 4K screen doesn't give you?

It's the ppi for a sharper picture. The pixels per inch on a 65" screen at 8K is a nice high 135 ppi. I now have a 43" 4K Samsung neo qled TV (103 ppi). And to your point it looks amazing for games. so stunning to look at. And I'd like to try bigger screens for gaming like 65-75"

But I'm guessing games will look more detailed in textures on a 65" 8K. Most don't think my ppi theory amounts to anything. It's just a few on the net who have stated they can see 4K looks less detailed than 8K for games. Not saying that applies to streaming movies.

Mr_scary · Feb 17, 2022

StAndrew said:
I think a lot of people started with the 8800GTS (or GT) (myself included). IIRC, the 8800 GTX and the 8800 Ultra cost more than two GTS's and were slightly slower. Those were the days; when two slower cards wither cheaper and faster than the flagship card.

Best. Case. Ever.

Best. CPU cooler. Ever.

Thanks for the nostalgia

Thanks. Here's some more from rigs I built.

780i SLI | 2 8800GTS 512 G92 | Antec 902

Computer cooling Computer Circuit component Passive circuit component Personal computer

X58 SLI | 3 GTX 285 FTW | Antec 1200

Computer Personal computer Output device Peripheral Computer monitor

Engineering Auto part Machine Electrical wiring Personal computer hardware

780i | 2 8800GTS 512 G92 | 9800GT PhysX | Antec Nine Hundred v1 | A bit dirty

Circuit component Computer cooling Passive circuit component Hardware programmer Electrical wiring

UltraMega · Feb 17, 2022

PharmingInStyle said:
It's the ppi for a sharper picture. The pixels per inch on a 65" screen at 8K is a nice high 135 ppi. I now have a 43" 4K Samsung neo qled TV (103 ppi). And to your point it looks amazing for games. so stunning to look at. And I'd like to try bigger screens for gaming like 65-75"

But I'm guessing games will look more detailed in textures on a 65" 8K. Most don't think my ppi theory amounts to anything. It's just a few on the net who have stated they can see 4K looks less detailed than 8K for games. Not saying that applies to streaming movies.

Well higher res is always clearer, but anything past 4k is serious deminishing returns territory. With my 65 inch TV the image is very clear already. If I had the budget for 8k I think I world get a really nice 4k projector or at least a 4k 120hz TV, or 3 4k TVs for surround. With 8k it would be hard to get consistently good performance even with sli 3090s. You would need to be using dlss pretty much all the time for any demanding games.

Keep in mind 8K is 4 times the res of 4K. 3 4K TVs for surround would only be 75% the render res of 8K so performance wise it's more practical, cheaper, and more awesome.

dagget3450 · Feb 17, 2022

UltraMega said:
Well higher res is always clearer, but anything past 4k is serious deminishing returns territory. With my 65 inch TV the image is very clear already. If I had the budget for 8k I think I world get a really nice 4k projector or at least a 4k 120hz TV, or 3 4k TVs for surround. With 8k it would be hard to get consistently good performance even with sli 3090s. You would need to be using dlss pretty much all the time for any demanding games.

Keep in mind 8K is 4 times the res of 4K. 3 4K TVs for surround would only be 75% the render res of 8K so performance wise it's more practical, cheaper, and more awesome.

Sorry but I am in disagreement on diminishing returns. It's really hard to show because without someone sitting right in front of the screen you cannot properly show it any other time way. Can't upload screenshots(uncompressed) or even videos due to the resolution and compression of any videos taken.

I don't have any screen over 4k but when I run resolutions over 4k the impact is very noticeable in visual upgrade.
In fact I spend a lot of time modding older games with HD textures etc.. because you can get playable fps. It's not for the gamer who wants 144fps or heck for 99% of gamers. It's a hobby or niche someone like myself enjoys.

The issue is now this niche I enjoy is under attack from 2 angles that weren't an issue before dx12 and them killing mgpu setups. First this dlss/fsr garbage is ruining image quality for faster fps. While I totally understand the desire for faster FPS it's only logical that raw resolution with reduce FPS. Second they killed MGPU pretty much now, so people like myself no matter how small or niche of a group I am. I cannot use mgpu except for very few cases of which I don't even care for the games supporting it.

The whole idea as mentioned by a post in here is pretty spot on. The PC gaming Industry both hardware and software have decided to cater to low resolution gaming. Also while more or less admitting the newer hardware is not really as fast because they can use fakery now to push fps.

Again I totally love fps and high refresh gaming for it's specific uses like competitive gaming or FPS shooters etc.. HOWEVER, they have totally shafted people like me who want to dabble in resolutions above 4k. It's clear to me with the current insane pricing on GPUs, people are willing to pay more and more for less and less. There is no win win situation for someone like me. I am all but ready to move on to new hobbies. In fact I have consistently done less gaming and tinkering that I loved to do.

It sucks

o1dschoo1 · Feb 17, 2022

Still got 2 sli setups I run atleast 4-5 times a week.
X58 bloodrage i7 975 @4.4 6gb ddr3 and a 7990 all water-cooled in a antec 900.
Or my xp setup with 939 dfi nf4 2 8800gt and a fx-57 with a zalman 9700 on the cpu

dagget3450 · Feb 17, 2022

o1dschoo1 said:
Still got 2 sli setups I run atleast 4-5 times a week.
X58 bloodrage i7 975 @4.4 6gb ddr3 and a 7990 all water-cooled in a antec 900.
Or my xp setup with 939 dfi nf4 2 8800gt and a fx-57 with a zalman 9700 on the cpu

I know its a bit being picky to point out, 7990 would be Crossfire

Brodda-Syd · Feb 17, 2022

dagget3450 said:
Sorry but I am in disagreement on diminishing returns. It's really hard to show because without someone sitting right in front of the screen you cannot properly show it any other time way. Can't upload screenshots(uncompressed) or even videos due to the resolution and compression of any videos taken.

I don't have any screen over 4k but when I run resolutions over 4k the impact is very noticeable in visual upgrade.
In fact I spend a lot of time modding older games with HD textures etc.. because you can get playable fps. It's not for the gamer who wants 144fps or heck for 99% of gamers. It's a hobby or niche someone like myself enjoys.

The issue is now this niche I enjoy is under attack from 2 angles that weren't an issue before dx12 and them killing mgpu setups. First this dlss/fsr garbage is ruining image quality for faster fps. While I totally understand the desire for faster FPS it's only logical that raw resolution with reduce FPS. Second they killed MGPU pretty much now, so people like myself no matter how small or niche of a group I am. I cannot use mgpu except for very few cases of which I don't even care for the games supporting it.

The whole idea as mentioned by a post in here is pretty spot on. The PC gaming Industry both hardware and software have decided to cater to low resolution gaming. Also while more or less admitting the newer hardware is not really as fast because they can use fakery now to push fps.

Again I totally love fps and high refresh gaming for it's specific uses like competitive gaming or FPS shooters etc.. HOWEVER, they have totally shafted people like me who want to dabble in resolutions above 4k. It's clear to me with the current insane pricing on GPUs, people are willing to pay more and more for less and less. There is no win win situation for someone like me. I am all but ready to move on to new hobbies. In fact I have consistently done less gaming and tinkering that I loved to do.

It sucks

I totally agree with you there!
AMD & nVidia only cater for 1080p gamers and killed off sli far far too soon for 4K gamers.
DLSS & FSR crap only make images look FUZZY and I didn't buy a 4K display to see FUZZY images!

UltraMega · Feb 17, 2022

dagget3450 said:
Sorry but I am in disagreement on diminishing returns. It's really hard to show because without someone sitting right in front of the screen you cannot properly show it any other time way. Can't upload screenshots(uncompressed) or even videos due to the resolution and compression of any videos taken.

I don't have any screen over 4k but when I run resolutions over 4k the impact is very noticeable in visual upgrade.
In fact I spend a lot of time modding older games with HD textures etc.. because you can get playable fps. It's not for the gamer who wants 144fps or heck for 99% of gamers. It's a hobby or niche someone like myself enjoys.

The issue is now this niche I enjoy is under attack from 2 angles that weren't an issue before dx12 and them killing mgpu setups. First this dlss/fsr garbage is ruining image quality for faster fps. While I totally understand the desire for faster FPS it's only logical that raw resolution with reduce FPS. Second they killed MGPU pretty much now, so people like myself no matter how small or niche of a group I am. I cannot use mgpu except for very few cases of which I don't even care for the games supporting it.

The whole idea as mentioned by a post in here is pretty spot on. The PC gaming Industry both hardware and software have decided to cater to low resolution gaming. Also while more or less admitting the newer hardware is not really as fast because they can use fakery now to push fps.

Again I totally love fps and high refresh gaming for it's specific uses like competitive gaming or FPS shooters etc.. HOWEVER, they have totally shafted people like me who want to dabble in resolutions above 4k. It's clear to me with the current insane pricing on GPUs, people are willing to pay more and more for less and less. There is no win win situation for someone like me. I am all but ready to move on to new hobbies. In fact I have consistently done less gaming and tinkering that I loved to do.

It sucks

Perhaps you're just really bothered by alaising artifacts, as I am.

I'd suggest using DSR or high level AA to see if helps get you what you're looking for. Maybe the rest of us should be glad we don't have a friend with an 8K TV hooked up for gaming to tease us with.

PharmingInStyle · Feb 17, 2022

UltraMega said:
With 8k it would be hard to get consistently good performance even with sli 3090s. You would need to be using dlss pretty much all the time for any demanding games.

Yeah dlss is a no go for me today and probably for the next year or two due to the lower IQ. I'm living ok with 20-25 fps in great looking pc games with max settings in 4k and it does dip a little below 20 fps. Which is not tolerated by some graphics enthusiasts.

25-30 fps all the time would be golden or at least a lot nicer for 4k max settings with user mods and reshades added for more visual clarity. And of course I wouldn't mind 40-60 fps someday for the smoother waterfalls, water movement, character movement and other graphical movement.

Formula383 · Feb 17, 2022

8k has its place - for me that place is in the form of a 65" tv that i can play games and watch markets/videos with good resolution for all of it. Think of it like having 4 monitors in one panel. As for gaming at 8k i think will be nice but the hardware is just not going to give ultra settings at 8k for most games with desirable fps. Worse yet gpu's dont offer the bandwidth to push high refresh rates at 8k

And for me 75hz is the absolute minimum i like to use for gaming. However 60hz is fine for more casual games.

Crossfire/SLI - Its actually not even nvidia or amd that control this. Game devs do, why do they care about you? all they care about is making money and is why indi games are so popular. they may not have the resources to make a AAA game but they do have passion for what their game is. But there is no reason Multi gpu can not function easily with current DX12. We just have to convince the game devs to include it in the game

Are you the only one using SLI - absolutely not. Altho i would say anyone buying new cards are likely not buying for SLI. But if they do happen to have 2 3090's for other reasons they might try it out. The problem is most games are not optimized for high frame rates. so even if you add more gpu power you may not see much of an increase to your fps you just hit the cpu limit. So imho SLI is only for people doing triple 1440p and up. And tbh i think it has been this way for quite some time. A single gpu can do really well with triple 1080p displays. Sure you might drop a setting or 2 to get higher fps but not like you would have to play on low settings.

Brodda-Syd · Feb 17, 2022

Formula383 said:
The problem is most games are not optimized for high frame rates. so even if you add more gpu power you may not see much of an increase to your fps you just hit the cpu limit. So imho SLI is only for people doing triple 1440p and up. And tbh i think it has been this way for quite some time. A single gpu can do really well with triple 1080p displays. Sure you might drop a setting or 2 to get higher fps but not like you would have to play on low settings.

Yes, I agree, as I have been gaming in 4K since 2014, and the only way to do that is with sli or X-Fire.
DLSS and all that crap adds fuzziness and I did not buy a 4K display to see FUZZINESS.

Brodda-Syd · Feb 18, 2022

dagget3450 said:
Has Nvidia locked out SLI on 3xxx RTX cards exclusively for dx12? Like AMD did with RDNA2?

It like ruined my high resolution gaming experiments

The sli code has been removed from all 30's series GPU driver's onwards.

Mergatroid · Feb 18, 2022

PharmingInStyle said:
I may soon go that way with two 3090 if needed for 8k gaming. Want a bigger screen but don't want the lower resolution for games. So a big screen like 65" will have a nice high ppi at 8k. Many are going to disagree with my reasoning but a few agree with it so I'm ok with that.

Is it really worth the price of a 3090 considering how poorly it's supported now? In some cases people are saying their experience with SLI is worse now than the FPS they get with a single card.
If you get poor results like that, it's definitely not worth the cost IMAO.

Brodda-Syd said:
Basically AMD & nVidia only cater for 1080p gamers, for 4K gamers sli & X-Fire were killed off far too soon!!!

I game in 3440 x 1440, and my 3070 worked great for that. My 3080 TI works even better.
I would definitely not say those two companies are only catering to 1080p gamers.

dagget3450 · Feb 19, 2022

Brodda-Syd said:
The sli code has been removed from all 30's series GPU driver's onwards.

So no SLI except DX12 now on RTX 3xxx? I don't understand why AMD/Nvidia didn't allow it for dx11 and under still even if they don't support it. I would love to tinker with it still on 6900xt's in CF esp at 8k or 10240x2880 - 7680x2160 etc...

o1dschoo1 · Feb 19, 2022

dagget3450 said:
So no SLI except DX12 now on RTX 3xxx? I don't understand why AMD/Nvidia didn't allow it for dx11 and under still even if they don't support it. I would love to tinker with it still on 6900xt's in CF esp at 8k or 10240x2880 - 7680x2160 etc...

No sli on dx12 unless dev supports it no matter the video card...
Could probably work on dx11 games with older drivers

pewpewlazer · Feb 19, 2022

Transient Gamer said:
GTX 560TI's were my last. I do not feel the need to go SLI anymore, and NVIDIA is limiting the capabilty on mid-stream and same high-end cards.
Nvidia killed it for the gamers.

No, DX12 and Vulkan killed SLI/CF for gamers.

Am I the only person in 2022 still gaming in sli?

lucasj1974

UltraMega

Brodda-Syd

Brodda-Syd

PharmingInStyle

Mr_scary

UltraMega

dagget3450

o1dschoo1

dagget3450

Brodda-Syd

UltraMega

PharmingInStyle

Formula383

Brodda-Syd

Brodda-Syd

Mergatroid

dagget3450

o1dschoo1

pewpewlazer

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