Advice requested - SLI video

[Jeffers2112]

The taxman has very kindly given me some of my money back and I thought that I might invest it in beefing up my rig before Horizons lands.
Given how graphics intensive things are these days I thought that I might put the money into that.
What I'd like to know is what people's experience of Nvidia's SLI was like.
Thing is I'm currently running a GTX 660, which works pretty well but is struggling a bit occasionally.
I was looking at a 980 as it's about double the performance of my current hardware, but it costs about twice what I've got and not sure I want to splash out that much extra cash.
However I can pick up another 660 quite cheaply and apparently with SLI that pretty much doubles my graphics capability.
I've never ventured into this before so I wondered if anyone else has used it and how easy/hard/successful etc it can be.....
Seems to make sense to me, I can keep my existing card (which would be redundant if I upgraded to the 980) and enhance performance fairly cheaply.
Anybody done this???

[blazingmaniac]

Ok couple of questions.
Firstly. Does your motherboard support sli ? Easy way to know is did it come with an sli bridge?
If yes then move to question 2. If no then a new single card is the way to go.
2. If it does support sli then is your psu and system capable of another cards worth of power draw and heat? so well ventilated and runs cool generally?

There are other factors but they are the first to consider. Also to note. Not all things support sli. I can't remember if elite does now. It didn't used to.
I have built a couple of sli systems and now I tend to go single card higher spec.

[Mouse]

I run 2 SLI'd GeForce 970's for things that support it it is great, for other stuff it is just normal. For Wildstar it seemed actually worse.. not sure what they did but something was screwed up. Most single player games and ED I do at max graphics

[Zadkiel]

SLI is a PITA.

It's difficult to set up, even if your MB supports it, it might not be ideal (for example if you only have 1 x16 PCIE slot, then that second card in a x8 slot is only going to get half the bandwidth). it adds difficulties with cooling, many games don't support it, so you end up having to fiddle with SLI settings between games, and it's not as simple as thinking it gives you double the GFX power, depending on game/driver setups even if a game supports SLI you often don't get a doubling.

I tied SLI a few times, my advice is to not bother, unless you have a VERY specific requirement (for example video rendering when you know in advance that your SLI configuration is going to work well with your rendering setup). I'd buy 1 new better card and stick with that. If you're using Nvidia then you could leave your old card in and set it as a PhysX card.

Also, it's worth mentioning that specs for the consumer release version of the Oculus Rift is a 970 minimum requirement. So if you were interested in picking an OR up, then a 970 or a 980 is an investment towards that goal.

[Jeffers2112]

My PC is physically capable of SLI, but I might just wait and save up a bit more cash towards a single new card.
I'll see how I cope with Horizons and I've also got Fallout 4 on the way next month, I might have to think about spending some serious money on my PC.....
BTW, regarding Zadkiel's comment, I hadn't thought about Physx, I might look into that if it lets me get some further use from the old card.

[blazingmaniac]

Personally I didn't really have much issue running SLI, I had 2 x 460 GTX 1GB cards and it works really well. I still run it on an old setup and it runs Elite pretty well.
My experience was not bad I just chose to go 1 single powerful card of late. You are reliant on Nvidia releasing SLI drives each time a new game comes out other wise you only get single card performance.

[Nexliar]

I run SLI in my laptop believe it or not. Its a Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P with dual GTX 755M cards. I had to get a larger power transformer as the standard 90w couldn't handle it but once I did it made a huge difference.

It will depend on what you system can handle and power and cooling are very important things to consider. But if adding a new case fan and possibly a new PSU are ok then you may get a good boost in performance for the price.

You also get the added benefit of being able to connect more monitors and also using the secondary card as a separate PhysicX engine.

With that said I've ran ED off SLI and it does work well with it. But I also have a large gaming Desktop with a GTX 970 4GB and the Desktop wins each time. Of course it has better overall hardware than the laptop too.

[TorTorden]

I run SLI in my laptop believe it or not. Its a Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P with dual GTX 755M cards. I had to get a larger power transformer as the standard 90w couldn't handle it but once I did it made a huge difference.

It will depend on what you system can handle and power and cooling are very important things to consider. But if adding a new case fan and possibly a new PSU are ok then you may get a good boost in performance for the price.

You also get the added benefit of being able to connect more monitors and also using the secondary card as a separate PhysicX engine.

With that said I've ran ED off SLI and it does work well with it. But I also have a large gaming Desktop with a GTX 970 4GB and the Desktop wins each time. Of course it has better overall hardware than the laptop too.

I run three screens out of a fairly quiet box at mostly 60fps constantly on a single 960 2gb card, and if I wanted I could add another two screens easily, but at this point, wall space is running out with just the three

I too am looking to hop on the VR bandwagon come next year so upgrading GPU is on my list along that, but I'm holding out for next gen (there is always nextgen) and then look for a single card solution in the 970 or 980 category.
I new this buying the 960 but I just needed something to replace my six year old ATI card that was really starting to hinder my gaming bliss

As for OP, I have never tried SLI, and from what I have read it has always sounded as if it's far more hassle than it's worth, and usually I have put my potential SLI money into just a single card.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I'll just add my 2-cents here.

I built a new machine last November with a single 970 running at 2560x1440. After a while, I installed a second 970 in SLI mode so I could take advantage of super sampling. That was my first experience using SLI. There were no hardware problems. I just plugged in the card, hooked up power, installed the SLI bridge that came with my motherboard, and then I needed to check a box in the Nvidia application to maximize 3D performance. There were no hassles at all. Two cards does not double performance, but I got between a 70-90% increase in frame rate in various situations in Elite. I have not played any other games.

[Nexliar]

Yes I agree. I have not had any trouble with SLI when I've used it in the past. I think the people who are having issues either do not have a motherboard or power supply that is capable of running in SLI properly. And No, it does not give you double the performance, but it does greatly reduce the need for System Resources such as CPU, and System RAM, which will increase frame rate and paging back and fourth to the hard drive. One of the best things you can do for any game though would be to install it into an SSD as it will greatly increase load times.