Hey,

Running a Gigabyte 980ti GTX and pretty happy with it.

If I can get another one off of ebay cheap enough, should I?

Is SLI still a thing?

For some reason I thought it had fallen out of favor...

People will say don't do it, but it still is a thing and worth doing.

Personally I would sell the card and use the money+ the extra on a newer card, but hey I'm still using a Asus GTX 960 Turbo.

I'm running a i5-4460, Windows 8.1, and 32gb RAM.

Will any of that make a difference on whether I can get the most out of an SLI set up?

Supposedly the 980ti GTX Xtreme Gaming outscores the 1060 GTX.

It ain't that bad.

It's almost always better to just sell whatever you currently have and upgrade. SLI support is spotty or eve nonexistent in many games and you do not get anywhere near double your current performance with a second GPU, which is what many people expect.

I need an upgrade soon. I play Arma 3 on all low at 30 fps. It's painful, but pretty much every other game runs perfect. Granted I don't play simulators that much.

Arma 3 is pretty CPU intensive, so just a GPU upgrade may not help that much if your CPU is still bottlenecking it.

I demand 200+ FPS so I can buy this monitor:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WRP3F5S?tag=blurbust-20

Yea I've heard that.

You'll probably need a GTX 1080 Ti to get to 200fps+ on new games at high settings. My GTX 1080 maxes out around 150fps on most new games at 1080p. I've tried it just to see if there was a discernible difference in responsiveness between the ~80fps I usually get at 1440p, ultimately there really isn't.

It took me two times to learn not to do SLI anymore. It's a terrible idea from a price:performance standpoint.

Aren't the 900 series cards still price inflated due to coin mining?

I'm currently using two Samsung SyncMaster 245BWs.... Bought in 2006 I think. My dad came home with them from work one day and I just used them. They heat up my office in about 5 minutes, and make the room so damn hot, but they were free.

Two gtx 1080ti in SLI will do it.

Looks like used they're around $350ish.

Is that high?

To me it's high. I've seen 1080s for around 400-450. Also remember to make sure they are the same manufacturer and chipset if you do decide to do it.

So what you guys are saying is to sell my current card for $350, and use that money (plus the money I'd spend on a used card) and get one of these?

What resolution do you want to play at? For anything below 1440p, the 1080Ti is way overkill. Even for "just" 1440p the standard 1080 is perfectly adequate. 4K is where the 1080Ti starts becoming necessary.

It'd probably be 1080p, or if I go superwide, 1440p.

It really depends on what you have and how much a new card will cost.  Basically, a pair of <any GTX card> will be faster than a single <any GTX card> of the next generation.  So, a pair of 980s will be faster than a 1080, a pair of 960s will be faster than a 980, etc.  By that rule of thumb, if you've got a 960 and want 1080 performance, you'd be better of buying a 1080 than a pair of 980s, but if you already have a 980, buying another 980 will be cheaper then selling your 980 and buying a 1080 (in general).

One trick I've found is that people will occasionally sell dead video cards that are still under warranty.  If you've got the patience, you can snag one of these for a song and RMA the card.

What are your other specs. There is some good advice here and some completely awful shit. I generally don't go full retard in the "I'm right and everybody else is wrong" sense but seriously, it's fucking fact at this point that SLI is going away, it's not an opinion. Nvidia, AMD, and a lot of game devs have flat out said they're dialing support back. There are games where it works perfectly fine or better than single card but they're few and far between and those are mostly older titles with some current ones sprinkled in, it flat out will not be a thing in the future, I am not speculating, it's in official statements.

That said, for 1080p a 1080 will be plenty depending on what you're playing. For a lot of games you're going to get really CPU bound really quick depending what you have already. High frames aren't going to happen in bf1 and arma 3 for instance without a very capable CPU. For 1440p I'd say the 1080ti IS NOT overkill. I have a 1080 and it isn't overkill at 1440p. I get the frames I want out of the games I'm playing today but I'm not near 144fps in a lot of the more hardware intensive games. I could be there with lower settings for sure but if I were to be spending a decent amount of cash on a card right now I personally wouldn't be going for what's good enough since they're a purchase that you want to last for a few years generally.

In any which case a 980ti is still a pretty damn good card and I think the smart play would be to wait for a black friday sale on a 1080ti at this point. AMD Vega cards are coming out and the mining performance on them is fucking nuts, miners will want them and nvidia cards already weren't their first choice so they sure as hell won't be going out of their way right now. The used market will also hopefully get flooded pretty quick which will make it easier to find a new card. This won't drive 1080ti prices down since it wasn't really a mining card in the first place but you might get lucky and start seeing more sales.

In any which case my regular gaming buddy runs SLI and the amount of time I've spent just chilling in lobbies waiting for him to get his shit sorted out makes it look not so worth it. It's your money obviously but I just think SLI is a terrible buy right now. It was a great idea at the time but the industry is moving on. No reason for those that already have SLI to jump ship, but I don't think it's time to jump on a boat that already set sail. I'm sure somebody will come along and tell you it's great though, the multiple hardware conflicts on big titles are part of the fun right? Double the heat and power consumption to save a few bucks to get some extra frames with a ton of extra microstutter and what not is worth it... I guess /sarcasm.

Half ass source:
http://www.pcgamer.com/amd-is-down-playing-crossfire-configurations-with-vega/

It's worth mentioning that of course all of my anti SLI and crossfire bullshit is strictly for gaming. For production multi-GPU will have a place but I don't see the point in needless complication in a gaming rig when a single card will get the job done.

Sli isn't going away, only 2 way Sli will be supported. Cards are good now but one card still can't run 4k at high frame rates. And 4k is much better looking than 1080p.

That is what I'd do.  I have 980Ti's in SLI but most games don't support SLI that I want to play like Cities:Skylines

Better to get a new card than to SLI.  About half the games out there don't support it at all anyways.

I'm currently running a 980Ti myself and have been waiting for a good deal to come by on a 1080Ti (likely won't happen too much). Going SLI 980Ti just bottleneck's your system basically and you won't get the true performance out of them, also its a headache with game's that support them. I plan on snagging a 1080Ti and selling off the 980Ti when I can. Much better to just flat out upgrade. Plus that 11GB of Memory tho.

Well ya man, didn't say you won't be able to buy a mobo that doesn't have sli, or that there won't be games that don't support. I said there won't be much of a new supply of games supporting it. I'm not trying to start a fight but I'm seriously not expressing any opinion when I say SLI support has been steadily waning in NEW games. AAA titles from the now and back generally support it to varying degrees but I absolutely stand by saying anybody that opts for a two mid range cards instead of one monster card are off their rocker. If you're pulling down pablo escobar cash and could literally give half a shit about spending cash to SLI for a POSSIBLE gain then sure. A single card will always be a smarter investment than two cards that might work at the same time sometimes.

It's a thing if you need the extra kick however small or situational.

3 screens at 2560 x 1440 and need it BADLY.

Running 2 980ti's I picked up used super super cheap atm to get me by till Volta Ti's hit the market.

They can BARELY handle it.

Based on how they run and seeing the 1080ti's etc.  Volta will be my sweet spot.

Two of those should let me run balls out maxed settings at that res across all 3 screens. (I think)

What about the performance of 1080ti's in SLI?

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/gtx-1080-ti-sli-performance-in-25-games.2501595/

Looks pretty nice in some games, and literally 0 in others. Kind of depends what you're running I guess. i think it'd be overkill for a single monitor unless trying to push high refresh at 4k

I'll slightly disagree there.  It's a game of "it depends".  If you don't want to max out settings?  Sure a standard 1080 will work fine.  If you want to get 1440p/60 fps and maxed settings on some newer games?  Probably should go with the Ti.  The reason I saw this is that I'm playing the new Hellsblade Senua's Sacrifice.  Event at 1440p and max settings there are dips below 60fps.  That could be game, drivers...etc.  However a Ti will do it just fine.  

Also I have a SLI and to me SLI should be supported more.  Mainly because it can load balance the heavy lifting and thus your cards don't have to run @ 100% usage and 80+ degrees Celsius.  

That's what I got a few weeks ago putting together a new system after many years.

Me likey

thank you for the excellent assessment. I've been kind of batting around the same ideas as OP, as I have a gtx 970. I think i'll wait for a decent price on a 1080 and do that.

Fuck that. You're only going to get ~20% extra. You'd get more with a pair of 980ti.

Sell your 980ti and buy 2x1080ti.

Most games don't support it.  I have SLI 1070 and don't notice a difference 90% of the time.  Certain games like Tomb Raider support it and it makes it amazing.

Some games will crash with SLI enabled.  Some run like crap with it enabled.

Just know what you're getting into.