Hi Guys, Hope you're all keeping well, and had a nice Christmas and a happy new year! I just had a quick query regarding a bottleneck on my system. Pretty simple question, all I want to know is if I added a 3rd GTX 980Ti to my system would my CPU/Motherboard be a bottleneck? Would really appreciate feedback. Thanks Sam
No, but it would be a poor way to spend your money, because outside benchmarks hardly any games scale very well across three GPUs.
I think you'd find a third Ti makes little difference except when possibly benching, in my experience matched dual GPU SLi is the sweet spot - your board and CPU are upto the task yes but performance wise it won't really be that much of a huge gain.
Hi Guys, Thanks for the quick reply’s, good to know that there would not be a bottleneck, however I must admit I didn't really consider the fact that most games will not be optimized for 3 way SLI maybe a little bit of an oversite on my part. Also to top it off the fact that performance per pound it would be a very high cost for very little performance return. Maybe one to leave then for the time being, just would be nice to run games like GTA V at max on 3440x1440. Thanks very much for the advice guys, much appreciated.
Hang on. You have a 4790k. Doesn't that only have 16 lanes? Does the Maximus board you are using have a PLX chip? because if it doesn't then you can't run 3 980tis as you won't have the lanes to operate it. CrossfireX will run at X4 but SLI won't.
Yeah it does I just checked That's good, though I still wouldn't go 3 way SLI. I was running two Titan Black and for ages I wrestled with myself over whether to add a third. I even ended up buying a third, and ordered the extra PCIE power cables I would need. Thankfully sense got the better of me and I ended up leaving it. I used the third card in the building of my wife's gaming rig As others have said once you go over two cards you have quite diminishing returns. At best you will get about 8% more performance (it really is that bad) and at worst you will actually get weakened performance. Just because a game is SLI or Crossfire compatible does not mean it is 3-4 way compatible. A dev can patch in support for two cards but for proper support for 3-4 cards you then also need to code that support in. What I mean is just because a game supports SLI does not mean it supports 3-4 way SLI. The only game I have ever played that seemed to like more than two GPU cores was Bad Company 2, which worked across all four of the 3870x2 cores I fed it and the GTX 295 cores. I know that was a while ago but just have a scratch around for 3 way SLI reviews there are a couple out there.
What he said. In fact, what they said! Pete J did a 4-way SLI review recently - it's worth a read. I'm on mobile so not easy to link but should be easy to find with a quick search [emoji2]
haha, I would if I could but afraid I can't mate. However I can offer you this lovely picture of an 980Ti. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9306/Geforce_GTX_980_Ti_Stylized-4.JPG
Damn! Did not realize the diminishing returns were that bad, anyway thanks for the heads up. Would much rather somebody told me than experience hardly any performance increase after buying a 3rd card. Thanks for all the info.
Just had a quick read through, quite an interesting read. As you guys say looks like that 3rd GPU just isn't worth the money for performance per pound.
I have 3 cards, it does help in some games, in others not so much, yoiu just need to find out if it is compatible with your game and whether cost of entry is worth it.
