1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Graphics 1080Ti (single or sli) or stick with 1070SC SLI x2?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Drachnem, 1 Apr 2017.

?

What video card setup should I go with?

  1. Stick with 1070sc in 2-way sli (not much gain to be had)

    3 vote(s)
    15.0%
  2. Go with 1x 1080 Ti (2 would be hardly noticeable)

    13 vote(s)
    65.0%
  3. Go with 2-way 1080 Ti (You'll need the HP and will make a big difference in games)

    4 vote(s)
    20.0%
  1. Drachnem

    Drachnem Minimodder

    Joined:
    15 Nov 2003
    Posts:
    398
    Likes Received:
    0
    As the title notes I've been mulling around the thought of getting a 1080Ti but I haven't had much luck seeing how it would stack up aginst the 1070SC SLI 2-way.

    I love my games on ultra, have an oculus rift, and a 4k monitor.

    I play Path of Exile, Battlefield 1, GTA V, Skyrim, etc and want them to run buttery.


    Should I make the move and if so, should I SLI the 1080Ti?


    Thoughts?
     
  2. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

    Joined:
    15 Jan 2010
    Posts:
    7,059
    Likes Received:
    970
    1070 SLI vs Titan X (which is a tiny bit slower than a 1080ti)

    http://www.babeltechreviews.com/titan-x-vs-gtx-1070-sli/3/

    Depending on which game you look at one or the other is clearly the correct answer as you can lose massively or gain like crazy from switching the two 1070s for a single 1080ti, but since proper SLI scaling is so randomly distributed across games it is pretty much a lottery which will be faster.

    But since there are situations where the single 1080ti would get badly beaten by 1070s in SLI I would go for two 1080tis so it is actually an allaround upgrade rather than a partial one.
     
  3. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

    Joined:
    30 Aug 2015
    Posts:
    14,886
    Likes Received:
    3,667
    Nvidia have kicked all of the value out of cheaper cards in SLi IMO. Last decent combo was two GTX 460s. They slaughtered the 480 and cost £150 less. Sadly they have realised this, and changed everything around. Most of their budget cards don't even work in SLi now.
     
  4. atc95

    atc95 I have the upgrade bug!

    Joined:
    3 Dec 2012
    Posts:
    1,295
    Likes Received:
    31
    Stick with the 1070s and if you want an upgrade in 9-12 months then you will have volta or Vega 20 to consider.
     
  5. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

    Joined:
    14 Jan 2009
    Posts:
    3,909
    Likes Received:
    591
    In cases where the 1070 SLI are faster, the gain is around ~10%, with a handful of cases jsut reaching 20%. In cases where SLI is not faster, the loss is between 20% and 50%, tending towards 50% in most cases.

    If you can afford a 1080Ti, it makes very little sense to use 2x 1070s unless you happen to only play games that scale exceptionally well with multi-GPU.
     
  6. Drachnem

    Drachnem Minimodder

    Joined:
    15 Nov 2003
    Posts:
    398
    Likes Received:
    0
    Sounds like the 1080Ti is faster than Titan X, and so the 1080Ti would be faster solo than my two cards together, but that speed would apply to ALL games not just sli, and I wouldn't lose out on games with poor SLI.

    Hmm... I really would love to see benchmarks vs 1070sc sli with the 1080ti.
     
  7. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

    Joined:
    30 Aug 2015
    Posts:
    14,886
    Likes Received:
    3,667
    IIRC Custom PC did an article recently on SLi 1070s for 4k. Though tbh they did cherry pick their games and made it look better than it actually is. IIRC they benched them against the TXP too, so you might want to look at that.
     
  8. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

    Joined:
    15 Jan 2010
    Posts:
    7,059
    Likes Received:
    970
    Except the op already has the 2x1070s...

    Or just click on the link I had already posted...
     
  9. Drachnem

    Drachnem Minimodder

    Joined:
    15 Nov 2003
    Posts:
    398
    Likes Received:
    0
    Welp...found the info I was looking for in this video



    Basically, my 1070 SLI setup is as fast or in many cases faster than a single 1080TI.

    The only thing that makes sense is to keep what I have, or spend 1400 and get two 1080TI cards.


    I've been doing most my fast paced action on my asus 2k with 144hz/gsync so I'm probably fine where I am at for now...until I load a game up and it drags, then i'll be down 1400... lol
     
  10. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

    Joined:
    14 Jan 2009
    Posts:
    3,909
    Likes Received:
    591
    Video embed seems to be broken

    One other thing to consider with SLI is that while it pushes up maximum framerate, it doesn't have the same effect on minimum framerate. AFR is used almost exclusively, so the minimum total frametime remains the same as the case of a single GPU (you can have multiple frames in flight, which hides the frametime increase at the cost of increased latency). Unfortunately none of the comparative SLI vs. Titan X or 1080Ti reviews I can find have bothered to do anything other than bare-minimum average framerate testing, which doesn't tell you all that much about actual performance.
     
  11. Drachnem

    Drachnem Minimodder

    Joined:
    15 Nov 2003
    Posts:
    398
    Likes Received:
    0
    hmm you are right, didn't think about that...
     
  12. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

    Joined:
    30 Aug 2015
    Posts:
    14,886
    Likes Received:
    3,667
    Nothing wrong with more information. Second opinion, and all that.

    Yup that's a bloody good point. If you ever wanted evidence of that just load up Heaven or Valley and watch your min FPS absolutely tank.
     
  13. LordPyrinc

    LordPyrinc Legomaniac

    Joined:
    7 Mar 2008
    Posts:
    599
    Likes Received:
    6
    While I started out with a single ATI card on this machine 7 years ago that had 875 MB of RAM, I moved to 2x NVidia 550Ti on my next upgrade. Then I went to 2x NVidia 660Ti 2GB or RAM, it doubled my benchmarks but took a lot more power, 4x6 pins. More recently I went for 2x NVidia 1070s with 8GB of RAM running at 4k when gaming on my 4K TV. Less power draw than the two 660Tis, 1x8 pin per card, but a lot more RAM per card. It was either spend $800 US on two 1070s or $1300 on two 1080s. Just after the purchase the 1080Tis came out, but such is life when doing video card upgrades.
     
  14. LordPyrinc

    LordPyrinc Legomaniac

    Joined:
    7 Mar 2008
    Posts:
    599
    Likes Received:
    6
    My experience with Heaven and Valley is that they don't work for the NVidia 10X0 series cards. Neither will do 4K resolution and both under-report the RAM if you have 8GB cards. Running my 1070s reported a lower score than my 660Tis did. I picked up the 3DMark Suite on sale and that's the software I'm using to benchmark now.
     
  15. LordPyrinc

    LordPyrinc Legomaniac

    Joined:
    7 Mar 2008
    Posts:
    599
    Likes Received:
    6
    I've been running SLI configurations for about six years now. 2 cards will almost always out perform a single card. Yes the minimum frame rate might be higher on a single card, yet two cards will provide a better average frame rate and generally allows for higher quality per frame. One card can off-load the physics while the other does the grunt work. Two cards are better than one. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
     
  16. Drachnem

    Drachnem Minimodder

    Joined:
    15 Nov 2003
    Posts:
    398
    Likes Received:
    0
    heh well then! Thanks for your feedback!
     
  17. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

    Joined:
    28 Sep 2009
    Posts:
    7,226
    Likes Received:
    1,784
    I've found the 1080Ti works exceptionally well in SLI. For some reason, two 1080 Tis run GTA V better on a triple surround set up (7960x1600) than two Titan XPs running 4K.
     
  18. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

    Joined:
    30 Aug 2015
    Posts:
    14,886
    Likes Received:
    3,667
    1080Ti won't run SLi any better or worse than any other card using it really. Running two very powerful cards in always SLi was always better because if you have to fall back to one card at least that one card has some guts, especially at higher resolutions.

    I know of a whole heap of games that simply do not work in SLi or Crossfire. Most of them are pretty recent. So I guess it depends on what you are doing with SLi. I like to buy all of the new games (where I can afford to of course which has been easy lately because there have been hardly any) and play all of them. Problem is a whole load of them have not worked, and cherry picking is cheating.

    However, if you had like an aspie obsession with one game and played it all of the time? then yes, it could be worth buying SLi for that. Back when Fallout 3 was around I ran multiple cards religiously to get as much performance as I could because it worked well with more than one card. And mods would bring it to its knees at points, so the more power the better.

    But then I have clocked at least 2000 hours into Fallout 3, so having two cards was worth it.

    It might settle down and it may become a given like it was during the Tomb Raider (the first modern one) days. Pretty much everything worked 100% then and times were really good. I benefited hugely from SLi then, as I used it to power through loads of games at max settings (Metro LL was another one).

    But these days it's far too hit and miss if you are the sort of gamer who likes to play everything.

    However let's say for example L4D3 came out next week, ran like turd on one card but got a boost from Crossfire? I would have no qualms at all.
     
  19. LordPyrinc

    LordPyrinc Legomaniac

    Joined:
    7 Mar 2008
    Posts:
    599
    Likes Received:
    6
    Wait, what? I know that NVidia's Game Ready drivers released in March are crap and cause Windows to crash coming out of sleep, but I've not heard of them not supporting SLI. I haven't bought any really recent games, but I've never really had any SLI issues with any past games except for a very specific campaign map in SC2. What specific recent games have SLI issues?
     
  20. LordPyrinc

    LordPyrinc Legomaniac

    Joined:
    7 Mar 2008
    Posts:
    599
    Likes Received:
    6
    If you are talking about console ports to a PC, then that's not really a fault of NVidia's SLI. Console ports have always run like crap on PCs, SLI or not.
     

Share This Page