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

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3087...ayoff-in-buying-nvidias-40-sli-hb-bridge.html

If you are running 2 x NVidia 10X0 series cards like I am at 4K resolution or above, the NVidia high-bandwidth SLI bridge is recommended. It cost me a little bit less than 50 US dollars extra on top of the cost of the two cards. A small price to pay compared to the cost of the cards.

 

Just Cause 3 - doesn't support SLi and never will.
Any recent Wolfenstein game - see above.
At last check -

Forza Horizons
Killer Instinct
Phantom Pain
Deus Ex (which has improved X months after launch).
COD BLOPS III - flickering textures and stutter.
COD Infinite Warfare - at last check did not work.

Those are games I saw directly affected, though the list is probably more extensive. It only started happening since the two new consoles arrived (Xbone and PS4) and this was probably because in the old days of console "ports"* more work needed to be done to get a game running on a PC. So whilst they were doing that work any way they may as well add in multi GPU support I guess? the thing is it would seem the two new consoles have made it so that a pc "port" is far easier than it ever was so why bother adding in any support at all? at the end of the day it's just more work (so more money) for something barely any one uses.

So any recent console "port" has come out barely able to run on a PC, let alone in SLi.

* There is no such thing as a console port. That is just a slang term given to it. Games are coded and made up of lots of elements. Code, textures etc. They are then compiled for a specific platform. They are not ported to PC, they are coded to be compiled for a PC. Totally different thing, hence why I have trouble actually calling them console ports. I prefer console slop.

But yes, not sure where you have been for the past 18 months but it was so bad that websites began writing articles like this one.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/7631/wtf-wrong-multi-gpu-support-games-days/index.html

I really would not recommend multi GPU of any type or sort until things settle down and it gets back to as close to 100% as it was a few years ago. Right now you face a couple of month wait or worse, it does not get support at all. Leaving you with a £350 paper weight and a £35 paper weight (the bridge.. BTW any hard dual connector bridge is HB and will do the job perfectly).

 

GTA V - does SLI well
Recent hitman games - do SLI well
Tomb Raider - does SLI well
Rise of the Tomb Raider - does SLI well

CryEngine - does SLI well
Crysis series
Ryse: Son of Rome
Star Citizen

Frostbite 2 engine - does SLI well:
Battlefield 1
Battlefield 4
Battlefield Hardline
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Star Wars: Battlefront

IMHO, SLI works more often than it doesn't. However, IMHO (gain), you should only really be considering SLI if high resolution/high framerate PC gaming is your main hobby and/or you have enough disposable income to not really mind.

One thing I'm really glad about: Nvidia drivers as of late have actually started activating SLI by default.

 

Yeah then you have the Far Cry games that don't do SLi well, all of the UBI stuff that doesn't do SLi well and so on.

I think it took three games that all came out one after the other not working for me to finally give up.

So seriously, it doesn't work more often than it does not. Especially for the past two years or so.

I used multi GPU all of the way from 2010 until 2016. It peaked around the time the GTX 690 came out and was absolutely marvellous. But in recent times it has just fallen to the wayside. And it's because the new consoles are very closely matched to PC hardware, so the work to get them working is less than ever. So it's time and money... A couple of game devs have risen to the occasion (pardon the pun with ROTTR there) but other than that? all broken with flickering textures etc.

It's also become clear that no matter how much work AMD or Nvidia do without actual support from the game engine it's close to impossible to get a game to work.

If the devs ever bother with the DX12 features we were all promised? the fortunes for multi GPU will likely be reversed. However, not until the consoles support it IMO. Until then it's an unnecessary expense for game devs.

The only reason you are not noticing it as much Pete is because you are running stupidly fast GPUs. Believe me, when you rely on it for a decent FPS it's ten times worse.

 

Go with a single TI and another once games struggle, 2x 1080ti's are absolute overkill now even for 4k, unless you're gonna grab that inc 4k 144hz monitor from Asus

 

My experince with SLI is that it works well if you're willing to make it work - even on the far cry games you can normally google the name of the game and it'll lead you to some forum posts where someone has managed to use nvidia inspector to make it work. As such I'd probably stick with 1070 SLI personally for now.

 

I notice if I'm not getting the required frame rates. I would not be able to run most of the games at the settings I like if SLI didn't work.

Far Cry games not doing SLI well? News to me. Far Cry 3 had perfect scaling with two cards and got on very well with three when I played through it.

 

The best thing about multi-GPU setups is the shear sexiness in the case XD I actually run centOS as my main OS and pass-through one card to a windows VNF to run all the games that linux can't.

Just because you have a multi-GPU setup doesn't mean you have use SLI for Crossfire, there's plenty of other uses too