Thinking of selling 2x GTX970's for single GTX980Ti.. worth it?

Thinking I could sell my 2x GTX970's and get a single GTX980Ti.

I don't hate them or anything I just think it would be less hassle having a single high end GPU than two.

Less heat, less power draw (970's barely use anything tbh), less driver hassle, bigger frame buffer, would be able to use DSR as SLI and GSYNC together don't currently support DSR at all.

What do you guys think, I know there would be a downgrade in some games with performance and quite a bit in benchmarks but that is to be expected going from 2 GPU's to 1 GPU but I doubt it would be much and in some cases I would get more performance I think.

My MSI GAMING 4G GTX970's still sell for £269 from Scan. I reckon I could get easily £200 for both and then the 980Ti would only cost me £150 extra (1 of my 970's is exdisplay though but no damage at all) both GPU's boost to 1329MHz on their own. I have not had them overclocked or used them for any form of mining or folding. Only used them for gaming and very light benchmarking?

What do you think?

I would wait for Pascal but that probably won't be until the mid to end of next year. I am only at 1080p GSYNC monitor at the moment so SLI is also complete overkill (as would a 980Ti but I want to use DSR so the bigger framebuffer would be nice). I might upgrade later next year to either 1440p or even 4K if prices are decent and then SLI would become viable again and a second 980Ti would be cheaper too?

You can tell I have talked my self into this already but I wanted a few second opinions?

Was going to sell them on here first then ebay them if they don't sell.

 

lol
I agree with you 100%. I will never go dual GPU after trying Crossfire for two weeks. Jesus that was a horrible mistake. SLI is probably way better, but still has the same issues in the end.

You've literally realized that the cons outweigh the pros, congratulations. Go sell your 970s on Amazon and buy a 980 Ti on hardwareswap, you'll probably break even.

 

well i never had SLI nor xfire, but single card is always the best. go for it, the 980TI is a beast of it's own league, i have this card and i'm having sex with it way too many times.

 

980ti is a really nice GPU about the same as 2x970 so not really an upgrade.............. though in games were sli is not great it will be a huge upgrade I say if you can sell your 2x970 do it get a 980ti

 

Never tried SLI, but had bad experiences with CF, have heard better things about SLI, but I'd still opt for the single GPU choice

 

this is my 2nd Sli rig and overall I am happy with Sli I am worried about DX12 and lazy devs not bothering to include or do it correctly.

 

First things first, I'd do it too if I were you. Only, I'm not sure I can sell two 980s myself

Me too...

 

Too much hassle. Just forget about it and wait for Pascal. Its not like you gonna have to wait a very long time.

 

^ this.

Sure some games with no good or not at all SLI support will benefit from a more powerful gpu but you really gain only this. Less heat and less power is not something that needs to be considered because I beliece since you don't have now any problems with heat or your PSU's output..so why suddenly worry..?

The only one which will currently get the best deal is Nvidia (TBH and dealer too..)

just wait to see how things will go with dx12 and upcoming gpus. Don't rush for such a move unless you may get it with no more than 100 euros/pounds max. (even 100 seems too much for me but that's why I wrote max).
Ofc at the end do the math about how much money you would spent for gpu(s)..

I think the best replies you will get from users who already made this change, not everyone else (including me )

 

Well its definitely the better option vs two 970's at 1080p. Reasons being heat, possible thermal throttling, noise, more dust, micro-stutter and performance inconsistencies if the game doesn't like SLI. I remember going from two 780's to one 980ti in BF4 and noticing it being smoother with one card. My one 980ti with a decent overclock is very good at 1440p, not far off 100 fps average mostly, at max settings or close to. So a single 980ti would definitely make good use of a 144hz 1080p monitor.

Only way I'd go SLI is if I was forced to ie. 120hz 4k . There would also have to be no single dual GPU card available at the time (omg just bring them back already). The lack of a single card that could not achieve 60+ fps @ 4k would additionally force me to get dat SLI.

But all that being said... maybe just wait for Pascal, its not that long now really, probably before mid year. It really is just a case of do you want to go to the trouble, because cost isn't that much of a factor.

 

Just do it, dx11 multi-gpu is already getting swept under the rug.

 

Have you ever had a CF rig? Just wondering if you could compare the differences between CF and SLI

 

sorry never had CF had ATi cards years ago but mainly use NVidia due to better driver support (my view from many post read on Guru3d forum)

 

I've run CF a few times and it sucked each time, had people say it was due to my CPU/PSU etc, but I don't think so, when it worked it was great (So PSU/CPU was fine), but that was like 1/10 games, the rest had worse performance than a single card

I had 2 x 6850s, and after a few weeks, one of them was sitting on my desk instead of being in the machine, that's how poor CF was

Got the 295X2 a while back and that sucked too, that's how I ended up with nvidia and don't feel like going back any time soon

My next build I'm saving for atm is going to be a 980ti job, and was considering SLI, hoping it's not like CF

 

If OP's confident enough it won't be a hassle then why not? I've only read good things bout the 980Ti, no doubt it's a great card.Even better for what he plans to do with it.

 

I have SLI issues in the following games...

Evil Within (unsupported SLI)

Wolfenstien (unsupported SLI)

New UE4 games (will mostly be unsupported due to how the engine works)

Just Cause 3 (unsupported SLI)

Fallout 4 (SLI needs game patch to even work so unsupported)

Killing Floor 2 (SLI has been patched in and out so many times now every SLI uses gets flashing textures and dipping frame rates)

You can see my worry as newer engines are opting to not support SLI or CF.

A single GPU has less heat, less noise, less driver issues, less power draw, bigger frame buffer, etc.

Pros out weight the cons massively in my book.

I think I will go for it.

Anyone want to buy a GTX970 for £230 posted? I have 2 of them no seriously though.

 

There is still hope for CF/SLI, but it is in VR. One card renders content for left and another for right eye. This gives perfect utilization. Stutter is not increased even a bit in comparison to AFR method.

But I see nearly no future for AFR. It would require quite some engineering and probably joint research from both AMD/nV and probably intel too.

 

When most new game engines are doing their rendering where the next frame requires data from the previous frame in order to render it it basically makes AFR totally useless as it simply won't work.

I can see your point for VR however I really don't think VR will take off that much. It will be another fad that will come and go. It may improve over time and it could and probably will get better. I have tried Oculus, HTC Vive, and Morpheus. All of which really really did not impress me at all. The graphics were shocking in parts and took away from the realism. The lag on the Morpheus was so bad most people felt sick from it when I tried it I used it for 10 minutes and gave it back to the rep and said you think this is good? He looked at me and said no not really I'm just paid to show it off... says it all really.

Vive was good though but it requires so many additional camera sensors its not worth it yet.

I can 100% see SLI/CF being very good for VR games but at the moment I am not one of them people who will jump on the bandwagon early.

 

Definitely the right choice to ditch SLI, developers just don't seem to give it any priority and the number of recent AAA games which don't support it out of the box is a massive shame.

You may need to adjust your expectation of your 970's resale value - brand new 970s, even factory overclocked models, can be picked up for £230-£250.

 

Out of those games there's 2 I'd play, JC3 and Fallout, and to be honest, I'll wait until JC3 gets cheaper, and I'd say Fallout doesn't normally need SLI (except SLI 680s or something). I'd wish for it in Blizzard games (which traditionally neither support SLI, nor had big demands on the hardware either), but other than that, I've been able to use SLI or achieve decent frame rates with a single 980 alone. So far