First world problems - 1080SLI or Titan X Pascal?

As many might know by now, I'm a strong advocate against SLI since it's really let me down of late and will gladly discourage people from taking that path. nVidias official announcement that 3-way and 4-way SLI is no longer supported is a clear indication that SLI won't be around for much longer. I only hope that Volta does a considerable jump in performance from Pascal since 4K is so heavily promoted these days. Will it finally be the true 4K card we're all waiting for?

 

I went with a 4K monitor as I had SLI and knew I had the horsepower for it, so wanted to give it a go - and while it wasn't a revolution in the way past advancements have been, the quality was beautiful and the free frames you get by being able to forget about needing any kind of AA is a lovely bonus.

I agree on the SLI concerns, but re: BF1 - that's one which is glorious in 4K on SLI. Moments like those are why the risk can be worth it.

 

I suspect 3 and 4-way SLI causes far too many problems in configuration, in terms of coding for it, while 2 way isn't half as complicated. And DX12's mGPU does force the notion that the concept isn't dead yet by a long way.

No hope for Vega?

 

I have 2 x 1080s currently and honestly I wish I hadn't bought 2 cards. I was aiming to hit ~120fps at 1440p with maxed out settings in games.

When a game has great SLI support it works pretty well... But more and more games keep coming out with either no SLI support or full of bugs and performance problems for SLI users.


I was kinda hoping the 1080Ti would be announced by now so I could maybe sell off these cards and grab a single 1080Ti. Even then I'm not sure a single card will get me exactly the performance I want. So I'm sure I'd end up having to turn down settings or tweak things.

 

If a Titan X Pascal cannot hold 60fps in some games in 4K then it's a pipe dream for any single card to do so.

I totally agree with you, when SLI works well it's wonderful, but the inconsistent support is a real problem and probably is going to only get worse. I don't think it's going to outright die, and then we've had it since 1999 (Voodoo 2 SLI anyone) in different forms and it's been threatening to fade for 20 years but here we are and it's still going. It's always been like this - some games work great with it, some don't - I don't think that's going to change much.

 

The question comes down to: Do the games and applications that you play & use that would benefit from SLI, support SLI? If the answer is yes, go for the two 1080s, if no, go for Titan XP.

For me for example the games I have that don't support SLI, aren't demanding enough to put a hurtin a single 1080 or Titan XP and the games I have that are that demanding do support it, so the choice is clear.

The other factor, which is a bigger one for some and not one at all for others is aesthetics. I personally like to build systems with lots of glass and acrylic and custom loops and not many things look more bada$$ than a mult GPU system on an X99 board with a custom loop. So for me unless the architecture and recent run of drivers really sucks for SLI/crossfire on the majority of the games I play, I pretty much always go for a 2 GPU setup (when I can afford it) :arnie:

 

I just grabbed a Titan XP from a 980ti last week. I love the thing! I drive a 1440p ROG Swift, but nothing has been short of 100 fps on ultra settings. From Battlefield 1, H1Z1 King of the Kill, Rust, Overwatch, and the like.

It's true about needing water though. The card limits is boost clock heavily based on temps, and unless you want that vapor chamber air cooler sounding extra frisky you'll want to toss on an EKWB and loop it into something or get EK's AIO's or get EVGA's hybrid water cooler for the 1080 and just plop it on the card like I did.

Temps are 45C at full load with aforementioned games and I get a steady +250 core giving me boosts upwards 2150-2200mhz at times.

It's another world.

 

I'm not an AMD guy and truth be told nVidia has too tight a grip on the market which works in favor for the green team (when it comes to games). I used to own a couple of ATi cards back in the days though.

From what I gather, SLI back in 1999 was a much simpler task and would pretty much always double your performance. 3D Engines have since then evolved greatly which makes it much more complicated to have SLI working. Not only does it have to be fully supported by the engine, you need a decent driver side profile. I understand that developers don't see a proper ROI for adding SLI support when less and less users have it.

 

Not really sure I'm with you because those "free frames" are bought by a higher rendering resolution (which costs performance too in comparison to say 2K without any AA) anyway. But I can imagine that native res is always better than AA, it's just 1440p + AA usually needs less horsepower than 4K -AA, or am I wrong?

Yes even on "2K" 1440p the game looks amazing on my cards, even more annoying that they broke SLI support with a game patch. Sadly, since they did so, I have hardly played BF1 becaues I've simply switched on to Overwatch personally. So I haven't really gotten back into playing BF1 since then. Well done Dice

 

It depends on the game, true, but if you think about it this way:

resolution is a hardware feature - the switch from 1440P to 4K requires to be supported by the monitor. That's all it requires. Whereas AA is a hardware feature in software - aka requires sampling or multisampling or post-process AA etc. These all cost a lot of GHz. With 4K you don't need ANY of those AA features - and the cost at all resolutions of AA is massive the higher you go. Hence you get free frames at 4K because there's no need to use AA. Of all the games I've seen, 4K-AA and 1440P+AA are either equal in 'cost' or the former is cheaper. The only games I've found to be poor at ultra settings in 4K are Deus Ex and Watch Dogs 2 (of those which SLI works in). Everything else is quite viable or plain locked into 60+.

In my opinion if you're happy with 2K that's all you need. I shouldn't have sampled 4K because I can't go back now. PS I had a go at BF1 tonight - campaign mode. Got a little frustrated at a checkpoint restoring my position miles from where I died and disorienting me, but good otherwise. Not a stunning game so far for me, but I've played way worse and the SLI support is excellent.

 

Bought Zotax AMP Extreme 1080gtx
16gb ddr4
i7 6700k

Currently tried in 4k ultra settings:
Doom (Vulcan)
RE 7
Overwatch

all 60 fps

No overclocks on cpu or gfx yet other than the factory Zotac OC. Pretty happy so far

 

I take back the RE7 60 fps.... its 60fps before entering the house weirdly enough then its goes to a weird laggy type game play but not bad frames... I seem to actually have an issue with that game in the house, I will report back when I have time to investigate.

 

Dont we need at least fxaa for the shadows in 4k?

 

Matter of personal opinion but end of the day AA is AA whether it's for shadows, textures, it's in PP or whatever.

 

Yup, one of the many technical glitches I had with this game. Also plain didn't like it and gave up with it. It's just not Resident Evil.

 

Even getting 55 fps avg in Rust 4k fantastic setting. Smooth 50 - 60 fps and that game is notoriously badly optimised right now if you check their forums.

Playing Planet Coaster nicely at 4k ultra everything 15 coasters, lots of stuff in park, 8000 guests. Playing about 30 - 35 fps which is amazing for that game which is known to EAT top end PC's... looks beautiful when playing too... Really will test CPU

 

Battlefield games of recent, always something critically wrong with them. Don't you guys ever learn with regards to dice and bf games.

 

Nothing personal, but to me frame rates between 30-60 on a PC isn't a good experience. A 1080 is a good GPU for 1440p. For some older AAA titles it is adequate for 4K 60 FPS. We are still under powered for consistent 4K game playing at a min of 60 FPS...even with the TITAN (P). Not trying to harsh your mellow man ... but I need a new GPU for 4K and what is out there now isn't quite enough for me....I just updated from the X58 and my my 'anchor' is the 980Ti.

 

Hey man I dont disagree, I am sharing my experience. However coming off my previous build I hope you will allow me some enthusiasm

50 - 60 fps 4k ultra with vivid colors has me almost hallucinating after a couple hours game play... couldn't go back from even this setup

 

Also I went in cheap but decent on the 4k screen with 40" iiyama 4k screen, it can only do 60 fps, it can actually do 70 but if it hits 71 it will tear.. not bad for a 450£ 4k nice screen which is my entry to 4k