GTX 970 2x SLI vs i3-6100

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Alexlomm

Alexlomm

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May 18, 2016
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Hello. Will GTX 970 2x SLI be bottlenecked by i3-6100 CPU? If yes, what is other budget-friendly CPU to be considered to handle these beasts?

The thing is, that I am trying to build a budget PC with single GTX 970, while leaving a possibility for SLI upgrade in the future.

P.S
My monitor is 1080p and preferable budget for the PCU is around 150$.
 
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T
Get a i5 4460 or i5 6500 at the minimum and hold up for a gtx 1070, maybe you don't need a SLI setup, if you want to SLI 1070 though you'd want an even better unlocked CPU
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aces19

aces19

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Aug 27, 2015
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Right now? Can you wait until the gtx 1070 is released? It shouldn't be long at all...

As for a budget friendly CPU, the i3 is an OK choice but with a 1070 I'd have to recommend and i5 at least.
 
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burdenbound

burdenbound

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i5 at a minimum but I personally recommend an i7 for multi GPU setups especially on games which are CPU heavy. There is overhead with multi GPUs which gets forgotten and it doesn't help that pretty much every benchmark out there for multi gpu tests always use the fastest i7 they can get their hands on.

But like aces19 said, wait for the 1070.
 
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InvalidError

InvalidError

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Do you have a Z170-based motherboard? You need a Z-series chipset to unlock the i3's PCIe lane-splitting so you can run the SLI/CF GPUs in x8x8 PCIe mode.

Most games that scale high enough to possibly require GTX970 in SLI are also very likely to require something faster than an i3-6100, especially with the extra overhead SLI and CF come with.
 
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Alexlomm

Alexlomm

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Not right now, but hopefully in the nearest 3 months period. There are 2 major problems with me considering the GTX 1070:

    ■ The price difference between 970 and 1070 probably will be about 100$, which is a heavy blow to my wallet
    ■ The upgrade for i3-6100 will cost some more bucks and my wallet is sent to knockout, effectively leaving me homeless

On the other hand, forgetting about the future upgrade to SLI, thus cutting down on prices for motherboard and PSU might work.
 
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burdenbound

burdenbound

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If I were you I wouldn't be worrying about building a computer if a few hundred bucks determines if your homeless or not.

If you exaggerating then I would abandon SLI/CF it's just a headache, and then go with the 1070 and an i5.
 
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Alexlomm

Alexlomm

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The motherboard is Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151
 
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Alexlomm

Alexlomm

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1080p and about 150$ respectively
 
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Alexlomm

Alexlomm

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The gaming urge is strong. I'm starting to lean towards i5 - GTX 1070 build
 
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T

technoholic

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Another opinion: wait for Polaris. Now, we don't expect Polaris to perform any where near the 1080/1070 levels of performances but bigger Polaris may offer a performance near 1070 (most people claim it will be much faster than 970, a matter of speculation) levels for a cheaper price. If AMD makes a surprise and brings some good performer for a good price, you could make a better decision depending on your criteria
 
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Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader

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Thats not true, in fact much speculation is it will very well outperform the 1070/1080 and beyond.
 
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burdenbound

burdenbound

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The fury X is awfully close in ashes of the singularity to the 1080. I get a feeling that polaris will pull ahead in DX12 applications that actually take advantage of asynchronous shaders. Thats the big catch, I get a hunch most game developers will skip out on implementing this due to the extra work involved. I hope I am wrong though.
 
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T

technoholic

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You guys have no idea what you are talking about. Polaris was never meant to compete in the high-end. There will be 2 Polaris cards, 1 is for low segment (probably sub 200$ mark) and the bigger Polaris will be a mainstream card (probably 250 to 350$ mark). Polaris will not compete in the high end
 
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Rogue Leader

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No actually we do know exactly what we are talking about. That was a rumor that was going around months ago. Lisa Su the CEO of AMD herself stated it was wrong and not only that "we do not want to be the budget option anymore".
 
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Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader

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Thats an incorrect assumption. Like Burdenbound said the Fury X already outperforms the 1070 and almost performs as well as the 1080, there is no chance in the world their new flagship card is going to get beat by their previous one, when they go from 28nm to 14nm process. Everything out there is pointing to Polaris possibly outperforming Nvidia (and hopefully it does because if it and Zen flop AMD is going to be hurting bad).
 
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TJ Hooker

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@Rogue Leader are the Polaris cards even supposed to include a flagship though? I admit that I'm not completely on top of Polaris news, but I thought they were supposed to be more mainstream cards, with the big guns coming out with Vega late this year/early 2017.

And that quote from Lisa doesn't really prove anything. To be honest I thought that quote was more in relation to CPUs, where it makes more sense given AMDs complete absence from the high end market.
 
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