SLI Performance issues and OC'ing questions.

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BOOMski

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Feb 1, 2016
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First off I understand that it's easier to post what my build is to better locate (if any) issues I feel like I'm having.

-ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII HERO LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Gaming Motherboard
-Dual EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB HYBRID GAMING
-EVGA SuperNOVA GOLD 850W
-Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz
-G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4
-Microsoft Windows 10 Home - 64-bit - OEM
-Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX Extreme Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

I feel like I'm not getting the full performance out of my SLI config. My frames are really not that much higher than with the one card on games. My benchmark has a substantial difference but frames in game don't seem to be much higher.

Now I know I'm able to OC the crap out of these cards because of the liquid cooled and they run super low in temperature. My question is is this worth OC'ing? and also is there a chance I would be able to run some type of trouble shooting process to see if there is an issue?

One last thing, does the bridge matter for performance? In other words, will a different bridge give me better performance.
 
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Eximo
Not every application supports SLI indeed. One of the reasons I 'downgraded' from a pair of 980s to a 1080. Some games have specific SLI settings that must be enabled as well, though I haven't seen that as much as in the past.

SLI bridge on GTX970 won't make a difference. Only the newer 1070/1080/Titan X require the high bandwidth bridge.

GTX970 are somewhat limited at high resolutions/textures/AA due to their 3.5GB memory cap. The remaining .5 GB requires an additional clock cycle to access and can really slow down things. Check your VRAM usage to see if you are encountering that problem.

A single 1080 would outperform your 970s, so that might be something to look into as well. Save you a little power as well.
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Eximo

Eximo

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Not every application supports SLI indeed. One of the reasons I 'downgraded' from a pair of 980s to a 1080. Some games have specific SLI settings that must be enabled as well, though I haven't seen that as much as in the past.

SLI bridge on GTX970 won't make a difference. Only the newer 1070/1080/Titan X require the high bandwidth bridge.

GTX970 are somewhat limited at high resolutions/textures/AA due to their 3.5GB memory cap. The remaining .5 GB requires an additional clock cycle to access and can really slow down things. Check your VRAM usage to see if you are encountering that problem.

A single 1080 would outperform your 970s, so that might be something to look into as well. Save you a little power as well.
 
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BOOMski

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Feb 1, 2016
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4,510
That makes sense, I didn't realize some games don't support SLI. Main games I'm playing right now are Company of Hero's 2, Total War Warhammer, and of course Battlefield 4 and 1 when it's released. But the main reason I decided to go for SLI is for games like tomb raider, Far Cry 4 and things like that. I should have just saved my money for the 1080 I really feel I just wasted 350$. I was SO set on SLI being so much better from benchmark performance as well as Reviews. On a side note though, what's the best way to check my VRAM?

 
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Eximo

Eximo

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BF4 and 1 should support SLI. Not sure about Company of Heroes. Tomb raider should (I think, I know it was a big deal for AMD when it came out), Cryengine games also should.

MSI Afterburner is a good tool. It will show you the last minute or so on a chart but will also store maximum values. I believe you can enable logging, but I haven't bothered with that.
 
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