Are gtx 1070 in sli worth it l?

Simon_49

Commendable
Mar 10, 2016
48
0
1,540
So I have a 1070 right now and I'm really happy with it's performance. However I'm only running a 1080p 60hz monitor. My monitor really needs an upgrade as it's already 7 years old and has a few glitches. I've been considering 1440p monitors with high refresh rates, but I don't think that in the long run my gpu will be able to push it as well as I would've liked. Anyways, I was wondering if its better to get a gtx 1080 or get a second 1070 since as far as I know sli these days isn't really great.
 
Solution
SLI, as you said, is terrible. My sugestion is that you buy your new monitor and see how it performs, I think that you won't really feel the need to get a new GPU unless its a 144hz and you want to max it out. Also, you can wait for the next GPU generation, because changing such a recently bought and powerful 1070 for a 1080 seems like a waste of money, unless you get a really nice deal with it. Anyways, this is your budget!

rubervaldo66

Commendable
Jul 28, 2016
110
0
1,710
SLI, as you said, is terrible. My sugestion is that you buy your new monitor and see how it performs, I think that you won't really feel the need to get a new GPU unless its a 144hz and you want to max it out. Also, you can wait for the next GPU generation, because changing such a recently bought and powerful 1070 for a 1080 seems like a waste of money, unless you get a really nice deal with it. Anyways, this is your budget!
 
Solution

iamacow

Admirable
SLI is alright coming from someone who has owned many pairs over the year. They do however have its own set of issues and frankly if you can get away with a single card and good FPS, its usually the better option. A Single 1070 is all you need for 1440P max settings and still get over 60fps.
 
A 1070 will move 1440p just fine at 1440p. The 1080 is a 20% performance improvement for a 54% increase in price. If that's what ya thinking, wait for the 1080 Ti to drop which will push the 1080 / 1070 south. With the 980 Ti's release, the 980 became a forgotten card. I expect the same with the 10xx series.

As for SLI, that's a bit of a conundrum. When I see highly negative comments about SLI, and ask in what instances did you experience this, the most common answer is "I read it on the internet. On the 970, simply put, it was the proverbial "no brainer". This was one of the reasons that the 970 was the biggest selling card of all time, out selling all AMD 2xx and 3xx cards combined. When you can buy two 970s for the price of a 980, and the twin 970s are 40% faster on average (70% average scaling including games that didn't support SLI, demanding games in excess of 95%) than the 980, the 980 lost its luster.

On 10xx as well as AMDs 4xx, it's quite a disappointment. many reasons have been suggested for this:

1. GPU advancements have been generation to generation have been as high as 50% or more, whereas CPU advancements have been paltry. To do SLI and keep minimum frame rates up, the system performance is affected by RAM speed, CAS and CPU performance.

2. The driver teams for both sides, are struggling to keep up with games that started as DX11 and now are rushing to get out adaptations for DX12. As always, work on SLI takes a back seat to single card development.

3. Does nVidia really have a interest in improving SLI performance ? As it stands now, the 1070 and 1080 have no competition from AMD. So given the fact that card manufacturers make far more margins on their flagship than selling 2 lesser cards, does it really make sense to improve 1070 SLI performance ? The only card sales that would be hurt by better 1070 performance in SLI would be that of the 1080 ... so until there is something to compete with these cards, they would be shooting themselves in the foot so to speak by improving SLI performance.

Looking at Witcher 3 for example at 1440p, we see about 64 fps... there's not many more demanding games around and if 60 fps is your goal, the single 1070 gives you that. You will take a loss on the 1070, maybe get $300 for it, and then ya gotta but a $650 card. Is 13 more fps worth $350 ?

a) Stick with the 1070 *
b) Right now scaling @ 1440p is about 33% over TPUs entire test suite... keep in mind that games w/o SLI support of without SLI support yet are included. Stay put right now and watch to see if things improve and the driver developers catch up and the cards have some competition to incentivize the time investment for improvements.
c) Look again when the 1080 Ti drops




 

Simon_49

Commendable
Mar 10, 2016
48
0
1,540
Guess I'll be waiting for the one card that can push a high refresh rate ultra-wide 1440p monitor. Thank you guys for clearing my head, I do tend to get overexcited with those kinds of things.