Is Nvidia slowly doing away with SLI?

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fordongreeman

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Nov 5, 2017
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Is Nvidia slowly doing away with SLI?

It seems that they are now putting more emphasis on single, but POWERFUL GPU systems.

Word is that AMD is also moving away from multi-GPU systems.

SLI/CrossfireX setups are known to cause problems like microstuttering, screen-tearing, and driver issues.
 
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renz496


to certain extend yes. main problem with SLI (or crossfire) in general games are not built to take advantage GPU the way SLI/CF handles them. because of this reason both AMD and nvidia have to "hack" their way in to make it work in games. ex-nvidia driver engineer said that almost 50% of driver team effort is to make current games work with multi GPU system. that is a lot of effort just to support very small customer base that using such...
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manddy123

manddy123

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Aug 25, 2016
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SLI / X-Fire was a thing back in the day, now it's not, just as you've stated.

The benefits from it aren't worth compared to a single stronger card and some of their newer models don't even support SLI at all, like the GTX 1060.

There's also the point that devs aren't supporting it as much, so those issues you mentioned became more and more noticeable....

So yup, imho, they are, and problably aren't going back.
After all, if you can have a 1080Ti horsepower by combining two 1060, why would you buy it?
 
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Neur0nauT

Neur0nauT

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Dec 1, 2014
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I don't think they'll get rid of the technology completely. Although it would appear that they're catering more to singular GPU buyers, this is just a logical progression due to the increased cost of power and hardware for SLI builds. They're catering to their customer-base. They know most folks won't or simply cannot afford to fork out for SLI.

There is no denying that they would obviously like you to buy more than one of their discrete GPUs, or at least have the option to invest in a second card down the line should you so choose. After all, there are still plenty of x2, x3, and even x4 PCI-E slot motherboards being released on the latest chipsets/platforms. Not to mention the premium cost of those high bandwidth SLI bridges that Nvidia do make money on.

That mixed with the latest upsurge in bitcoin mining, it would be foolish for them to completely retract from the SLI market segment. Also don't forget that as larger 5k+ resolution displays start to emerge, SLI will probably be a requirement as the single GPU architecture catches up performance-wise for running at these very high resolutions.

Because of these factors alone, I believe It'll always be around....just not used commonly by the mainstream user.
 
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renz496

renz496

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Jun 16, 2009
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to certain extend yes. main problem with SLI (or crossfire) in general games are not built to take advantage GPU the way SLI/CF handles them. because of this reason both AMD and nvidia have to "hack" their way in to make it work in games. ex-nvidia driver engineer said that almost 50% of driver team effort is to make current games work with multi GPU system. that is a lot of effort just to support very small customer base that using such setup. but the worse offender probably the game itself. many new rendering method that being incorporate into modern game engine did not work well multi GPU tech that AMD and nvidia use such AFR. SFR have several advantage over AFR but scaling is the main culprit why both nvidia and AMD did not use them. the investment on second card quickly lost it's value when you can only get 20% performance boost by adding second card (and some people even consider 70% scaling as terrible). with DX12 multi GPU being included in DX spec instead of need specialize API from nvidia/AMD. with this people hope it will increase multi GPU adoption but the exact opposite instead happen. if anything giving the control to support multi GPU in the hands of game developer might as well putting the last nail on the coffin. game developer in general have no interest supporting feature that is exclusive to one platform only and if possible they will want their game to be experienced just the same regardless of platform (PC gamers does not like this because it is associated with "console parity"). and ultimately supporting multi GPU did not give any benefit for game developer at all. GPU maker get to sell more GPU but for game developer it did not increase their sale instead it only increase their workload to support the feature.
 
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