GTX 1080 SLI or RTX 2080 - 4K/60

luci5r

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I'm feeling a little like being caught between a rock & a hard place.

Currently I have a GTX 1080 in my Gaming rig, which I bought for $549 in 2016. It replaced an old GTX 760. All of my Gaming is on a 55" 4K TV (TCL 55R617) which supports both HDR & Dolby Vision. The machine has a 6-Core Intel & 16 GB DDR4, with an NVMe HDD & other HDDs.

When I built the system in 2016, I had built it with GTX 1080 SLI in mind. I was going to wait for a couple of years when GTX 1080 was around $350 to install a 2nd one. I already have the SLI Bridge which came with the ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1080.

With the announcement of RTX Series, the prices of GTX 1080 are coming down. Just a couple weeks ago, a fresh GTX 1080 could be had for $350 on eBay using a coupon. They are around $400 or so easily right now.

Two other strong points to note here:
- The entire 31 page list of Games listed as supporting SLI on Nvidia's page here (https://www.geforce.com/games-applications/technology/sli) is essentially my entire Gaming library. In other words. Over 90% of the games I play support SLI, and even with upcoming games, I don't believe that percentage will change.
- I've already spent an enormous amount of time deep rooted into the SLI discussions and communicated with people who actually have an SLI setup, have opted for one, or in some shape or form experienced SLI first hand; not hearsay, opinions or second hand information. I have yet to meet one individual who would trade it for a non-SLI setup, and am extremely convinced of SLI's benefits, at least in my given situation.

However, now enter RTX 2080.

The thing with GTX 1080 is, while it's an amazing GPU and was a big upgrade for me coming from GTX 760, it does fall short of excelling at full 4K. I'm not able to max out most of the AAA games. Some or the other setting has to be brought down for smooth game play. Secondly, frame rates hover between 30 fps & 60 fps. If you're standing in a closed up room with maybe one other AI, you'll get 60 fps. But if you go out into the streets with expansive world around you, frame rates drop to 30 fps.

I'm looking to max out Settings and achieve a higher frame rate during action scenes, open worlds and large number of moving objects on screen.

This has been achieved by almost everyone who has GTX 1080 SLI setup.

I don't know for sure if RTX 2080 will deliver the same (And I will be waiting for reviews before making my decision), but let's assume it does.

RTX 2080 sounds great, the thing is, economically I'm not sure of it's viability.

RTX 2080 is not the same leap from GTX 1080, as say, GTX 1080 from GTX 760.

I can get away with $350 - $420 for a GTX 1080; but around $700 at the very least for RTX 2080. From everything I've read, RTX 2080 doesn't appear to be DOUBLE the performance & benefits of GTX 1080, yet it's demanding DOUBLE the price.

The other issue with RTX 2080 is, then I'll need to sell my GTX 1080 as it becomes a $549 Coaster in the house. Selling on eBay, CL etc might come easier for some who sell online often - I don't. Which makes it a very cumbersome effort for me.

While all of this might favor GTX 1080 SLI in my head - I need opinions of others. Some people are more knowledgeable about GPU's then I am. I might be missing some great big advantage of RTX 2080. Or not looking at all points.

Would seriously like some serious advice.

One note, the "SLI is dead" proclaimers can stay away from this thread. You have no idea how wrong you are and I don't have the time to bother debating with you.

I'm not planning to purchase one way or another until after Sep 20th when real world RTX 2080 reviews come out, UNLESS, I'm totally convinced I won't be going with RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 SLI is a better deal.

Thanks all.
 
Solution
Yeah considering how long it has been since Pascal release, many of us were hoping the performance jump would be similar to Maxwell -> Pascal.

As you say though, the 2080 ti is clearly top card for now until either AMD bring out something great, or Nvidia release the full uncut TU102 GPU (more likely when they do a die shrink like what happened with Fermi 400->500 series).

On the other hand, you could look at the 2080 ti as a much much cheaper Titan V, which makes it good value for money.
I wouldn't state SLI to be "dead" however, I do totally agree that it's not really practical for three main reasons.

1. A single better card is more efficient, optimized, stable and normally yields better performance then two decent cards in SLI.

2. The performance return on that second card while using SLI is just sad. (no you dont get 100% performance gains when adding a second card, it just doesn't work that way You'd be lucky to get 15-50% increase).

3. Not everything is compatible with SLI and even some games that are compatible still has SLI related issues.

So with those points stated. Also with the information you provided about the resolutions and size of your monitor. I'd say wait for benchmarks and then go for RTX 2080 and if I were you, you may want to consider RTX2080 TI. You are gaming on a larger screen. You'll need all the power you can get.

Reading Material
https://www.twistedcurve.com/techknowscope-blog/2017/5/2/is-sli-dead-the-gtx-1080-ti-sli-benchmark-results-are-in
 
Whatever you do, don't go with SLI. Support is almost next to nothing. I have run both 1080s and 1080ti's in SLI and scaling is terrible when it works. When it works best, you can only really expect 30% scaling. That means for well supported games you will only see 30% better fps in games.

Then there are the games that don't support it or have very limited support. I found more often than not I had SLI disabled because it would cause negative scaling or hurt performance in some games. So when I wanted to turn it back on I had to turn off certain processes and go into the control panel to turn it back on. I found most of the time I would forget to enable SLI again.

If you want that extra 30% performance increase, then go get a 1080ti. It is about 30% faster than a 1080 which is about as good as it gets for scaling. You can sell your current 1080 on the used market and go get a 1080ti and in the end it will cost as much as you would spend on a second 1080.

With that being said, I would hold on to the 1080 and see how the new GPUs review. Yesterday not much information was provided on performance, so I would hold off on a purchase until you have more information. Its not like your current GPU is a slouch.
 

WildCard999

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I had SLI (780's) from 2014-2017, I won't go back to it as even AAA games were losing some support, or if they initially supported it major game updates could break it or cause graphical issues.

That being said if your games do fully support SLI and the scaling is good it may be worth it over the cost of a single RTX 2080 but I would still recommend waiting for the benchmarks to be released.
 
Just don't sli... I'll not say it doesn't work, I know people with weak cards SLI that results in a decent performance in the end, but so much problems... he had major problems with micro-stuttering and he had to deal with it.

Buy a single good card.
 

luci5r

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I like your response as you're coming from personal GTX 1080 (and 1080 Ti) experience. Definitely sounds like there was too many software issues compared to the advantage received.

I also wasn't fully aware that you don't actually get full 100% performance from second card, but only a fraction. That is definitely not worth the software issues, nor the expense.

l also appreciate all other responses which seem credible & informative.

I think you guys have definitely changed my mind about SLI, especially coming from people who actually did invest in and experience SLI.

As I was going to wait for real-world reviews of RTX series, I do have some time. I don't believe I'll go in for GTX 1080 Ti as the price difference just isn't all that much between GTX 1080 Ti & RTX 2080 (Although I did see a ZOTAC GTX 1080 Ti AMP Edition for $526 deal come through this morning).

I do wish to see real-world results of performance difference between RTX 2080 & RTX 2080 Ti and if there is a credible justification for the almost $200 - $300 price difference.

Thank you for the responses.
 

luci5r

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Just to add, I'm also taking a good hard look at various different articles & posts that have started popping up, which do have a sound genuinity to them. For example:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/08/21/nvidia-rtx-20-graphics-cards-why-you-should-jump-off-the-hype-train/#39ad75933f8e

Essentially the excerpt,

"The reality of the RTX 20 Series that releases next month is this: it's a money-grab designed to get early adopters on the ray tracing hype train for the 20 or so games that will ship with the feature. It's a stopgap to next year's 7nm cards which will offer substantial performance gains and power efficiency improvements. And as for the price tag, Nvidia can charge whatever it desires due to lack of competition in the high-end space."

There is very little to nothing to suggest or believe the expense of upgrading GTX 1080 to RTX 2080 is justified currently, if you dis-count the Ray-Tracing, which I just don't believe there is a big enough market for. I have a vast library of Games, none of which have the RT factor, which I'm either currently playing, yet to play, and possibly will be playing well into 2019.

I think that may have been part of my idea of skipping RTX Series and plugging in another, cheaper, GTX 1080. Although I'm convinced now SLI is not the way to go, judging by some of the articles I'm reading, I might end up waiting for the 2019 offering and run my GTX 1080 another year, instead of making any changes right away.

Will need to see how things roll over the course of the next few months post GTX 2080 release.

Thanks.
 

Philballer17

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I wouldn't get too hyped over the RTX series, if you're running a GTX 1080 it's only 5-10% framerate increase.

GTX 1080 TI, will outperform the RTX 2080. The only card that can take the "king" crown away from the 1080 TI, would be the RTX 2080 TI.
 

luci5r

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I have no reason to disagree with you. Everything I'm reading up over the last 24 hours is pointing to exactly this.

More and more is pushing me to wait another year or so for the next offering and skip the RTX lineup entirely.

One thing I should probably start asking experienced users: Is it worth it for me to upgrade the GTX 1080 to a $500 1080 Ti? Specifically to achieve what I wrote in my original post above?
 

WildCard999

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A GTX 1080 ti (with a good CPU) will give you playable settings at 4K/60hz on higher settings (mix of Ultra/High) with little dips. I'd give you benchmarks but I just sold my system today, delivering after work. If you can sell your 1080 for around 350 and adding in that $150 for a considerable (30% I believe) bump in performance would be pretty good and may hold out until your next series of RTX cards.
 

poopflinger

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I owned an MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X for a couple months before I gave it to my GF at the time because it really can't handle 4k 60fps the way the 1080ti can. Huge difference going to the 1080ti variant. Before the 1080, I was Crossfiring a couple RX 480s. It was kind of fun, but very tedious and finicky. I won't ever go back to two cards unless scaling improves substantially. It's tough to say what's going to happen with 1080ti pricing. If benchmarks of the 20xx are lackluster, prices may not drop very much, if at all, from that $525 Zotac 1080ti on Amazon (which is actually the card I own). If benchmarks show substantial gains, then prices may drop a little more. Either way, the 1080ti is a phenomenal card for 4k gaming and this next gen of RTX cards are priced way too high for my liking. I'm also skeptical about the performance of the first generation cards utilizing this new technology, especially before a substantial drop in die-size coming in the next year or so. Who knows when we'll get those 7nm cards, though. With no competition in sight, NVIDIA could just as easily sit on the 7nm cards until they feel they've milked this 20xx series to their liking. There's a lot of uncertainty in the graphics market right now so it's difficult to make predictions. Either way, though, a 1080ti at $525 is a great deal for the kind of performance it can achieve. I support the argument to buy one at that price range.
 


Yep I literally just purchased an MSI GTX 1080 TI for $530 on ebay. Thanks RTX for dropping some those previously unreasonable prices on last gen.

For OP however. I still recommend he waits and purchases the 2080 TI version simply because he will be gaming on a 55'' tv. That is a lot of surface area to cover and not sure he would get performance he is looking for on a GTX 1080TI with that big of a screen.
 

poopflinger

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I also game on a 55 inch 4K TV. It's awesome, and a 1080ti has no problem with it. I don't think screen size is a factor in terms of the GPU's capability. Resolution definitely is!
 


Yeah maybe all I know is I have a 60 ich and a 1080 can't cut it on high. Thats for sure. Maybe TI will work for his needs. Wont know until you try it.

A lot of this is going to depend on your resolution, herts and in game settings. Oh and of course the OPs budget.
 

luci5r

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Your last statement is exactly the reason I'm still holding out on listening to actual reviews when they start coming in post September 20th. I do feel the current RTX 2080 Ti price point to be unreasonable, nevertheless.

Selling GTX 1080 for $350 & getting GTX 1080 Ti for $525 sounds pretty good - economically worth it for the 30% odd bump up, but perhaps the whole idea of upgrading the GTX 1080 was for more then a 30% bump. I'm not sure if 30% bump for an interim period is worth it. Perhaps waiting for the next offering in an year or so for a higher bump would be better.

My gaming is exclusively at 3840 X 2160, 60Hz, on a 55" screen. GTX 1080 is already able to give me playable settings with a mix of Ultra/High Settings, at 30fps - 60fps. In most games I have to bring a couple of the settings a couple notches down. In some, like Call of Duty, I have to bring down a few of the settings down. A few games, like Prey, manage at fully maxes out settings. But fps never goes above 30 in large or action scenes.

I'm looking to achieve fully maxed out settings with at least 50-55 fps at the very least on my setup. Ultimately that is the only goal. I thought GTX 1080 SLI would deliver that, but it appears not & wrought with issues. I'm not sure right now if GTX 1080 Ti can deliver that, and definitely not sure about engaging in the swap (sell 1080 then buy Ti).

So it's either the
- GTX 1080 --> GTX 1080 Ti Swap (Not crazy about the Sell then Buy; and not sure about expected results)
- RTX 2080 Ti (Unreasonable price, but more importantly need to wait for real world reviews)
- Wait for next iteration & hold on to the GTX 1080 (So far seeming like the best choice).

Thanks.

EDIT:

One quick word on Budget. For me the budget is not necessarily (in this case) defined by what I can afford, but rather if the price I'm paying is justified & worth it. I can spend $1,100 on the 2080 Ti today, that's not the issue. However, I wouldn't do that if I'm not convinced it's a) exactly what I need & give me exactly what I'm looking for, and b) worth the price being asked (and not price-gouging due to monopoly).

$350 for GTX 1080 is an amazing price.
$525 for GTX 1080 Ti is totally worth it & justified.
$1K+ for 2080 Ti needs to be proven.
 

king3pj

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I'm not sure we can make statements like that before any real world, independent benchmarks are available. Maybe you have seen some leaked information that I haven't but I really would take all of that with a grain of salt until we have actual reviews.

As for the SLI question, lots of other people have already chimed in but I thought I would post my experience as well. I was rocking SLI 970s long after most people were saying "a single, more powerful GPU is always better." I partially disagree with that statement. With games that have good SLI scaling my SLI 970s would often beat a 980 Ti on my 1440p 144Hz gsync monitor. Sure I could have gotten 1 980 Ti for about the same price as 2 970s but I was in a situation just like yours where I only had one 970 at first.

The problem is that when a game didn't support SLI or had poor SLI scaling a single 970 just wasn't enough for that resolution and framerate and more and more games were coming out without SLI support. Many of the games that did support it didn't have support available at launch.

I also had an additional problem that you won't because VRAM doesn't stack in SLI. Some games that were VRAM hogs would have major stuttering problems because the 970 only had 3.5GB of fast VRAM and .5GB of slower VRAM. When a game was using that last .5GB of slower VRAM the stuttering would be terrible even if the SLI scaling was good.

I don't really regret the time I spent with an SLI rig because it was cool to tinker with and I doubt I will ever get to mess around with 2 GPUs in my system again. I still sold both of my 970s when they 1070 was coming out even though the performance was about the same in games that had great SLI scaling. Switching solved a lot of issues for me. It mean't I had good performance in every game, not just some of them. It mean't I haven't had to worry about how much VRAM a game uses a single time since. It also made both my CPU and GPU run noticeably cooler and my system draws less electricity.

I would just hold for benchmarks to make sure the RTX 2080 is a significant upgrade from the 1080 that can handle 60 FPS 4K gaming. If it's not I would just sit out this generation and jump on the next one.
 


Then hold on and wait like you originally thought.

Going from 1080 to 1080Ti is generally like only 20ish% performance boost... I really wouldn't recommend that as an "upgrade" for me I'm going from a 1070 to a 1080ti thats like a 50% boost for me so its totally worth it.

And yes I agree prices on the 2080ti are going to be retarded for awhile.

So if you can wait. Then I'd do that. Or if you happen to get lucky and get a stupid crazy deal on a 1080Ti then it might be worth it. (

P.S.
Maybe wait a bit and buy a used 1080Ti for dirt cheap just to hold you over? Only concern here is that you dont know what you are buying so you might get a used GPU that was put through the storm OC'ed and running on max for years during bitcoin farming etc... but you'd be able to get it cheap and if it was cooled properly, would give you enough usage until you next GPU upgrade.
 


This man speaks the truth, while its still too early to determine if the RTX 2080 is faster or slower than the 1080 TI, i can tell that the margin would be minimal for either, it also would explain why this time the Ti edition came along, if the 2080 was basically as fast as the 1080Ti, they wouldn't sell so well because people who already have the Ti wouldn't buy it just for the raycast thing, I mean, there's some titles coming out that uses it, but to what extent? everything is uncharted waters... I'm here only hoping that the RTX release will actually make the 1080ti price drop, I'm seeking a 1440p experience and no more than that. I think i'll be happy enough for a couple of years until the new RTX cards settles.

 

Karadjgne

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DX11 was the last directX with sli support, such as it was. DX12 is native to windows10 and future releases. DX12 has no sli support, nor does Vulcan.

SLI will only be of any relevance for as long as DX11 titles are still released, which really won't be too much longer.
 

luci5r

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I'm more inclined towards the first part of your post. Leaning very strongly towards skipping both a 10 Series upgrade and the RTX Series upgrade, and just holding on to the GTX 1080 for another year or so and waiting for the next iteration.

Can I wait? Sure. If I was running something < GTX 1080 I would be more inclined to rush for an upgrade right now. But with GTX 1080, as I said, I have playable 4K gameplay with a mix of Ultra/High settings. The only thing I'm not too satisfied with is the fps, but a 20% - 30% bump is not really what I was hoping for from this upgrade.

I've pretty much ruled out GTX 1080 SLI, GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 2080 upgrade.

So it looks like unless the RTX 2080 Ti proves itself exceptionally worthy of it's price tag and significant bump from GTX 1080, I'm going to be skipping this lineup and waiting another year.

 

luci5r

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CPU: Intel i7-6800K (6-Core)
Motherboard: ASUS X99-II A
GPU: ASUS ROG Strix GTX 1080
RAM: 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4

CPU is running stable Overclocked to 4Ghz. I'm not too keen on pushing it any further.
I use the ASUS GPU Tweak II and run the GTX 1080 in "OC Mode".

Thanks
 

Philballer17

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It's probably best to either buy a used 1080 TI on eBay for $450-550, Or wait for a 2080 TI price drop in my opinion.

Many people are simply just selling off their 1080 TI for either cryptocurrency mining failures or because they want to upgrade to the 2080 TI, and just want money back from their card.

I highly doubt users running the 1080 TI are even eyeballing the 2080 as an option. Just simply because based on the Nvidia cycle in the last generation, It won't make a reasonable upgrade anyways. They will be eyeballing the 2080 TI.

Applying a nice overclock to the 980 TI made it pointless to upgrade to a GTX 1080.

Arguably the same can be said to an aggressively overclocked 780 TI. It wasn't worth the jump to a GTX 980.
 


I agree on the 1080Ti. I doubt very much about this overclocking to the next gen concept however.