SLI my 560 Ti

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mojorisin23

mojorisin23

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I have a question... I have an ASRock gen3 Extrem4 mobo... i think its pcie 16x for the first card, 8x for the second. If i want to SLI and get another 560 Ti, how much of a performance hit will i get by reducing both cards to 8x? Also, would it just be better performance wise to just sell the 560 Ti and upgrade to one card thats much better (570 Ti 2gb or 580 )?

Thanks
 
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From what I hear, running 8x/8x doesn't noticeably affect your performance.

However, selling your current card and investing more money into a single card MAY yield better results.

Less strain on your PSU, better temps, and no micro stuttering. But considering 2 560 TI's are nearly on par with a GTX 680, you'd be hard pressed to find a single card solution that can manage.

Not to mention, you're not going to be making all your money back when you sell your current card.

The more cost effective route would be to run SLI, in my opinion. Provided your PSU can handle the extra stress.
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aaronstyle

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From what I hear, running 8x/8x doesn't noticeably affect your performance.

However, selling your current card and investing more money into a single card MAY yield better results.

Less strain on your PSU, better temps, and no micro stuttering. But considering 2 560 TI's are nearly on par with a GTX 680, you'd be hard pressed to find a single card solution that can manage.

Not to mention, you're not going to be making all your money back when you sell your current card.

The more cost effective route would be to run SLI, in my opinion. Provided your PSU can handle the extra stress.
 
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aaronstyle

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I don't think there is such a thing as a 570 ti... at this rate, running SLI with your 560 TI's are going to blow a 570 out of the water. Even a 580 for that matter.
 
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mojorisin23

mojorisin23

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Whats micro stuttering?

I have a corsair 850W v2. So I think there's plenty of room. i MAY get back $200 if i'm lucky selling the 560 Ti on ebay, from what i see, but then investing in a 680 would set me back at least $500. so ($300) on that route.

waiting a bit and getting another 560 Ti would only cost me $200... so as is i would save $100 SLI'ing...
 
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mojorisin23

mojorisin23

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Really? no 570 Ti? i thought i saw it around. must be imagining it.

So two 560 Ti's (The one I have is an EVGA OVerclocked 900; so i would get another just like it) would rank somewhere between a 580 and a 680.

what about on the AMD side? 7870 or better?
 
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willard

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Because they don't know what they're talking about.

PCI Express gives you a set amount of bandwidth per lane. An x8 slot combines 8 lanes into one slot, for 8x the bandwidth of a single lane. x16 similarly gives you 16x the bandwidth of a single lane.

The question then becomes, how much bandwidth does your card need? As it turns out, only the highest end cards (GTX 680, GTX 590, HD 7970, HD 6990) need more than 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0 bandwidth. Unless your card is a flagship model, it won't even notice that it has less bandwidth, because it still has all it can take advantage of.

It's like speed limits on the highway. If your car can do 100 and the limit is 50, you have to slow down. If the speed limit is 500, however, you can still only go up to 100 because of the limitations of the car.
 
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ricardois

ricardois

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that was true beforhe 680 and 7970, now this is not so true

i am usign 560 ti Sli and i know the performance is awesome, the boost, over a single 560 ti is very nice and it almost doubles the framerate on some games so yes it would be somewhere between 580 and 680.

570 TI does not exists, only 570.

the 7870 by the benchmarks looks a very nice card, and should be even better than a 560 ti, so if you aren't looking for physx, 3D vision, it worths checking that out.

 
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aaronstyle

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Micro stuttering explanation can be found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995-15.html

In short, when you have 2 GPU's running in tandem (crossfire or SLI) they split the workload, and although you may achieve higher overall frame rates, when it dips to the lower end you can almost see how the frames are being rendered.

For instance, you have an SLI setup and you run a game at 100 fps, but when it dips below 50 fps you can visibly notice it. This visually appears as stuttering frames, going fast, and then slowing down.

Some people downplay it and say it's hard to notice, some people say it ruins gaming for them.

Either way, it's something to consider, but I wouldn't worry about it much with 2 560 TI's. unless you're going to crank up your AA, shaders, and etc.

Even then, I'd rather save the $100.
 
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mojorisin23

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Cool... thanks to all of you.

quick follow up - i have a thermaltake FRIO fan and a Corsair 400R case, with all the case fans, you think temps would be a problem? i dont OC yet, and running skyrim on high or BF3 on high gives me temps around 60C. How much higher do we estimate it would go with two 560 Tis in there? and since each is doing less work now, perhaps the increase in temp isn't incremental.
 
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Rockdpm

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Your thinking of the 670 ti, which is a current rumored but real card... a few of us have seen it:)
 
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loops

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560 ti cards run "cool". You should be fine. The biggest issue is having a motherboard that has no space between the cards. If you got about an inch or so you should be fine. The top/main card will run hotter...don't bug out.
 
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mojorisin23

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hmm... i'm sure i can find that out. on the article i read that an earlier person posted it said to place the second card one slot lower for max airflow. I wonder if thats possible on an ASRock Extrem4 Gen3? Anyone know offhand? i'm going to research now.... hopefully i dont have to start unscrewing the case and whipping out a ruler...
 
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motorneuron

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It's a good time to be buying 560 Tis, and a bad time to be selling. It will soon be a really good time to buy them, and a very bad time to sell them--once the next round of nvidia 6xx cards hits. Look at what the arrival of the HD 7xxx series did to the prices of 6870s, for example. Given how good a 560 Ti SLI setup is and that it'll be relatively cheap compared to starting anew with different cards, I think that's your best choice.

This isn't a perfect comparison, because the test settings between 2011 and 2012 aren't the same. But you can get a good sense of the 560 Ti in SLI against the 680 by comparing them both to the 6970:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/555?vs=509
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/441?vs=292

Since the 680 is just about impossible to obtain at the moment, and since you can more or less see from these tests that the SLI 560 Tis will do comparably well in many settings, I'd go for that.
 
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willard

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Just glanced at a pic on Newegg, you should be fine. There's a standard PCI slot between the top two PCI-e slots. It's not going to be a ton of room, but you should get enough airflow through it.
 
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meh, that is still debatable.
(i do thank you for including the newest, PCI 3.0 cards in your post because i haven't looked to see if any have been benched comparing the x16/x16 vs x8/x8 configurations.)

after a bit of googling it seems it still the same about ~4% loss that is within the margin of error. though i did find this video that states there is a 19% loss with the MSAA cranked up. (interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGbPpbx9gE4

you got a link to share? i would be forever grateful :)
 
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willard

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Unfortunately, no, I don't. I'm really just going by SWAG (scientific wild ass guess). I remember Tom's did an article several months back about it and found that outside the flagship dual GPU cards, the difference was basically nothing until you got to the top of the line cards. If I remember correctly the 580 and 6970 were both throttled very slightly by x8 slots (couple percent), which we can extrapolate to say that the 680 and 7970 will also be throttled.

Really not sure about things like the 7850 and higher, could go either way.

I'd love to see more in depth reviews about this kind of thing. If somebody has a link, please post it.
 
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monsta

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560ti SLI is really a great performing set up, it keeps up with the 680 at times and it is an affordable choice.
I'm running mine on an older 775 platform and it rocks , I'll be upgrading to Ivy next week using the same cards for now and looking forward to the additional boost I will get on the new Z77 chipset.
Its your choice at the end of the day , but its worth getting another 560ti and going SLI since you already have one, using a x8 lane is not going to make much difference at all, so don't be too concerned about that.
If you want to just go with a single card , wait and see what the 670ti is like if thats what they are gonna call it, or consider the 680.
Upgrading to a 570 isnt much of a performance jump especially how the 560ti overclocks so well.
 
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