SLI, is it worth it?

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BaronVonRotterdam
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SLI, is it worth it?

Post by BaronVonRotterdam » Sun Mar 27, 2011 3:07 pm

What is SLI? SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface. SLI let's you add in more of the same card you own for more performance.

Using this video:

I will show you the cost and performance of utilizing SLI.

In this video they are using the Nvidia Geforce GTX 580 which retails for $499.99

And now the results:

Nvidia SLI Performance:

1GPU = 63.9
2GPU = 120.2
3GPU = 169.5
4GPU = 208.1

Scaling:

2GPU: 1.88x
3GPU: 2.65x
4GPU: 3.26x

Theoretical Perfect Scaling:

1GPU = 63.9
2GPU = 127.8
3GPU = 191.7
4GPU = 255.6

Performance Loss Per Card:

2GPU: (-6%)
3GPU: (-13%)
4GPU: (-23%)

Financial Impact:

Cost:

1GPU = $500
2GPU = $1000
3GPU = $1500
4GPU = $2000

Loss Due To Scaling:

2GPU = -$60
3GPU = -$195
4GPU = -$460

Conclusion:

The more cards you SLI the amount of performance you get per card drastically decreases. Therefore at this point in time it makes financial sense to only utilize 2-Way SLI because of the impressive negligible 6% loss, or impressive 188% increase in performance. Anything more than 2-Way sli you are just wasting more money to get not as much performance as you are paying for.

And this isn't even including the extra cost for a motherboard that has 4-Way SLI, a powersupply that will support 4-way SLI, a CPU that won't be a bottleneck for 4-way SLI, the amount of electricity needed to run 4-way SLI, An advanced cooling system needed to keep your 4-Way SLI setup within a safe range..ect So I can say with absolute certainty that there is barely any positives to using anything greater than 2-way SLI.
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Re: SLI, is it worth it?

Post by Analog » Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:12 pm

Not at all, it not worth the money, at any point the price of the 2 cards is too much. If you get 2 bleeding edge cards as soon as they come out you will waste the money you spent on the 2nd card because anything out at the time will not run any better and if you wait and but a 2nd card later you won't still won't get the performance you would get by buying a single next gen card.

The best example that I had where I saw this was with a 7900GTX - I bought the card when it first came out, cost me like $400 or something. Had it for like a year or two and then GTA 4 came out which is was wicked graphics intensive. I picked up another 7900 gtx at that point for less then $200 thinking, Sweet!!! That will kick ass!!

Except it didn't, I'll never forget how GTA would only draw about 5 feet in front of the headlights. I turned around and bought a 2nd gen card (I think at the time it was a 260 gx) and it preformed twice as good as the SLI 7900.

It's a waste for gaming IMO.

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Re: SLI, is it worth it?

Post by BaronVonRotterdam » Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:33 pm

You do bring up a very good point. And you are right SLI isn't for everyone. But you also have to factor in that many people who spend the money to buy a PC only plan to spend that money once every 5 years or whatever. So they want to make their build "future proof". Let's say right now your single GTX 580 works great. But a few years from now it is no longer cutting it. You could either spend more money buying a new cutting edge power supply to handle the newest video card (assuming your current motherboard supports the new tech and your CPU isn't a bottleneck) or you could just add a second card and SLI to squeeze some more life out of your system. So while I agree that SLI isn't for everyone it does have its uses, especially for people who use multiple monitors. The whole point of this topic was to show people that are interested in SLI that anything more than two cards is a waste of money.
| ASRock Fatal1ty X470 | AMD Ryzen 3700x @Stock | 32GB DDR4 3200 mHz | Zotac GeForce RTX 2060 Super | Dell S2417DG |

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