Damn, copyrighted! I was gonna start using it as well.

As to the latest and greatest cutting edge gaming systems, all well and good provided you have a stack of cash to spare on such fine things. I do not which is why every system I've ever built has used "last year's" technology, and I've been more than happy with the performance each time. Plus, when I do the next build/upgrade I have a guy who buys my gently used parts.

Aye, ne'er more wise words be written, to be sure.

1. Always do what I call "keeping up by being one step behind". That is, you can afford to keep a very nice higher-end, capable system at a much lower cost by never buying into the latest and greatest. Whatever it is you're looking at that's just come out - give it 6 months or a year, it'll be a lot cheaper. If you're not into it yourself, consider finding someone who offers gently used hardware with a warranty and support. You should find that last year's technology is holding it's own just fine, thank-you-very-much. If used hardware doesn't appeal to you, look into closeouts and clearance sales on the previous generation, just around when the next gen stuff is coming out. Spend the savings on your boat self wife

2. Be happy with the performance (knowing you saved a ton that wouldn't be worth it anyway, even while acknowledging there will always be something later and greater. Next time. How is your boat wife doing, anyway?)

3. Find a way to recycle your hardware so that you can further offset the cost of upgrades. Consider the guy who makes reasonable offers on gently used stuff
About 2 weeks ago, I sold a rebuilt third-gen i7 / GTX980 / 16G machine to a young man who worked and saved his money to afford it. He was looking at a $1500+ new build online; I cut that figure nearly in half, and he was thrilled. Not just with the savings, but with the performance as well. And it runs like a scalded dog, I promise

OK, off the soapbox. Sorry, I get carried away

I often kick around building my next machine and saving a metric s-ton in money.
Kinda spoiled by “click, click” online and the next greatest CP is at your door 2 days later ready to rock.

The last upgrade I made to my old gaming system was well over a year go at this point and I've been running the following since then:

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core, OC’d to 3.8GHz
CPU Fan: Arctic Super Cooler
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16gb (4 x 4gb) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Mobo: ASUS Sabertooth P67
Hard Drives: 2 Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA
Opti Drive: LG 22X DVD+/RW Dual Layer SATA Rewrite
Video Cards: Two EVGA GeForce GTX 970 04G-P4-3975-KR 4gb cards with HB SLI bridge
PS: Corsair HX 850 Watt
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
LG 27" flat screen LCD monitor, 1920 x 1080 native resolution
Four large case fans, plus the PS, CPU, mobo, and card fans
Saitek AV8R joystick
Saitek Pro Flight rudder pedals
Track IR4 camera with latest IR5 software

I know it is far from cutting edge but it runs WOFF UE beautifully so I see no need to spend money to change it right now. Not saying I won't build a new one at some point though.

Does WOFF take advantage of SLI vid cards?

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Duke, I'm not sure of the "magic" that takes place with the SLI but I can tell you that before I added the second card I was not able to run all the settings in the workshop at '5' and have smooth performance. Now I can. Take that for what it's worth.

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Ahhh, here we go. I am stunned at the number of folks (and, more specifically, "Developers") who don't seem to understand this, even though the information is readily available.

It's another widely misunderstood topic that comes up in game forums all the time: SLI "support". Factually, no game requires built-in support for SLI in order to take advantage of the additional GPU processing ability. There are modes of SLI that can be applied to any properly equipped and configured system (no built-in 'SLI support' is required), these modes exist specifically for applications that do not have built in support for SLI. It simply happens that many games have been configured to work with profiles which are provided to automatically optimize SLI settings/features for that game. This is actually addressed on Nvidia's website ( click here ):

What applications are supported with SLI technology?

SLI technology can be enabled for every gaming application, including both OpenGL and Direct3D gaming applications. SLI technology provides either 3D performance scaling using alternate frame rendering (AFR) or split-frame rendering (SFR) or increased visual quality using the SLI Antialiasing mode. In order to provide the optimal 'out-of-box' experience for its customers, NVIDIA has created an extensive set of optimized game profiles which enable SLI scaling automatically.

Just as Lou has seen first hand, there doesn't need to be 'support' in the sim for performance to improve by using SLI.

Hmmm. Seems like I hear a lot of complaints that SLI is “old news” and “modern systems and games” do not take advantage of it. But that’s just what I hear.

It's really unfortunate that SLI, being so widely misunderstood, has suffered a poor reputation among those who don't understand it and/or have zero experience with it (not at all directed toward anyone in particular, to be clear). However, I can tell you first hand (as can Lou) that it does work. I've set up several SLI machines; 9800-GTs, 260s, 460s, 560Tis, 570s...Not long ago, I set up a pair of 770s and I'm here to tell you they could hold their own easily against a GTX980, and beat the pants off a 3G 1060. Yes, they drew a lot of juice and generated a lot of heat. Not for everyone, obviously. Sometimes, it just won't work (in a given game) no matter what, it seems (poor programming, say I).

But it's hardly old news, and just as I explained above, *any* game can take advantage of it. Whether a specific system can will depend on the actual hardware. Some motherboards do not support either SLI or Crossfire (the AMD version of multi-GPU); some only support one or the other. Generally, the more high-end boards will, since it's an "enthusiast" feature anyway. Also, if the motherboards slots are not arranged a certain way (or are simply not present) then SLI isn't an option. And it only works with certain cards (on the 10-series, only 1070 and up, for example).

So there might be some newer systems that don't have SLI support, but only in teh same sense as not every new car you can buy will have all-wheel drive. Just not a standard feature on all units.

Hope this makes sense

DirectX 12 should be specifically coded to support SLI, there's no automatic support in DX12. It however allows to use multiple GPUs even if they are completely different. For example, it can use GPU integrated into the processor together with main GPU. But once again it is not automatic in DX12 and game developers has to specifically implement this feature. Which is very unlikely in modern world where most games are developed for PC and consoles at the same time.

AnKor - is this to say you believe that SLI will no longer work on DX12 if it's not specifically supported within the game? What about the SLI modes (AFR, SFR...) which don't require built-in support (per the link above)? And I assume games running DX11 or earlier could still benefit even on a Windows 10 machine - no?

DX11 is not affected by DX12 quirks and features. And Windows 10 has improvements for DX11 as well.


Yes, it will not work (I may be wrong of course, but from what I learned it really seems so).

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Looks like my next update will be dictated when, and if, I actually run a sim that takes advantage of DX12.

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AnKor - thanks for clarifying I suppose we'll see.

Lou - I'm going to hazard a guess that many games will have configuration settings to allow selecting which version of DirectX to use. Oddly, I was just looking at this the other day for a couple games that my sons and some of their friends play (GTAV and Ark, maybe...?)

99% of the time, unless a game actually has a dedicated SLI/CROSSFIRE profile, trying to force a game using AFR rendering or something similar is abysmal, unless you like poor framerate, flashing, corrupted/missing textures, missing shadows, missing effects or a million other potential quirks. This is coming from someone who currently has 2 970's in SLI and 2 R9 290's in crossfire and have used SLI rigs for the last 10 years at least. In this day and age, unless you are hunting for 4K Ultra settings or 240hz refresh it just isn't worth it.

DX12 sounded super exciting with its ability to use multi-gpu rendering setups and actually be able to harness the full amount of both cards Vram without having to each use its own frame buffer, but 2 years down the line there is literally 0 support for it. In fact current SLI support on new games is practically non existent in my opinion, and also factor in that most games actually still achieve better performance in DX11 mode V DX12.

My current advice is to just buy the best performance single GPU you can afford, especially in the current climate with gpu's being used by crypto miners. SLI used to be a cheap way 18 months down the line to give yourself a nice GPu boost by adding a cheap second hand card to your rig, but in the current climate I could actually sell my cards second hand for what I paid for them new.

4L0M I guess we'd just have to say your experiences with SLI have been different than mine (and some others).

Like I said above, I've also used more than a couple of SLI rigs myself over time. I am very aware of some of the issues - as I said, sometimes it just won't work no matter what you try. The same 2x 770 setup I mentioned before just absolutely refused to work for the very game it was targeted for (PUBG), and after weeks of trying this and that, I finally gave up, slapped in a single 980 and off we went, not a hiccup since - just like you mentioned. But I think it's important to distinguish what I consider poor programming from any problem inherent in SLI.

You did mention something significant about very high resolutions. I've long maintained that as possibly the best case for having a dual-GPU setup.

Whether SLI is "worth it" or not, in my opinion, is also very subjective. For example, Lou seems very happy with his setup.

As for support going forward, I also said that (in my opinion) this is a very unfortunate product of the (perhaps undeserved) reputation SLI has gotten. I maintain that it is a valid technical approach in the right circumstances, which - had it been better received/gotten more support - would have done much better than it has. Instead, it looks to be waning, and I think that's a real shame.



I agree completely with you in this respect; I think this mining business has dramatically changed the outlook for SLI from what it was intended to be back in the day.

Anyhow, this thread wasn't started about SLI, and I'm sure we've all been over this ground a thousand times. Sorry if I've had a part in dragging it off course.

Regards,

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I thought most who are now actively crypto mining have moved, or are moving, to ASIC miners.

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TBH Lou it's not something I really follow believe or not - you may well be right. But, I think where SLI is concerned, I'm afraid the damage may be done.

I think the bigger ones like bitcoin are, but there are loads of "ALT" coins popping up all the time, such as Dogecoin, Litecoin, Z cash, ethereum that people still try to mine on GPU's etc etc.

It's so annoying! I was debating whether to buy a 1070gtx last year, I decided against it as I already had 2 970's in Sli, so for me personally, I didn't really think it would be worth it so I would skip this 10 series of cards completely.

When I was looking at the Asus OC Armor 1070gtx, it was £325.
The EXACT same card is currently retailing in the UK 6 months later for £590!

Crazy!

Yup, when you can find the 10-series cards anymore (if they're not out of stock...) the price seems to have doubled, maybe more. Christmas 2016 I bought my sons both 1060 3G cards for just under $200. Now, when you can find them in stock, they're much higher (NewEgg lists the same model from OutletPC right now for - get this - a totally absurd $539!!!!)

This past Christmas, I waited and checked several times a day just after New Year's and was finally able to catch a MSI 1070Ti Titanium to replace my aging 780. I had been using a 980 that I 'borrowed' from my inventory to evaluate the performance. Turns out the 980 was only about 16% better than the 780 I already had (and only +1G RAM), so it was worth it to hold out for the 1070Ti - it's more than 50% better than the 780, and at 8G has more than twice the RAM. Solid upgrade, even though it's a sinful amount to spend on a stupid graphics card *lol*

And yes, I doubt it would be worth the upgrade for you if you're already using 2x 970s, unless you just really wanted to save on power/cut down heat by going back to a single-card setup...and if either you/Lou get ready to part with the 970s, you let me know; maybe I can help you take a chunk outta what they get for the 10xx cards

BTW, wasn't it MSI not Asus that made the Armor series GPU's?