Disregard: I've made up my mind based on some reviews and tests I read that showed no significant difference in performance with 44 (or more) lanes of PCIe versus 28. That's what I thought. Because I remember a few years ago the standard line was no graphics cards are slowed by 8 lanes of PCIe 3.0.

Can I haz 128lanes please?


Ne le répétez à personne, mais les CPU EPYC de 2e gen d'AMD auront 64 cores, 256 Mo (!) de L3, 8x DDR4-3200 et 128 lignes de PCIe 4.

This video may answer some of your questions. I think you're a bit fixed on SLI, from the other threads I've seen you on.

IMO, SLI/Crossfire is just not worth it unless two things: 1. you play a few games that you know for sure to work well in SLI mode, and 2. you play those games on high refresh, high resolution monitor (like 2560×1440, 3840×1440, 3840×2160 and above 100 Hz).

Check again this article. As you can see, some games will run worse in SLI than on single card, and I think just a few games are optimized for SLI. There may be some logic behind why is that, because the vast majority of gamers play on single card only and the developers know that and don't waste resources on optimizing their games for SLI. Hell, many developers don't bother fixing major bugs.

At the moment, any current game will run at more than 100 FPS on a GTX 1080 Ti at 1920×1080 resolution. If you use a 60Hz monitor, then is better to limit your FPS to 60 and you'll have less heat, noise and power used. See this article for the GTX 1080 Ti power consumption and maybe do some calculations on how much you'll pay for electricity.

My advice, get one GTX 1080 Ti and save the money you would have payed for the second one. In 2 years you'll buy the best card at that moment with the saved money (and maybe sell the current GTX 1080 Ti).

That's because I've had SLI before and saw what a huge difference it makes. Yes, I ran into about two, maybe three, games that I wasn't able to use SLI on (mainly older ones) where in fact it either ran worse in SLI or didn't run at all (would crash) but on every other game and on every application it made a huge, noticeable, difference. Often literally doubling framerate. Which makes sense. SLI means one card generate half a screen and the other card the other half a screen, so it's only generating half as much data as it would with only one card. Half as much data is almost always going to go faster than twice as much data. Like I said, I've seen it. I had two 470's running in SLI and they did as well as and often outperformed a single 680 (at the time the top of the line).

ADDED: Granted, I had an absolutely awesome CPU in that rig, but still I could tell a noticeable difference when I would turn off SLI (you can do this in Nvidia control) and when I would turn it on in the same game. Framerates always much, much higher.

ADDED: LOL, for some reason it just popped into my head one of the games that wouldn't play nice with SLI. It was Two Worlds. And I loved that game. But if I put it in SLI on that rig, it would freeze, and often crash. Just didn't much like SLI at all. lol

Well, things have changed since 2012 and SLI and Crossfire are not as useful anymore with a lot less titles being optimised for it.

I know you've been talking about building a future proofed machine, but honestly, SLI isn't nearly as good as it used to be, based on the little bit of evidence i've seen.

You might want to pull up some charts and see if it makes a noticeable difference, and really, if you're planning on getting a new graphics card, I would wait for the 11xx line which should be coming early 2018, where an 1160 will perform like a 1080, or so I'm told.

Ultimately, it's your call, your money, and your system, but I would hate to see you invest money into an SLI setup that doesn't really pay off as much as you'd think.

Safe travels,
-Leu

I know what I saw. Guess that's all I can say. Nothing personal, but when you see it with your own eyes that's what you're going to go with. Not sure where all the anti-SLI (crossfire) "info" comes from, but whatever. Like I said I've seen it and still see it whenever I go visit my nephew who has two 980's in SLI. Undo SLI (you can do this in Nvidia control) and framerates drop. Almost. Every. Time. And not insignificantly either.

I'm not anti-SLI, I just read the Nvidia forums a lot, and a lot of people complained in the past year that they didn't see the SLI gains they thought they would.

This is actual knowledge though, and not people complaining about drivers: https://hardforum.com/threads/single-gtx-1080ti-or-1080-sli.1928017/ Seems SLI 1080 Ti's rock in 4k.

I apologize, was not trying to misinform, I just didn't do a ton of research on it because my mobo only supports one graphics card, so I only had a limited data pool to take from.

Reading that thread though, I still stand by waiting for the 11xx refreshers and maybe sli'ing them. You're looking at a ton of performance for some savings based in comparison to the 1070/1080 cards, but based purely on performance, those are very good, too. Nothing seems to be able to touch the 1080 Ti right now. Even AMD's Vega cards only compare up to the regular 1080, unless I'm mistaken.

Apologies again, OFG, have a great day.
-Leu