# Thinking about SLI GTX 970s



## Upgrayedd (Feb 3, 2018)

I have a 970 right now. It does pretty good in most games with decent settings but I'm getting tired of dialing back options and trying to find the sweetspot in games to get the most out of my card while keeping 60fps. I often find myself either on the very edge, 90% usage and higher while maintaining 60 until I turn the camera a certain way or something then all of a sudden fps drops happen and it just isn't pleasant or else I end up dialing a setting or two back that I really don't want to and usage is goes down considerably, lets say 77%.
I have someone I can buy the same exact card that I have for $175. I bought my original for $330. So I would have spent $500 on SLI 970s. It is either that or sell my 970 , eat the $150 loss and get a 1070Ti which would put my total spent on a 1070Ti around $600-700, which just seems ridiculous to me.

I play at a locked 60fps vsync off @ 1080p.
Most of the games I play support SLI. Doing this for the eye candy @60fps. Not for high frame rates.
I would only have 1-slot between the two GPUs. I would copy my current modded bios from my card and be flashing it to the new card so they have the same BIOS. 
I will also be changing the thermal paste on everything when I do this.

Anyone have any useful recommendations, settings, tweaks or maybe even helpful websites that talk all about SLI and how to properly use it.


----------



## Toothless (Feb 3, 2018)

Nope. It's not worth the power draw and driver issues. Even if a game "supports" SLI doesn't mean you'll get a good experience.

Source: Ran GTX780 SLI  with regrets.


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Feb 3, 2018)

I personally wouldnt. And ive had 970s in SLi since the day they were released but ended up sidegrading to a 1070 instead after what i think was two years??

the 3.5GB ram limitation on these graphic cards becomes a problem at anything above 1080p if you play with maxed settings. 970sli will also create unnecessary heat and power draw and some issues when it comes to game compatibility. Sometimes there will even be microstutter. Its easier just to have the one off card doing all the heaving lifting then two unless you run 4k monitors, bencher or use its compute features.

Even AMD and Nvidia are moving away from multi-GPu configs because its just so much of a PITA to get right


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 3, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I personally wouldnt. And ive had 970s in SLi since the day they were released but ended up sidegrading to a 1070 instead after what i think was two years??



Yep, I did the same exact thing(then downgraded to a 1060 when GPU prices started to skyrocket to bank a tidy profit and wait to spend it on something even better).

I don't agree the 3.5GB limit is any worse than a 4GB limit when these cards are in SLI though.  At this point, if 3.5GB is limiting then 4GB is likely to be as well.  Also, turning up the resolution doesn't really increase the amount of VRAM used as much as people think.  The large majority of VRAM usage is textures these days, and the space used stays the same regardless of resolution.  At 1080p, the actual rendered frame is only taking up about 190MB of VRAM.  At 4k its only 760MB.  The rest is largely textures.  And most of the well coded games don't actually need 3GB worth of textures in VRAM.

Still, I wouldn't bother with SLI anymore, I ran it for years, basically every generation from the 7800 series onward.  And this generation is finally the point when I stopped, it just isn't worth messing with anymore, and the support of it is drying up(like you said).

A few months ago I would have said sell the 970 and just buy a 1070, but with the GPU market the way it is currently, I'd say just stick with the single GTX970 for now, save the extra $175, and hopefully the mining craze dies down and prices return to where they should.  Then I'd pick up the 1070.


----------



## droopyRO (Feb 3, 2018)

I was thinking the same about two years ago. Sold the 970 i had and bought a 980Ti. I see that the second hand prices are ok for the 980Ti at least where i live. Might check your local second hand prices and get one, since cards like 1070/1070ti or 1080 have inflated prices due to mining.


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Feb 3, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Yep, I did the same exact thing(then downgraded to a 1060 when GPU prices started to skyrocket to bank a tidy profit and wait to spend it on something even better).
> 
> I don't agree the 3.5GB limit is any worse than a 4GB limit when these cards are in SLI though.  At this point, if 3.5GB is limiting then 4GB is likely to be as well.  Also, turning up the resolution doesn't really increase the amount of VRAM used as much as people think.  The large majority of VRAM usage is textures these days, and the space used stays the same regardless of resolution.  At 1080p, the actual rendered frame is only taking up about 190MB of VRAM.  At 4k its only 760MB.  The rest is largely textures.  And most of the well coded games don't actually need 3GB worth of textures in VRAM.
> 
> ...




Different strokes for different folk's. I found that i continuously maxed out the 3.5gb on my 970s@1440p. Since ive had my 1070 for over 6 months now. Ive noticed it eating as much as 6GB in some of my games. BF1, BF4, PUBG etc etc. PUBG is just a mess though when it comes to code


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 3, 2018)

vram makes it a no go. get a 1070 or wait for next gen (ampere) 2060.


----------



## trog100 (Feb 3, 2018)

Upgrayedd said:


> I have a 970 right now. It does pretty good in most games with decent settings but I'm getting tired of dialing back options and trying to find the sweetspot in games to get the most out of my card while keeping 60fps. I often find myself either on the very edge, 90% usage and higher while maintaining 60 until I turn the camera a certain way or something then all of a sudden fps drops happen and it just isn't pleasant or else I end up dialing a setting or two back that I really don't want to and usage is goes down considerably, lets say 77%.
> I have someone I can buy the same exact card that I have for $175. I bought my original for $330. So I would have spent $500 on SLI 970s. It is either that or sell my 970 , eat the $150 loss and get a 1070Ti which would put my total spent on a 1070Ti around $600-700, which just seems ridiculous to me.
> 
> I play at a locked 60fps vsync off @ 1080p.
> ...




i ran a 970 sli setup with no problems just like now run a 1070 sli set up with no problems.. so taking the current price of everything into account.. ignore the nay sayers and add another 970.. 

trog


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 3, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Different strokes for different folk's. I found that i continuously maxed out the 3.5gb on my 970s@1440p. Since ive had my 1070 for over 6 months now. Ive noticed it eating as much as 6GB in some of my games. BF1, BF4, PUBG etc etc. PUBG is just a mess though when it comes to code



Yep, and that will happen.  Games today are designed to eat as much VRAM as they can, because they just stuff it full of as many textures as they possibly can even if most of the textures aren't being used.  W1z has done a few tests about this, showing that given the chance, a lot of games will use stupid amount of VRAM, but they'll also happily run with much less with no performance impact.  This why you'll see cards like the GTX 1060 3GB still outperforming cards with more memory like the GTX 970 and RX 570. Even when you push the resolution up to 4k, which is unplayable on these card anyway, the GTX 1060 still often outperforms them.  For example, look at CoD:WWII.  If you give it a 11-12GB graphics card, it will happily use almost 8GB at 1080p.  Yet the GTX 1060 3GB easily outperforms cards with more memory like the GTX 970 and RX 570.  And this same applies for pretty much every modern game.

So, yes, you'll max out the VRAM on a card 3-4GB, but it won't affect performance unless the game is just really shittly coded(PUBG I'm looking at you here).


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Feb 3, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Yep, and that will happen.  Games today are designed to eat as much VRAM as they can, because they just stuff it full of as many textures as they possibly can even if most of the textures aren't being used.  W1z has done a few tests about this, showing that given the chance, a lot of games will use stupid amount of VRAM, but they'll also happily run with much less with no performance impact.  This why you'll see cards like the GTX 1060 3GB still outperforming cards with more memory like the GTX 970 and RX 570. Even when you push the resolution up to 4k, which is unplayable on these card anyway, the GTX 1060 still often outperforms them.  For example, look at CoD:WWII.  If you give it a 11-12GB graphics card, it will happily use almost 8GB at 1080p.  Yet the GTX 1060 3GB easily outperforms cards with more memory like the GTX 970 and RX 570.  And this same applies for pretty much every modern game.
> 
> So, yes, you'll max out the VRAM on a card 3-4GB, but it won't affect performance unless the game is just really shittly coded(PUBG I'm looking at you here).



Yeah but don't forget the whole memorygate scandal here. If the op does use more than 3.5Gb's of ram then his fps will start tanking. I experienced this on BF1 before i went with the single 1070


----------



## jboydgolfer (Feb 3, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Yeah but don't forget the whole memorygate scandal here. If the op does use more than 3.5Gb's of ram then his fps will start taking. I experienced this on BF1 before i went with the single 1070



I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I was never able to replicate that situation, Meaning  the situation where memory causes a drop in performance after the 3.5 GB mark . I don't know if I just picked the wrong games to attempt it ,but over allotting memory in say Grandtheft auto five ,didn't cause any drop in performance.  I even tried exaggerating the "slow" memory by running sli ,to turn the .5 GB into 1 gigabyte ,in case that's where I was failing to cause that issue , but i didnt notice a drop. My guess is either the way a game handles memory or that it's more obvious in certain titles. I'll just consider myself lucky  
also, i have modified bios' on my 970's, but i cant imagine that would change it, otherwise everyone would have done it. speaking of which, i never got my damn class action payout


----------



## Kissamies (Feb 3, 2018)

I had 970SLI some time ago and personally I didn't have any problems. And the boost was pretty nice compared to one card. Gigabyte G1 Gaming and EVGA SC (blower)


----------



## Pehla (Feb 3, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> I personally wouldnt. And ive had 970s in SLi since the day they were released but ended up sidegrading to a 1070 instead after what i think was two years??
> 
> the 3.5GB ram limitation on these graphic cards becomes a problem at anything above 1080p if you play with maxed settings. 970sli will also create unnecessary heat and power draw and some issues when it comes to game compatibility. Sometimes there will even be microstutter. Its easier just to have the one off card doing all the heaving lifting then two unless you run 4k monitors, bencher or use its compute features.
> 
> Even AMD and Nvidia are moving away from multi-GPu configs because its just so much of a PITA to get right


not realy true!Both Nvidia and AMD are exploring multi chip design as they reach the end of shrinking die's..
multi chip is mostly same as sli  or CF...


----------



## John Naylor (Feb 3, 2018)

Over 40% of the builds we did up thru the 9xx series where SLI with the rest were SLI capable and many users went that route when money became available..   Twin 970s were actually cheaper than a 980 and 40% faster.  yes, there were games that did not support SLI but here's what you were left with ..

15 games that averaged 45% faster with twin 970s
3 games that were 10% faster with a 980

And of course the big games like Tomb Raider and Witcher 3 did extremely well in SLI.  Now with 10xx series the world chnage and many have speculated why... SLI has frankly been a thorn in nVidia's side for  along time ... two 560 Tis outperformed the 580 ... two 650 Tis outperformed the 680, two 770s outperformed the 780 ... two 970s outperformed the 980.  Their problem was they make significantly more profit margin on the x80 series than the lower tiered cards.  But as long as AMD has CF, they couldn't let it go.  And then AMD competition vanished in the top 3 tiers ... with no competition for AMD an any SLI capable cards, SLI performance ceased being a requirement.  SLI Scaling went from an average 70% (96 to  > 100% in some titles) w/ 9xx  in TPUs testing to just 18% at 1080p  at 1440p).  It's hard for me to believe this isn't by design as at 4K scaling still exceeds 50%.   So the option to buy two lower tier cards for less money than the top ier card is gon, while buyng two top tier cards remains a viable option.    This situation will no longer result in the cannibaliuzation of top tier nVidia card sales as there is no competion from AMD and now they don't have to compete with themselves.

As to the alleged 3GB RAM limitation was shown to be much ado about nothing.  After all the hullabloo, outside of 4k, you had to work real hard to create a proble, and when you did, the 4 GB 980 didn't do any better:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-geforce-gtx-970-vram-stress-test.html

_"Thing is, the quantifying fact is that nobody really has massive issues, dozens and dozens of media have tested the card with in-depth reviews like the ones here on my site. Replicating the stutters and stuff you see in some of the video's, well to date I have not been able to reproduce them unless you do crazy stuff,..._

_Let me clearly state this, the GTX 970 is not an Ultra HD card, it has never been marketed as such and we never recommended even a GTX 980 for Ultra HD gaming either. So if you start looking at that resolution and zoom in, then of course you are bound to run into performance issues, but so does the GTX 980. These cards are still too weak for such a resolution combined with proper image quality settings. Remember, Ultra HD = 4x 1080P. Let me quote myself from my GTX 970 conclusions “it is a little beast for Full HD and WHQD gaming combined with the best image quality settings”, and within that context I really think it is valid to stick to a maximum of 2560x1440 as 1080P and 1440P are is the real domain for these cards. Face it, if you planned to game at Ultra HD, you would not buy a GeForce GTX 970.... I again stick to my initial findings here, there's no significant evidence that once you graphics memory runs out and starts using the 512MB (or not at all) that you can see massive and weird behavior. "_

The reason so many folks thing its a problem is because they **think** the utility they are using is telling them VRAM usage; the fact is that there is no utility ij existence that measures VRAM usage.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...y-x-faces-off-with-nvidias-gtx-980-ti-titan-x

_"GPU-Z claims to report how much VRAM the GPU actually uses, but there’s a significant caveat to this metric. GPU-Z doesn’t actually report how much VRAM the GPU is actually using — instead, it reports the amount of VRAM that a game has requested. We spoke to Nvidia’s Brandon Bell on this topic, who told us the following: “None of the GPU tools on the market report memory usage correctly, whether it’s GPU-Z, Afterburner, Precision, etc. They all report the amount of memory requested by the GPU, not the actual memory usage. Cards will larger memory will request more memory, but that doesn’t mean that they actually use it. They simply request it because the memory is available.”"_

In short, these utilities are like your credt card ... if you have a credit limit of $5,000 with $500 charged on it, when you apply for  aloan for a credit check, the CC company roports a liability of $5,000 ... regardless of the amount that is actually charged on the card at athe time.  If you have an 8GB card it will ask for more RAM to be allocated simply because "it's there"

So as far as the 3.5 GB thing, as long as you are sticking to 1440p or less, your fine ... from TPU testing

Tomb Raider:  970 SLI @ 58.7 or 980 @ 29.8 ... 97% faster @ 1440p
17 Game Average: 970 SLI @ 100% or 980 @ 69% ... 45% faster @ 1440p

But here's what it comes down to.  A 2nd 970 will cost ya $150 on ebay.  A 1070 is a 5% in Witcher 3, but on average, the 1070 is about 4% faster.

For roughly the same performance based upon TPU testing, options are:

Invest $750 to buy the $900 1070 and sell the 970
Invest $150 to buy the 2nd 970

We have boxes here with (2) 780s, twin (2) 970s and (1) 1080 Ti ... The Ti was purchased after selling two 970s ... at the time for the same cost.  No problems with any of them or older ones that preceded it.  As for the games that don't support SLI ... a)  We're nt playing them or b)  witha  single card, fps is in well excess of 60 fps anyway.  Don't much care if I only get 70 fps cause SLI not supported and a 980 would given me 90.  I care that I am getting 58 fps in Tomb Raider instead of 35 w/ a 980


----------



## Upgrayedd (Feb 3, 2018)

All this info is great Thank you very much for taking your time to give your input, much appreciated. 
I never had an issue with the VRAM limit unless I was modding a game. Nothing major comes off the top of my except for trying to mod Prey. That game went straight to 4GB ran cool for about 15seconds then GPU usage drops to like 30% w/ 25fps while VRAM is full but I honestly just think it was the extremeness of the mod. Too high of a shadow resolution that I couldn't change myself.
I live by a Microcenter also, gpu prices are not extreme like they were $900 1080Ti, $680 for 1080 and $550 for 1070. Still pretty stupid high but not extreme. 1070 is really a $330 card to me not a $500+ card. Seeing that is has been nearly 20months since the release of Pascal I'm feeling reluctant to buy an old card for that much that isn't a full fat chip. 
I seen someone else mention Ampere/Gaming Volta. I thought about waiting but it will be 6months before we see those right? I thought about side-grading to an EVGA 1070/ 1070Ti and doing the 90-day Step Up program but Ampere is no where in sight. I was hoping to holdout until the next-gen's fat chip but I don't see it coming too soon.

Games I play - The Witcher 3 , GTA V, Tomb Raider, Rocket League, PUBG, BF1, Civ V, Rust, Dying Light, Fallout 4, Insurgency, Metro series.

Someone else said look for a 2nd hand 980Ti, I have been searching far and wide for a reasonably priced 980 Ti lol. This is the closest I can get right now - https://kansascity.craigslist.org/sys/d/gaming-pc-monitor-and-display/6473203923.html - thought about doing it, selling off the rest of the parts inside but it is most likely a reference card.
Power draw isn't really an issue for me.


----------



## droopyRO (Feb 3, 2018)

Upgrayedd said:


> I seen someone else mention Ampere/Gaming Volta. I thought about waiting but it will be 6months before we see those right?


The problem would still be availability since miners would lineup to buy those too. The second problem would pe the shops themselfs that would not sell the cards at MSRP prices. This is how i view it right now. I would really like a GTX 2080 with 1080TI performance <200W TDP and  price of about 800 usd/euros, but it is wishfull thinking ATM.


----------



## trog100 (Feb 3, 2018)

Upgrayedd said:


> All this info is great Thank you very much for taking your time to give your input, much appreciated.
> I never had an issue with the VRAM limit unless I was modding a game. Nothing major comes off the top of my except for trying to mod Prey. That game went straight to 4GB ran cool for about 15seconds then GPU usage drops to like 30% w/ 25fps while VRAM is full but I honestly just think it was the extremeness of the mod. Too high of a shadow resolution that I couldn't change myself.
> I live by a Microcenter also, gpu prices are not extreme like they were $900 1080Ti, $680 for 1080 and $550 for 1070. Still pretty stupid high but not extreme. 1070 is really a $330 card to me not a $500+ card. Seeing that is has been nearly 20months since the release of Pascal I'm feeling reluctant to buy an old card for that much that isn't a full fat chip.
> I seen someone else mention Ampere/Gaming Volta. I thought about waiting but it will be 6months before we see those right? I thought about side-grading to an EVGA 1070/ 1070Ti and doing the 90-day Step Up program but Ampere is no where in sight. I was hoping to holdout until the next-gen's fat chip but I don't see it coming too soon.
> ...



i moved from a pair of 970 cards to a pair of 980ti cards.. i did not consider a single 980ti an upgrade..

you are getting some sh-t poor advice in this thread. . i will leave it up to you to figure out the good advice from the sh-t advice.. 

trog


----------



## eidairaman1 (Feb 3, 2018)

Just start saving up for a 1070Ti or 1080 or a Vega 56/64 AIB model.


----------



## trog100 (Feb 3, 2018)

eidairaman1 said:


> Just start saving up for a 1070Ti or 1080 or a Vega 56/64 AIB model.


 
be real.. 

trog


----------



## Upgrayedd (Feb 4, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Yeah but don't forget the whole memorygate scandal here. If the op does use more than 3.5Gb's of ram then his fps will start tanking. I experienced this on BF1 before i went with the single 1070


I actually get a solid 60fps in BF1. I even turn the resolution scale up a bit. I'm on 1080p though.


droopyRO said:


> The problem would still be availability since miners would lineup to buy those too. The second problem would pe the shops themselfs that would not sell the cards at MSRP prices. This is how i view it right now. I would really like a GTX 2080 with 1080TI performance <200W TDP and  price of about 800 usd/euros, but it is wishfull thinking ATM.


1080s are $650-700 USD right now where I live. Which is really what the 1080Ti should be costing, not $900. 
My wishful thinking was that since Microcenter(my local store) is only doing 1 per house is that when the new ones finally do come out that they won't be gobbled up by miners at my local store. 
I really hope 2080s are not $800 MSRP....


Chloe Price said:


> I had 970SLI some time ago and personally I didn't have any problems. And the boost was pretty nice compared to one card. Gigabyte G1 Gaming and EVGA SC (blower)





jboydgolfer said:


> I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I was never able to replicate that situation, Meaning  the situation where memory causes a drop in performance after the 3.5 GB mark . I don't know if I just picked the wrong games to attempt it ,but over allotting memory in say Grandtheft auto five ,didn't cause any drop in performance.  I even tried exaggerating the "slow" memory by running sli ,to turn the .5 GB into 1 gigabyte ,in case that's where I was failing to cause that issue , but i didnt notice a drop. My guess is either the way a game handles memory or that it's more obvious in certain titles. I'll just consider myself lucky
> also, i have modified bios' on my 970's, but i cant imagine that would change it, otherwise everyone would have done it. speaking of which, i never got my damn class action payout





trog100 said:


> i moved from a pair of 970 cards to a pair of 980ti cards.. i did not consider a single 980ti an upgrade..



Do you guys have any forums or websites that you frequently visited for SLI help?

They actually denied me my lawsuit money, I thought I sent them everything they asked for but I guess I didn't.


----------



## kn00tcn (Feb 4, 2018)

Pehla said:


> not realy true!Both Nvidia and AMD are exploring multi chip design as they reach the end of shrinking die's..
> multi chip is mostly same as sli  or CF...


of course it's not the same, that would be the stupidest thing they could do

intel's first quad cores were two dual cores stitched together, that is exactly what gpus need to do, but with out the cloned vram nonsense


----------



## Melvis (Feb 4, 2018)

I run GTX 970's and when the game supports SLi the performance gain is very nice and smooth for me so far. I can give you some benchmark scores if you like to give you an idea of what gains you might get in some games. I was at 1080 with a single 970 but now I can game at 1440P with Sli GTX970's


----------



## Kissamies (Feb 4, 2018)

Upgrayedd said:


> Do you guys have any forums or websites that you frequently visited for SLI help?
> 
> They actually denied me my lawsuit money, I thought I sent them everything they asked for but I guess I didn't.


Didn't need any help, since SLI worked perfectly when I had 2x 970.


----------



## Upgrayedd (Feb 5, 2018)

I just want to know where the hell was I when 970s were $80 at microcenter? - http://www.microcenter.com/product/439377/geforce_gtx_970_superclocked_acx_20_video_card


----------

