NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 SLI

[efikkan]

a clear step back in sli scaling... yea I know it is always "the drivers not out there yet", but it was factor also before and previous gen cards in sls offered more improvements.

It's more due to poorly coded games rather than poor drivers. Multi-GPU support is simply not a priority among developers.

 

[jsfitz54]

Plus you can always use two "classic" bridges in case extra "bandwidth" is needed.

I did some very quick testing and it looks like only one bridge is active when two are connected (checked with a scope), but the scope is kinda slow with 100 MHz bandwidth, so no conclusive evidence.

What is the take-away on this?

The new HB bridge is better or just a superfluous up-sell over using 2 classic bridges?
Is it just "pretty" with lights?

Only a single bridge is required?

W1zzard said:
"You can still use the classic SLI bridge that came with your motherboard, though."

"As mentioned earlier, you can use the classic 2-way bridge included with your motherboard, and NVIDIA's driver will enable SLI for you, but with a reminder that you can improve your experience with a "higher performance SLI bridge." This reminder goes away as soon as a SLI HB bridge is installed."
[Page 2 of review.]

"So I picked a few scenarios and ran them with one flexible "old" bridge as well."
[Page 22 of review]

 

[truth teller]

The bridge isn't just two classic bridges fused into one, though.

I did some very quick testing and it looks like only one bridge is active when two are connected (checked with a scope), but the scope is kinda slow with 100 MHz bandwidth, so no conclusive evidence.

does the second part/side of that 40 western euros contraption even become active too (signaling)? or does it only provide power to the led (lol)?
couldnt you just trace the bridge pcb (continuity/ohm with a multimeter should do, if there are no visible traces on the pcb sides [inner layer holds traces]) and check if its any different from 2 bridges slammed together? maybe, if the need for this bridge even becomes a thing in the future (really doubt that), people can just bodge two $2.4 sli bridges together with some minor patches.
no performance improvement, what a rip off, but then again, the people who buy it wont really care...

 

[Sah7d]

So... in a few words; there is NO POINT to get a SLI nor the HB Bridge...

Nice Nvidia... nice move!

I just received my GTX1080, I had a GTX980Ti SLI and all I can say is that is less noise; system runs cooler and games are barely with good performance at 2560x1440 in ULTRA
Yes, this card is better than a SLI because the support on games are HORRIBLE for SLI but lets be honest; we are no ready yet for 4K playing.

GTX980Ti SLI barely moves the games at 40FPS, GTX1080 at 4K has no better performance on this stage neither.
Sorry but We need at least 75 FPS to get a smooth experience at 4K on ULTRA settings and this is not going to happen soon; probably in 3 years but now is not possible; and this gen is not good with SLI at all so you get your conclusions here.

 

[GreiverBlade]

they need to stop using MSRP ... definitively

as low as 1200 considering 599$ baseprice or 1400 considering 699 founder ... not likely ...

ok again: a 1080 SLI is more 1826$ and above than 1200$ (considering custom model prices of 899chf or the actual founder price of 849chf, respectively 936.87$ and 884.76$)

blessed are those who live where the actual price is close to the announced price (AKA: probably no one .... )

 

[ZoneDymo]

I think you're optimistic, next gen won't offer playable 4k@reasonable price. In my case, reasonable price is ~$200. I'm betting on 2-3 more generations, but that depends on how 10bit and HDR catch on, because those would incur further performance penalties.
I would love to play games and edit my photos @4k, but I'm not spending $599 on a video card. Hell, I'm not spending $400.

Well keeping in mind the prices of years past 200 bucks is quite cheap for a videocard new (good job AMD).
But im thinking, its taking 2 of these, we still need to see the GTX1080Ti.
The GTX1170 will probably have the performance of the GTX1080Ti whenever its released.
The GTX1260 will probably have the performance of the GTX1170 whenever its released.

Thats why I think it comes down to about 2 gens.

 

[the54thvoid]

Thats why I think it comes down to about 2 gens.

What about big Vega?

Also, 4k is already playable on a 980ti (which is price dropped lower than Fury X). It's also down to dev's how well a game runs. BF4 still looks good after years and Battlefront is well pretty (if boring).

 

[jabbadap]

Hmm, does dsr work with gtx 1080 sli, wonder if you can test it with 5k or even 8k... Nonetheless, great review as always

 

[jihadjoe]

> Crysis 3 60fps @4k

It can play Crysis!

 

[trog100]

I did some very quick testing and it looks like only one bridge is active when two are connected (checked with a scope), but the scope is kinda slow with 100 MHz bandwidth, so no conclusive evidence.

i tried it with my pair of 980 TI cards.. it produced strange horizontal interference lines so i gave up on the idea and went back to a single bridge..

so for me it didnt work.. i tried it for cosmetic reasons.. nothing else.. it looks better.. he he

trog

 

[SimpleTECH]

HB bridge scale well in firestrike benchmark.

http://www.vmodtech.com/th/article/nvidia-hb-bridge-for-pascal-gpus-review/page/2

Different drivers though.

TPU: 365.10
Vmodtech: 368.19

 

[2big2fail]

@W1zzard can you add 980ti SLI to the performance summary?

 

[SithLord]

good review, i was wondering about that SLI HB bridge, good to know its not really needed as nvidia claims. not that i was going to buy a 1080 (or two for that matter) since i game on 1080p and a single 970 does just fine.

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

so in other word.. HB SLI Bridge= LB SLI Bridge / Old SLI Bridge but more style and blink on it and plus wire inside?

I didn't get it.. already 2016, and still kept with SLI bridge...

 

[Cataclysm_ZA]

Wow, that's really disappointing. No wonder they won't put much stock into triple and quad SLI. There's just nothing to take advantage of it now.

 

[efikkan]

The SLI bridge will still be useful in the future. The multi-GPU support in Direct3D 12 doesn't change that, that's only the front-end changing. It will still be advantageous to use the bridge when using two Nvidia cards, and due to the latency problems without it this is what most multi-GPU users will continue to do.

 

[Beast96GT]

Um, seems a lot of you guys didn't read the article.

Right now, SLI HB bridges cost $39.99 and are in limited supply, especially the popular three-slot bridge most motherboards use is scarce. So as long as you are gaming at 4K@60Hz or lower, you will be fine with a classic bridge.

The HB SLI bridge is obviously not useless, it just fits a need that many of you may or may not have. I don't game in 4K@60Hz or lower, I game in nVidia Surround (6000x1080) G-Sync 144hz. Many of you may not believe it, but there is a large group of people that will buy two GTX 1080s, other than me, and put together far more tricked-out rigs than I've got. I'm just really glad that TechPowerUp wrote such an awesome article to discern the difference. Now game on.

 

[iLLz]

In BF3 and BF4, you seem to be hitting the FPS cap of 200 that's set in the default config file for the game. Considering the framerate is equal in both 1080p and 1440p. Have you tried to raise the limit above 200? Is it even possible? Genuinely curious as this could have an affect on some of the performance accumulation charts, since BF3 and BF4 make up a decent chunk of the games tested here.

 

[jsfitz54]

Um, seems a lot of you guys didn't read the article.
The HB SLI bridge is obviously not useless, it just fits a need that many of you may or may not have. I don't game in 4K@60Hz or lower, I game in nVidia Surround (6000x1080) G-Sync 144hz. Many of you may not believe it, but there is a large group of people that will buy two GTX 1080s, other than me, and put together far more tricked-out rigs than I've got. I'm just really glad that TechPowerUp wrote such an awesome article to discern the difference. Now game on.

The point is, I have 2 candy jars on the counter, each has the same candy in it, one jar says 5 cents the other says 20 cents.
You would by the 20 cent candy?
If eye bling is the only criteria then say so, and market it, as such.
It appears that there is no special magic in this new HB SLI Bridge. Wow, it lights up...
If that's the case, shame on Nvidia for the money grab.

 

[TirNaNog]

It seems that it scales quite well, unless there is no SLi support... Nice card though!

 

[rainzor]

Well, i thought nvidia (Petersen?) said the point of HB bridge is to improve frametimes i.e. provide additional smoothness to an SLI setup. Also, there seems to be some CPU bottlenecking in FO4 and WoW, maybe even in Hitman as well since the FPS is pretty much the same 900p-4K.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

why the hell rise of tomb raider is not good scaling on DirectX 12 ??
I guess Nvidia is ruining the performance again in DirectX 12 To make AMD asynchronous compute not useful for DirectX 12
like what they did by put heavy tessellation on crysis 2
See This "

"

Yes because we should totally blame Nvidia for a game developers garbage implementation of a feature in an API.

 

[Beast96GT]

The point is, I have 2 candy jars on the counter, each has the same candy in it, one jar says 5 cents the other says 20 cents.
You would by the 20 cent candy?
If eye bling is the only criteria then say so, and market it, as such.
It appears that there is no special magic in this new HB SLI Bridge. Wow, it lights up...
If that's the case, shame on Nvidia for the money grab.

That's not the point. And not a valid analogy at all.

This is from the article:

A single frame at 4K resolution is 32 MB (3840x2160x4 bytes per pixel). At 30 frames per second, that's 960 MB, which is just shy of the 1 GB/s bandwidth classic SLI provides. This means that SLI HB provides no benefit until you exceed that limit, which happens at higher resolutions, like 5K or 4K@120.

It does you no good unless you're running greater than 4K @ 60hz, that's what's written in the article. As I said, I plan to exceed the 1 GB/s bandwidth limitation of classic SLI. Nvidia surround resolution 6000 x 1080 x 4 bytes per pixel at 144hz is about 3.5 GB/s. That said, I doubt I'll get 144 fps. I need myself an HB SLI Bridge, just not you.

 

[jsfitz54]

That's not the point. And not a valid analogy at all.

Your aren't seeing things clearly. The community here understands you need a bridge for SLI. The point is you don't need this particular bridge according to the review or there is no clear benefit in paying extra for this component over what is supplied by your motherboard manufacturer.

To that end my analogy is spot on.

"The SLI HB bridge, which uses a rock-solid metal case, reveals a rigid fiberglass PCB with two SLI slots wired along its length when taken apart. Each slot is reinforced with a metal sheath, much like PCI-Express x16 slots are in some of the newer motherboards. The bridge isn't just two classic bridges fused into one, though. It has a green LED that lights up only when SLI is enabled at the driver-level. On custom-design SLI HB bridges by NVIDIA partners, LEDs of different colors are available. Some even have RGB LEDs with manual color selection."

The magic is the driver not the bridge. SEE PAGE 22 of Review. I am not blinded, impressed or willing to pay more for the shiny green LED, that lights up.

If Nvidia wants to say, "Hey, we redesigned our FE shroud and here is a bridge that compliments our new design", that's OK.
But to claim that connecting two points of metal together with this particular HB Bridge implies some sort of advanced magic, is false.
This HB Bridge doesn't have anything over any previous designs that use ribbon cables, that connect two points together.
I did not see any advanced circuit design on the HB Bridge pictured. The only chips controlled the LED lighting.
Any old bridge or two, will do.
I never said bridges aren't required, at any time.

 

[Beast96GT]

I did not see any advanced circuit design on the HB Bridge pictured. The only chips controlled the LED lighting.
Any old bridge or two, will do.
I never said bridges aren't required, at any time.

I'm glad you can tell 'advanced circuit design' by looking a picture. This is crazy and um, I think I'll go with Nvidia and the author of the story that says the HIGH BANDWIDTH SLI bridge has HIGH BANDWIDTH instead of listening to you.