Is SLI a dying technology? Cast your vote

[moonbogg]

Simple poll. SLI support has been terrible with support for major games being totally absent. I think its a technology who's function is contingent upon way too many magical stars aligning just right for it to work. It needs developer support, Nvidia support, driver optimization blah blah blah. It sucks.
I've been an SLI user since Geforce 6 and for the first time since Geforce FX 5800 Ultra, I won't buy two cards next time. Cant do it. They don't work anymore. Only a few games work well and many others have crappy scaling. I vote that SLI is DEAD. Its dead to me.

 

[nerp]

It has always been a pretty tough justification. When it works it's fantastic but the tradeoffs are huge, mainly price, heat, power usage, lack of broad quality support and more. I've never considered it just studying the experience of others who have made the plunge.

 

[Excessi0n]

The gains are great... when it works. It can be the difference between a stuttery mess and a smooth experience... when it works. It lets you get away with higher graphics settings with midrange cards... when it works.

Getting it to work can take time and cause headaches. A lot of the time it won't work no matter what you do. You see where I'm going with this?

Next time I'm just going to get a single top-end card and be done with it.

 

[AdamK47]

Nope

 

[master_shake_]

maybe?

 

[Pantlegz]

I don't know all these issues you guys are talking about I ran GTX 680's SLI since they were released without a single issue. Moving to 3way SLI some games didn't play nice but that more of an experiment after they were dirt cheap. Do some games not scale well? I guess, I got good enough frame rates it didn't matter. I recently replaced them with a single GTX 1080, mostly due to a change in platforms thanks to Alienware's Graphics Amplifier and needing a more mobile computer and I really didn't want two. But ~1000 for 4 years of GPU dominance, that's the same or less than buying a new mid range card each year and still out performed everything until the GTX 980 Ti was released.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've run SLI GTX460 1GB OC cards. The Gigabyte WindForce ones, with dual fans / non-blower style.

Boy, did the top card get HOT. Had some instability because of it.

I don't think I'm going to ever do SLI again, gains weren't worth the hassle and expense.

 

[Hinda65]

SLI has always treated me right...I've had SLI 9800's and 780's. Its a great way to skip a gen or 2 but still get great performance. Only drawback for me was not being able to max settings before running out of vram with 780's.