Need SLI owners to chime in, is this an issue?

[Fire&Blood]

PC in the sig, I just added a second 980ti. Ran GPU-Z to check ASIC.

Tried to give the cards more space between them but the lowest PCI-E slot runs @x4 for the second card, so I moved it up. Now both cards run x8 3.0 but when I run the GPU-Z render test, as you can see in the screenshot, after a few seconds the second card goes down to x8 1.1.

I am still waiting for the SLI bridge to arrive, maybe that will correct it but wanted to check in with you guys.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Solved. The GPU load needs to meet a certain threshold to bump up to 3.0.

 

[TheRyuu]

It's a power saving feature. With both cards in use you should see them both at the maximum x8 3.0 speed.

 

[master_shake_]

you can't enable sli without a bridge.

how did you do it?

 

[Fire&Blood]

I got a bridge after I started the thread, I ran GPU-Z before the bridge. SLI was disabled without the bridge but I didn't really need it to test the config. Like TheRyuu stated, it's a power saving feature, initially both cards ramp up to 3.0 speeds then one drops down to 1.1.

It's been a decade since I last ran a SLI setup (7800GT last time around) so I was a little rusty lol.

On a side note, PC gaming is alive and well. Went to a Microcenter to pick up a bridge, store was pretty crowded. In the few minutes I was there, a 1070 was sold, another guy with his wife was buying all parts for a new build.

It's all working fine now: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14772179

 

[master_shake_]

cool bridge

 

[Fire&Blood]

Thank you. I heard that the bridge lighting (possibly the lights on the cards as well) can be customized to specific colors. It just reminds me that I am getting old, I would have never figured that out on my own lol.

If nothing else, the PC is now ready to serve as a space heater when it gets cold. Winter is coming.

 

[Deders]

IIRC SLI will still work without a bridge, the data will be passed via the PCIe bus.

 

[bystander36]

IIRC SLI will still work without a bridge, the data will be passed via the PCIe bus.

There might have been some low end cards in the past that this could have been true, but it is not true on these cards, or any other in recent memory. Crossfire doesn't use a bridge anymore, if that is what you are thinking about.

 

[Fire&Blood]

I'm confident 8 lanes per card won't be a bottleneck for a while. I keep missing the 3dmark sales on steam so I'm stuck with basic firestrike. Not even at the limit here, I could push the CPU to 4.8, another 50-75 on the GPU clocks and a bit more on the VRAM but already having great results:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14876531