Two SLI vs three SLI of GTX 970: worth it?

[Lil'John]

My MB/CPU is a 3930K on a ASUS Rampage RIVE with 32G ram.

I currently have two Gigabyte G1 gaming GTX 970s. I can get a third one fairly easy.

I am running THREE ASUS 1080p(1920 x 1080) vertically... 3240x1920.

I'm looking at "getting into" more graphically intense games than the current Borderlands 2, Civ 5, Starcraft 2, etc. I'm not sure which games I would get but part of the criteria for it would be heavy graphics (I'll even take recommendations for games )

 

[n0x1ous]

depends what your definition of "worth it" is. Scaling on the 3rd card will be much worse than on the 2 card setup. 20-30% is probably all you can expect. In some games at your rez it will be a noticeable improvement, and in many games it wont be noticeable and could hurt performance if its a cpu intensive game.

While it certainly isn't a good bang for the buck upgrade, if the money isn't an issue than go ahead as its a neat setup but hopefully you have a nice overclock on the 3930k to make it sing...

EDIT -the other thing to consider will be you are running open air cards and a 3 way sandwich setup will roast the top two cards. you may want to go water if you go down this route or switch to blower coolers......

 

[Annisman*]

It's probably way more of a hassle than anything. Unless you are just going for high benchmark scores, which is fun I guess. Back in the day I rocked three GTX 670 4GB cards, I knew the third was basically a waste of money but I still had some fun with it, then it quickly made its way to my brothers PC. What some of these guys with three and four video cards won't tell you is the large amount of input lag and microstuttering that multiple cards brings with it, which in my opinion almost makes those extra cards completely worthless. We are after a smoother game experience no matter what the fps says aren't we ? I used to rock multiple graphics cards on the reg, then I kind of wised up, now it's single fastest card for me period.

 

[raghu78]

do not go beyond 2 GPUs. enjoy the performance you get. scaling falls off beyond 2 GPUs. i mean there are more games that do not scale well with 3 and 4 way SLI compared to 2 way SLI . 2 way is sweet spot.

 

[Headfoot]

yeah you'll probably be best off just spending some time getting max OCs out of your current 970s

 

[Lil'John]

I suspected it wasn't going to help by much.

But the ease of availability through work was making it tempting.

 

[KaRLiToS]

If you can, why not get it, if you have the money.

 

[toyota]

a few people with more money than sense will tell you to get 3 or even 4 cards regardless of how little performance it adds if any. at 1080 there is no logical reason to run 3 970 cards.

EDIT: oops I thought he had just one 1080 screen.

 

[KaRLiToS]

a few people with more money than sense will tell you to get 3 or even 4 cards regardless of how little performance it adds if any. at 1080 there is no logical reason to run 3 970 cards.

Let's say he is playing Metro Last Light (which is very demanding) at 5760x1080

Single GTX 970: 25 fps
Dual GTX 970: 45 fps
Triple GTX 970: 60 fps


The Triple cards setup will help maintain a 60fps while Dual won't.
Oh and by the way Metro Last Light supports Quad. If ever you have more money....than no money.

 

[toyota]

Let's say he is playing Metro Last Light (which is very demanding) at 5760x1080

Single GTX 970: 25 fps
Dual GTX 970: 45 fps
Triple GTX 970: 60 fps


The Triple cards setup will help maintain a 60fps while Dual won't.
Oh and by the way Metro Last Light supports Quad. If ever you have more money....than no money.

I thought he had just one screen so my bad. Metro LL has about the worst SLI scaling out there though so I would not use that for example.

 

[Vicard]

Happy game.

 

[guskline]

If you have 3 screens and you have the $$ why not. For a single monitor, perhaps even a 4k, it's probably hard to justify. You sure have plenty of hardware (mb, cpu, ram).

 

[Lil'John]

I thought he had just one screen so my bad. Metro LL has about the worst SLI scaling out there though so I would not use that for example.

Sorry about the screen/resolution confusion. I adjusted my original post.

I won't say money isn't an issue but I'm getting ready to buy parts for the wife's a Devil's Canyon build. It is easy to just tack on the GPU when I get the CPU and SSD at the same place.

 

[Jacky60]

Crossfire and SLI scaling has got progressively better over the years and at your resolution the more GPU power the better. If you can afford it I'd say yes do it. When you're running a 3 screen set up you want to keep the quality settings as high as possible as well as the FPS, that's where having a third or fourth card really makes a difference.