Tips and Tricks for a newbie starting SLI

[Autonutz]

after doing some searching on the forum i cant seem to find a good guide to SLI, some basics to go by, things to look out for etc would be a great read.
I'm jumping into this soon and i'm certain there are some things i dont know about, i figured theres gotta be some basic do's and dont's that might not be straight forward for some people!

A few things were mentioned to me that make perfect sense;

-use the same type of gpu and what stock speed they run at (had to put this on there for some people lol)
-monitor your temps on both cards and test which PCI slots they run coolest in, go with that configuration.

anyone have a link to a good guide or some good learning experiences?

 

[caddi daddi]

a couple of simple things I've found.
your right about finding which card for slot one.
try to use the same part number cards, no real big issue but it helps some.
let the software lock the card clocks together at first.
sli and crossfire arepretty much plug and play now.
if you are after max performance, just get a better card, you will not double your performance by getting two cards, it just dosn't work that way.
if you buy cards with 2 gigs of ram, you don't have four gigs of vram you will still only use two, many game now need more vram, if you games need 4 gigs of ram, buy cards with 4 gigs.
and the big one, don't pay a grand for a gpu and expect an apu to feed it.

 

[Pepi93]

a couple of simple things I've found.
your right about finding which card for slot one.
try to use the same part number cards, no real big issue but it helps some.
let the software lock the card clocks together at first.
sli and crossfire arepretty much plug and play now.
if you are after max performance, just get a better card, you will not double your performance by getting two cards, it just dosn't work that way.
if you buy cards with 2 gigs of ram, you don't have four gigs of vram you will still only use two, many game now need more vram, if you games need 4 gigs of ram, buy cards with 4 gigs.
and the big one, don't pay a grand for a gpu and expect an apu to feed it.

Long live Al Bundy.

 

[Autonutz]

Well that is some good stuff to know!
Caddi Daddi you are the one that taught me the things i know about it already LOL Thanks again!

how do you think the 760 in 2 way SLI will hold up in Fallout 4 and witcher 3?
running the single card i've had to drop down to the high settings in fallout 4 and becomes unbearable only when around smoking objects.
I am a little concerned as my current 760 has only 2gb of ram as well as the new to me 760 on the way.

 

[JrClocker]

Depends on what resolution you are gaming at.

A few questions you didn't ask in your original post

1. Can my power supply power both cards?
2. Does my motherboard support SLI?
3. Do I have sufficient PCIe lanes available to SLI (NVIDIA requires at least PCIe x8 for SLI on both cards)?
4. Can I keep both cards cool?
--- double width graphics cards about 35 mm wide
--- 2 PCI slot width is 40 mm
--- that's about 5 mm between the 2 cards on a standard SLI motherboard
------ some motherboards have their SLI PCIe slots at 60 mm for better cooling
------ some motherboards let you SLI to a PCIe slot that is 4 slots away...giving about 45 mm of spacing between the cards

You won't get 2 times the performance from 2 cards. The general rule is that 1 card will always run better than 2 cards.

Also, not all games will benefit from SLI...they have to be written to use it.

I just looked on Amazon, and a new 760 card runs between $190 and $290.

A new 970 (has 4 GB of VRAM) runs between $320 and $370. I'm not sure what your budget it, but if you can swing it this might be worth a look.

I bought my daughter a GTX 970 as an upgrade to her GTX 660 to run in an old i7-920 machine. Only has PCIe 2.0. The card runs great on this old technology.

 

[Autonutz]

Depends on what resolution you are gaming at.

A few questions you didn't ask in your original post

1. Can my power supply power both cards?
2. Does my motherboard support SLI?
3. Do I have sufficient PCIe lanes available to SLI (NVIDIA requires at least PCIe x8 for SLI on both cards)?
4. Can I keep both cards cool?
--- double width graphics cards about 35 mm wide
--- 2 PCI slot width is 40 mm
--- that's about 5 mm between the 2 cards on a standard SLI motherboard
------ some motherboards have their SLI PCIe slots at 60 mm for better cooling
------ some motherboards let you SLI to a PCIe slot that is 4 slots away...giving about 45 mm of spacing between the cards

You won't get 2 times the performance from 2 cards. The general rule is that 1 card will always run better than 2 cards.

Also, not all games will benefit from SLI...they have to be written to use it.

I just looked on Amazon, and a new 760 card runs between $190 and $290.

A new 970 (has 4 GB of VRAM) runs between $320 and $370. I'm not sure what your budget it, but if you can swing it this might be worth a look.

I bought my daughter a GTX 970 as an upgrade to her GTX 660 to run in an old i7-920 machine. Only has PCIe 2.0. The card runs great on this old technology.

I was hoping someone was gonna list off a few things, I know some basics and the requirements of SLI but i'm sure there is a few things I could learn.

I game at 1080p on one monitor, i run a second at 720p for music etc.

A 970 would run my games almost on full everything but its kinda useless for me, the games i play support SLI so the $100 option right now is the best choice, when i move to 4K i will upgrade to a 980ti or even higher as the Pascal will be released this year and will change our entire market. The only downside is the 2gb of ram and to be honest for the price i wont complain a bit!