No BS GTX 970 SLI assessment

Evil Scooter

Evil Scooter

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 22, 2000
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Looking for firsthand experience from owners. I have a GTX970 (rig in siggy) and game at 1440p on a single monitor. I like to run with a lot of eyecandy and have been pretty happy with the performance in BF4 with the solo 970. I am planning on playing Fallout 4, GTA 5 and Witcher 3 in the near future. Are current owners still having SLI issues like micro studdering, general piss poor SLI performance, etc.? The cost effective route for me is to add another 970 and call it good. The other option(albeit far lees cost effective) to avoid SLI issues is a single 980ti. Pleas.. no BS fanboi posts.. I've run both xfiah and sli in the past and am not aligned to either company. I go where the performance is.
 
I would sell your 970 and go with a single 980Ti. Will cost you more, but you'll have great performance without any multi-gpu hassles.
 
DooKey said:
I would sell your 970 and go with a single 980Ti. Will cost you more, but you'll have great performance without any multi-gpu hassles.
Click to expand...

This.

Although I hear Nvidia SLI support is actually pretty prompt and reliable these days....
 
Had no issues running my MSI Gaming 970's on The Witcher 3 Ultra/1440p. FPS ranged fro 45-60. Probably averaged around 55 imo. From what I hear though, FO4 doesn't support SLI right now so that might be an issue.

I did have my 970's OC'ed, don't remember how high as I've swapped in a 980 Ti for a single card solution.
 
the last SLI setup i used was GTX 460's, so it's been a while for me :p. however i had zero issues with it. i know you're looking for first hand experience with 970 SLI but i can't personally give that. all i can say is i weighed the same decision and ended up selling my 970 and getting a 980 Ti. it just seemed like the better move to me.
 
Had zero issues with 970 sli but I kept resolutions on that setup to 1080p (Asus VG248QE) and later 1440p (Acer XB270HU). Never tried to game in 4k with maxed out textures on it nor did I play games that had poor sli support. Kept me happy from September 2014 all the way till June 2015 when I switched over to a single 980 Ti.
 
I run my 970 FTWs in SLI and absolutely love them. Get a custom bios and put em to work!
 
Power my Samsung 4k 40 inch with dual 970s with out issues. Get 60+ FPS in BF4 with just AA turned off. Mine are OC a bit think there at 1425 right now. But they run like a beast and for 500 bucks shipped from evga B stock I couldn't be happier with there perfomance.
 
DooKey said:
I would sell your 970 and go with a single 980Ti. Will cost you more, but you'll have great performance without any multi-gpu hassles.
Click to expand...

You got the correct answer in the first reply. Congrats!
 
970 SLI owner here. Given the choice, I would also definitely choose 980ti over 970 SLI any day.

SLI profiles are not bad, it's just the other things that SLI break and the whole 970 issue (it's not a big one, but still, even without segmentation, 980ti's 6GB is much juicier than 970's 4GB).

SLI breaks MFAA on its own, and SLI with G-Sync monitor plugged in breaks DSR, two of the biggest feautures of Maxwell.

so go 980ti if at all possible, I am even considering it myself, but I think I will instead hold out until pascal flagship
 
Love mine, scalling is usually at least good. But for instance there are no SLI profiles for Batman AK or Fallout 4 at the moment (personally really bummed out about the first one, as some places would need sli, but 98% of the time it's fine on just one, keeping in mind i'm @1200p). Also depending on games the 4*Gb could prove problematic.

When i got my cards there were no Titan X's or Ti's available. In your case I would look at the Ti just because you can later add another one. Performance is usually there, with the edge to the 970s, but with a Ti you win the single card overall smoothness and less haslle with non existing SLI profiles.
 
Bought 970SLI about 2 months ago because I need 3 DVI ports to run 3d surround. Going the 980ti route was going to cost me $130 more for less performance because I needed a DVI to DP adapter so obviously I went with the two 970's which were cheaper than the Gigabyte 980ti that actually did have dual DVI. If I would have gone with another cheaper brand of 980ti then I would have needed two DVI to DP adapters to the tune of $200 extra and the problems that those adapters bring into the mix as well. I am stuck with a two card solution until the rift comes out and then I'm going to ditch these 3d surround monitors and go single card solution from here on out. I'd say 90% of my gaming is troublefree in SLI though so the issues that come with SLI you are rarely going to run into. Surround on the other hand can be a frustrating experience more often than not and the problems seem to get worse as time goes on, particularly in 3d surround. You will have FOV issues, fps issues, profile issues, etc etc. Nvidia's drivers are about as bad as it gets from a 3d surround perspective and getting worse.
 
I have been gaming with SLi setups since 670 SLi. I have virtually no issues. Whenever SLi didn't work, I turned it off and enjoyed the game still since Drivers were up to snuff. However, I would suggest getting a single 980 ti and adding a second one later?
 
I have no problem with my 970SLI setup (system in sig). For me it was far cheaper than a 980ti that I was saving for, and the performance is mostly on par. Sure a few games don't support SLI but the fact is that most work fine and give equal or better performance. The 970's also overclock extremely well.

I do wonder how long the 4(3.5?)GB will last but for now it is more than fine.
 
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SLI fix for Fallout 4. I'm very happy with my 970 SLI. I run Witcher 3 at 1440p with no problem. I bought them at launch so the 980ti wasn't an option at the time.

I'd buy a used 970 and until pascal. Rumors is its gonna be a beast.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MmkZ_JkJibU
 
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This thread has me wondering too. The likely Black Friday cost of a 970 means I can go SLI for little investment and then wait. There are two other PC's in the house a 970 is a huge upgrade so for me, going SLI for the boost now and can upgrade those later when Pascal rears it's head in the mid-high end.
 
The 8800 series is the only series that actually delivered on 'massive improvement over previous generation' rumors. I wouldn't put too much faith in pascal being that much better than the 900 series because nvidia's track record doesn't really back those claims up from a historical perspective. We'll see about pascal but I'm not holding my breath on the hype. Certainly not enough to prevent me from buying a card now if I needed to.
 
Well I bit, just ordered a 980Ti and EK block. A second 970 would have been a helluva lot more cost effective, but the SLI/xfiah issues on new releases leaves me not wanting to have to deal with it. As long as I'm on a single monitor at 1440p I'm probably going to stick with a single fast card and trade the additional co$t for issue free play. Thank for all the input guys!
 
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I made a thread, I just did the swap. 980ti is better in every way. I've been an SLI user consistently for 6+ years.
 
I had two Gigabyte 970 WF3 OC cards in SLI. The biggest issues I had with it was that some games simply had poor SLI support. Far Cry 4 at the time was broken-working-broken again patch after patch. In general it worked fine though.

I moved to a single 980 Ti since I managed to sell my 970s for a good price and wanted to avoid any future issues with the segmented VRAM. I should note that Shadow of Mordor was the only game where I had noticed an issue with that.

Going to the single 980 Ti I feel there is a tiny bit less input lag. I have the fastest display around (ASUS PG278Q) and the 980 Ti seems to run everything just a bit smoother even though framerates are probably quite similar to 970 SLI.

At this point I'd probably either wait until next year and get the next top Nvidia card or sell your 970 and get a 980 Ti because I feel it will be a more future-proof solution at 1440p. I doubt I'll sell mine until 4K @ 120 Hz becomes viable.
 
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