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SLI in a nutshell is a way of using more than one graphics card at a time for a

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richer gaming experience with higher frame rates and more in-game eye candy

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turned on you can learn more about it in this video here on Techquickie now

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NVIDIA's website is full of certain

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information about SLI technology which graphics cards support it where to buy

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the other Hardware you need guides on how to set it up but I noticed that

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Beyond one specific 2-way SLI

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configuration at one specific resolution they don't seem to even want to talk

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about the value proposition of adding in

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more cards or how performance scales in

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relation to the cost as you put more and more graphics cards in your gaming PC so

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when a unique opportunity fell into my lap to test two-way three-way and

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four-way SLI with the brand spanking new gtx980 at 4K I jumped on it

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Corsair gaming RGB keyboards feature Precision Cherry MX RGB key switches for

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16.8 million color per key backlighting for virtually unlimited customization

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click now to learn more I'm going to jump right into numbers here because

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they actually only tell part of the story I tested four games with details

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cranked at 4K resolution on a Gigabyte x99 gaming 5 with a core I 749 30k 6

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core at 4 GHz and 16 gigs of 24 100 MHz

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ddr4 memory and then I threw a Corsair ax 1500i power supply on the bench

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because I was concerned about power consumption and overwhelming the

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existing one but more on that later so

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let's start with what should be the poster child for multi-way SLI Tomb

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Raider 2013 if all you do is hang around and play Tomb Raider go buy 4 GTX 980s

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hell buy an extra one to keep on your desk to remind you of how great it is

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you get 30 FPS average with one card then 20 3 to 24 more frames per second

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with each additional card almost the same scaling going from 1 to two 2 to 3

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and 3 to four cards and on top of that the animations are butter smooth with no

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perceptible micro stutter outstanding

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it's just too bad not every game is like this if Tomb Raider is the poster child

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Watch Dogs is the one in the corner with the duns hat scaling from one GPU to two

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seems okay at first glance if we only look at average frame rates but minimum

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frame rates tell a bit more of the story they dropped almost in half and this

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hitching and stuttering was very noticeable in game it actually gets

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worse the more graphics cards you add yet another issue for the PC version of

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Watchdog next up is Far Cry 3 something

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unusual you might notice about this game is that the minimum frame rates are very

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close to the average frame rates in some cases this is because our run for this

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game involves driving around a track running over dudes and getting shot at

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and looks very consistent having minimum and average frame rates close to each

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other makes animations appear very smooth on screen at least with one or

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two gpus installed in the system even though average frame rates scale very

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well with more gpus you can see that minimums don't and this manifests as

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uneven inconsistent movement of objects on screen with three or four graphics

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cards our last game is Crisis 3 just

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like Far Cry 3 it scaled well from 1 to 2 gpus but we see the same issue with

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great average frame rate scaling and poor minimum frame rate scaling that

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translates to uneven lurchy animations in the case of Crisis 3 it was actually

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noticeably worse than Far Cry 3 with three-way and four-way SL so much so

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that as a gamer I would much rather play with two graphics cards at lower detail

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settings than with more graphics cards and game settings cranked speaking of

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in-game settings if you want to see how I was running everything check out the

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download link in the video description GPU boost clock speed was another

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interesting part of the story with two gpus we saw slightly lower turbo speeds

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because we hit our thermal limit sooner on the top card than the bottom one

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because it has less access to Fresh Air surprisingly though we reached the same

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GPU speed even in the other configurations pretty impressive when

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they're all packed in like sardines in a four-way config speaking of impressive

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power consumption I mean I mentioned before I threw A500 watt 80 plus

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titanium PSU in this rig to ensure that

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I wouldn't be limited the fan on it barely even turned on our four-way SLI

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configuration Drew 620 Watts from the wall in our stare at the fire test in

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Far Cry 3 that means that even accounting for another 50% capacity for

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future expansion 1,000 watt power supply would have been plenty for this rig so

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it's back on the bench all right now back up a second line is you run in here

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throw a bunch of graphs in our faces for five minutes and then basically voice

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over telling us to ignore the performance numbers because they don't reflect the gameplay experience what

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gives great question normally when we do

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benchmarks on this channel it's okay to use fraps to take average frame rates

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and compare graphics cards relative performance because in our game

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showdowns and our graphics card reviews we only test single GPU configurations

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with multi-GPU configurations particularly Beyond 2-way as I've been

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discussing in this video different measurements need to be taken

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to evaluate the evenness of the pace

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with which new frames are delivered to the gamer here's an example the video

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you're watching right now is playing at 30 frames per second

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smooth hold on a second what was that we only dropped the frame rate 3% to 29

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frames per second but because we're doing this by dramatically increasing

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the delivery time of just a few frames periodically you're seeing very

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noticeable hitches and stutters aren't you that's what I'm talking about now

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unfortunately we don't have the equipment to objectively measure the

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perceived smoothness of a game like you'll see on some of the hardcore Tech

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sites like PC per and tech report I recommend reading up on those sites by

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the way uh search for frame pacing if you want to learn more about this but

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the good news is that in the case of our multi-way SLI video today at least with

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this new and relatively immature driver for the GTX 980 it was easy to pick up

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on this stuff with the naked eye so being able to measure it wouldn't have

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changed the conclusion much and here it is what we've been saying for years is

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still true one of the fastest GPU you

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can afford is best in most cases because you'll always get the performance you

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paid for even in Watchdogs until you get

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up to the top tier cards at which point two of them might make sense if you

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really are hungry for more performance but beyond that things really come off

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the rails in a hurry and I guess I can see why NVIDIA offers you the capability

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to run more cards if they want to but didn't even have any three-way or

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four-way configs running even in their own demo systems at the gtx980 launch

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event so that pretty much wraps it up guys like this video if you liked it

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dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are more complicated than this check the

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link in the video description if you want to support us you can give us a monthly contribution bu a cool t-shirt

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oh I'm not wearing one of our t-shirts today well that's awkward buy a cool line is Tech tips t-shirt like oh why

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thank you like this one yeah I'm standing on a

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box he tripped on it and also uh change

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your link to Amazon to one with our affiliate code so we get a small

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Kickback whenever you buy I don't know licorice or whatever it is you buy on

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Amazon thanks for watching guys and as always don't forget to subscribe