SLI by NVIDIA - Everything you Need to Know as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2014-05-07
·
846 words · ~4 min read
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NVIDIA sli technology was introduced back in 2004 it allowed users to run two
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graphics cards simultaneously to theoretically double 3d gaming
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performance versus what could be achieved with a single card here we are
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10 years later the technology has changed a lot now we have professional
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grade sli for 3d rendering multi-way sli with support for three or even four
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graphics processors concurrently and a plethora of different operational modes
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but the misconceptions about it have stayed pretty much the same so first up
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sli only works with cards based on the same graphics processor and with the
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same amount of onboard memory you can run these two cards in sli mode because
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they are identical these ones will still
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work because they are both gtx 780s
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that's the GPU or graphics processor with three gigabytes of RAM that's the
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memory even though they are from different manufacturers you only start
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running into trouble when you want to pair up two gig cards with four gig
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cards or two gig cards with different gpus or mix NVIDIA cards with AMD cards
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etc so guys it's not gonna work so
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please stop trying beyond choosing the right cards setting up sli is pretty
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easy you'll need an sli ready operating system an sli certified motherboard with
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two pci express 16x slots an sli bridge
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and a power supply that can provide enough power for as many cards as you're
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running NVIDIA has guidelines for all this stuff linked in the video
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description or better yet you can get personalized advice by posting in the
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linustechtips.com forum all right so what are the benefits number one as i
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mentioned before is better performance especially at higher resolutions like
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2560x1440 and 4k number two is better
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graphical fidelity instead of running out 130 FPS when your monitor only
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displays 60 images per second you can crank up the settings for better image
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quality while maintaining an acceptable frame rate number three is it looks
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awesome for lots of folks the improved performance while very important is not
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the only reason they do it it's shallow but i know i'm not the only one who
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thinks this way well gosh that sounds perfect right sign me up we'll hold on a
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second it's not all rosy the law of diminishing returns comes down pretty
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hard on sli configurations two cards obviously costs twice as much as one but
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it's rare for that to actually completely double your performance in a
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real world scenario and even less common to see triple the performance with three
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cards you'll also see increased power consumption and heat output so you want
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to make sure your power supply is adequate your pc case ventilation is
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adequate and in some extreme cases your room ventilation is adequate game
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compatibility is much better than it used to be but there are still games
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that don't have any kind of sli support especially right at release so that
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second card might be sitting there doing nothing sometimes especially if you're
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one of those people who lines up at midnight to buy the latest games finally
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there's the issue of micro stuttering or frame time variants which some people
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are more or less susceptible to but NVIDIA has that mostly taken care of
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compared to the competition while that last bit probably sounded like i was
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pretty down on sli i'm not multi-card configurations are the only way to get
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truly next generation performance today and for gamers who want to play at very
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high resolutions with very high detail settings and always get butter smooth
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frame rates those trade-offs we talked about before are going to sound like no
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big deal hence the continued success of sli today almost 10 years after its
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introduction speaking of masterful segues into ads
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