GeneralWhen is SLI/Crossfire for gaming/streaming necessary
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GeneralWhen is SLI/Crossfire for gaming/streaming necessaryPosted:

Knowledge_1
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No I do not plan on upgrading to SLI now or any time in the near future.

I'm just curious if there are any practical benefits for this for specifically gaming/streaming.
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Adam
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Reasons to think about potentially Xfire / SLI
If you already have a GPU that's fairly cheap and you don't have the funds to upgrade to a better one, you can add another one which you might want to get 2nd / 3rd hand to "boost" your performance

Reasons to not Xfire / SLI
Driver issues
Driver issues
Driver issues
Driver issues
Did I mention Driver issues?
Lack of developer support
Doesn't really make sense in the real world. If you want more performance, one stronger card will out perform 2 weaker cards.
Driver issues
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It is also worth noting that you'll actually get negative scaling with SLI/XFire in a lot of newer titles, so you lose performance by adding a second card. Plus a lot more games with no SLI/XFire support at all, so performance remains the same. Even games that do support SLI/XFire can have real issues with stuttering because adding the second GPU can raise avg/max FPS, but seriously tank your 1% and 0.1% low FPS which is not a fun experience.

I used to run SLI GTX 970s because they cost slightly more than a single GTX 980, but I got GTX 980Ti performance in the games I played before the 980Ti was even released. I did, however, have issues with stuttering in GTA V, but it wasn't that bad tbh. Then the games I was playing didn't really have SLI support so I ended up just getting rid of one of the 970s. I'd have probably been better off waiting for the 980Ti to release and getting one of those, rather than SLI 970s. It was a fun experience running a multi-GPU set-up, but I wouldn't recommend it, especially now.

I don't think multi-GPU set-ups are completely dead. I think they'll come back in some form at some point in the future, but for now, SLI/XFire is pointless.
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