NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series SLI Setup Will Cost You Over $3,000

Tsing

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Image: NVIDIA



If you’re a multi-GPU proponent who wishes to keep that tradition going with NVIDIA’s latest lineup of graphics cards, it’s going to cost you dearly. A comparison chart on the official site has confirmed that NVIDIA’s new NVLink Bridge peripheral is only compatible with the GeForce RTX 3090, which means that SLI is exclusive to the company’s 8K “BFGPU” for the Ampere generation.



Obviously, this is a big problem for those of us who don’t drive Audis and eat caviar all day. A single GeForce RTX 3090 costs $1,499, while the GeForce RTX NVLink Bridge costs $79.99. Do the math. (The correct answer is “yikes.”)



So, did NVIDIA kill multi-GPU with this decision? That’s what a lot of enthusiasts are claiming, but for the immediate future, those GeForce RTX 3090 SLI...
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I got good life out of my Maxwell based Titan X's in SLI. The 1080 Ti's, it wasn't nearly as good. When the 2080 Ti rolled around it was a pointless endeavor. It was the first generation I hadn't bought graphics cards in pairs since the 6800 GT days.
 
I don't see the need for SLI with the 3090 unless you're running Surround 4K monitors, and that is at least as rare as the number of people still running SLI these days.
 
Armenius said:
I don't see the need for SLI with the 3090 unless you're running Surround 4K monitors, and that is at least as rare as the number of people still running SLI these days.
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I wouldn't go full surround but I had one of those fantasy moments the other night. The ASUS Strix has 2 x HDMI 2.1 ports. Imagine having two 65" LG OLED G-Sync T.V.'s side by side in the living room. Their bezels are pretty thin too. 32:9 4K HDR G-Sync 120 Hz insanity. Any wants to donate a 2nd LG C9 to me I'll be happy to report on my fun after I get my 3090. :)
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
I wouldn't go full surround but I had one of those fantasy moments the other night. The ASUS Strix has 2 x HDMI 2.1 ports. Imagine having two 65" LG OLED G-Sync T.V.'s side by side in the living room. Their bezels are pretty thin too. 32:9 4K HDR G-Sync 120 Hz insanity. Any wants to donate a 2nd LG C9 to me I'll be happy to report on my fun after I get my 3090. :)
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Actually go for 3. You don't want a line down the middle of your screen running 2 in surround. If 2 is even supported, it didn't used to be the last time I even bothered to try surround (5 years ago)
 
This isn't surprising today sli is for video processing or extreme computational work more than entertainment.
 
I remember having SLI 470s and then SLI 970s. Kind of miss those setups. My SLI 1080 Vanilla didn't last nearly as long as I ended up moving one of them to my new HTPC setup where it currently sits.

Also had tri and quad SLI 980Ti setup, but it wasn't a daily driver or a gaming rig and I technically didn't use any SLI bridge on them. Just had 3 and 4 980Ti GPUs in the same rig.

I thought the 20 series killed off SLI. Or was it just the SLI bridge? Am I missing something here?
 
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LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I thought the 20 series killed off SLI. Or was it just the SLI bridge? Am I missing something here?
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Nvidia's been limiting the bridge, and thus SLI, to successively higher-end models in recent generations.

The real killer, though, is DX12 and Vulkan. These low-level APIs require significantly more work on the part of developers.

I also get the feeling that the drive to make multi-GPU work really isn't there because the market isn't really there. We're at one of those periods where games can be played on fairly pedestrian hardware; the single GTX970 in my living room rig is plenty for all current Battlefield games and even limped through The Outer Worlds for me earlier this year, and that was at 1440p.

Yeah, all that stuff looks and plays better on my main desktop with a 1080Ti, and of course it'd all look and run even better with something newer that supports DLSS and RT, but that's not a need, let alone justification for two!


I'll also share that I don't think that multi-GPU support is completely dead. While the mass market is largely satisfied with current offerings, the niches are certainly growing; VR, ultrawides, and even surround stand to push performance envelopes, and with the right games, the right amount of demand might materialize for support.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Is that even still possible?
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Should be. The methods in DirectX 12 explicit mGPU has not changed since its release, as far as I know. There is little reason to do it because of how few games support it, though. As many of us said when this feature was revealed, very few or perhaps even no developer was going to put in the effort to make it work. I believe Ashes of the Singularity and Rise of the Tomb Raider are still the only two games that actually support it. It is surprisingly difficult to find an up-to-date list of games that support explicit mGPU.
 
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