FEATURE / ANALYSIS
IS SLI STILL A VIABLE OPTION FOR GAMING PCS?
EDWARD CHESTER AND BEN HARDWIDGE
INVESTIGATE WHETHER IT’S STILL WORTH
PAIRING UP TWO GPUS IN GAMES
SLI
PICKINGS
E
versinceNvidiareintroduced the SLI
brandin 2004,adding two or more
graphicscardstoa system has been
seenastheultimatewaytoget the best
graphicsperformancepossible. However,
particularly in the last handful of years, there has
been less and less emphasis on the technology,
and fewer and fewer systems implementing it.
In fact, with its latest Navi-based graphics
cards, AMD dropped support for its rival
CrossFire technology, killing stone-dead any
chance of tying multiple AMD GPUs together
with full support from AMD. Technically, you
can still get two AMD GPUs to work together in
some games using the API’s own multi-GPU
system, but you won’t get any official driver
support from AMD.
So, is multi-GPU gaming still a going concern,
and if it is, just what are the benefits, and should
you invest in such a setup? We’ll answer these
questions and more over the next few pages.Scan sent us
a high-end
Ryzen 3950X
system, with
several EVGA
graphics cards,
for SLI testing