FEATURE/ ANALYSIS
year-old card, and youcanpickupa second
one very cheaply second-hand,soit
would be good to at leasthavetheoption
of SLI. However, it’s stillmuchmorelikely
that simply upgradingtoa fastercardwill
be a better bet.
Game compatibility
If there's a single reasonwhymulti-
GPU has struggled totakeoffandstick
with us, it’s simply gamecompatibility.
Unfortunately, SLI can’tjustworksilently
in the background andaccelerateevery
single game that’s thrownatit.Instead,
each game needs an SLIprofiletotellthe
graphics driver how tobestmanagethe
game’s renderer.
What’s more, somegamessimplydon’t
work either very welloratallwithSLI.This
can be for all manner ofreasons,butthe
You need at leasta pair
of GeForceRTX 2070
Super cardsif you
want to enableSLSLI
reality is that many games either just crash,
will only run on one GPU or will have stutter
or visual artefacts. We tested a handful
of the most popular modern games and
several had major issues. If you’re looking
to play slightly more obscure or indie titles,
there’s little chance SLI will add much to
your gaming experience.Other downsides
While the potential positives of SLI are fairly
clear, with up to a doubling of performance on
the cards, the negatives aren’t just confined
to game compatibility. First, there’s the cost.
Even when dealing with high-end cards, it
can still sometimes be worth spending the
extra on a full single-card upgrade instead,
even if you do get good compatibility and
performance improvement using SLI in many
of the games you play. More expensive cardscan potentially provide a larger VRAM pool as
well, and provide more consistent frames in
many games as well.
Then there’s heat and noise to consider.
While some motherboards and SLI bridges
may allow for a large gap between cards,
in most setups one card will be right next to
the other, which can severely restrict airflow,
in turn boosting temperatures and noise
levels. In fact, you could potentially even see
thermal throttling hamper performance if
airflow isn’t kept in check.
This leads onto the third consideration,
which is power consumption. With modern
graphics cards being very sophisticated
with their power management, the drain
of an extra card while idle is potentially
quite modest. However, once two cards are
cranked up, you’ll see a serious increase in
power draw.,)<28Ś5(/22.,1*723/$<025(2%6&85(25
INDIE TITLES, THERE’S LITTLE CHANCE SLI WILL
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