GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review - Introduction

GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI

Last week we had a peek at the GTX 970 setup in SLI, this round however we bring in the big guns. We will arm our big daddy PC rig with two and even three GeForce GTX 980 cards, yep we'll zoom in an up-to 3-way SLI performance for the GeForce GTX 980. In this review we'll run the standard benchmarks, but we will also have a good look at Ultra HD gaming performance as well as a micro stuttering analysis with the help of FCAT. Next to that we'll not only overclock the 2-way setup, but also overclock the 3-way SLI setup to see how overclocking and tweaking goes with that many graphics cards.

Obviously we'll throw in some 970 SLI results as well as for the money, nobody will deny that, it is the cheaper alternative. We will be looking at performance from a single monitor point of view, so ideally with so much horsepower a WQHD resolution (2560x1440/1600) is the monitor resolution where you should start (but preferably Ultra HD of course). You will notice great performance increases with 2-way SLI as the cards scale nicely with so much horsepower, 3-way SLI will have a bit more scaling issues. Yeah, while Full HD (1920x1080/1200) and WHQL (2560x1440) have become the industry standard within the display industry, enthusiasts will never settle for just the 'standard' and are always looking for the next big innovation in technology. Ultra HD gaming is exactly that, the next evolution in immersion that gamers have been waiting for. Commonly addressed as Ultra HD, UHD or 4K, this new resolution refers to the ultra-high resolutions with approximately 4000 horizontal pixels. Ultra HD resolution also has four times the number of pixels of a typical 1920x1080 resolution. It will be interesting to find out how the GeForce GTX 980 cards will handle such extreme resolutions. Considering its nice 4 GB framebuffer but slightly dimmed memory bandwidth yet hefty GPU clocks, it's looking quite alright I'd say! With UHD (Ultra High Definition Gaming) becoming rapidly popular we'll test multiple multi-GPU setups on such a monitor. Next to that we'll perform FCAT tests to see where AMD is in Autumn anno 2014 in terms of micro-stuttering and frame pacing.

Join us in this review where we'll once again look at everything. As if you figured just one card would be interesting, you have no idea what's coming at you with two and later on in the article, even three cards setup in SLI.