GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review (Page 26)

GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review

Graphics cards 1048 Page 26 of 26 Published 2014-10-01 08:38 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Final Words & Conclusion

Alright, a good week after Nvidia released their GeForce GTX 970 and 980 products we now are ready to show you a proper and not rushed our 980 SLI review. At the request of you guys, triple SLI results have been added. You have been able to notice that up-to 2x SLI, scaling is pretty darn nice. Now, 3-way SLI works well, but does not scale as good. We always figured 3-way SLI to be more for the benchmark crunchers and true aficionado’s rather than is being a wise investment. Much like our 970 SLI review a couple things surfaced, the first being 3-way SLI scaling as mentioned, the second one being that the higher you go in monitor resolution, the more difficult the Maxwell GPUs seem to be able top cope. Nvidia cut down the GM204 GPU in shader processors and overall specs including a much narrower memory bus (256-bit) opposed to the 780 product series, and that does seem something hard to tackle, even with the high clock frequencies the these new Maxwell products are running. So for Ultra HD, I feel the 780 Ti / Titan (Black) is still a better product (even if it has only 3 GB graphics memory). However up-to 2560x1440 the 970 and 980 cards in multi-GPU modes rock & roll hard, very hard actually. Also a small note. You will have noticed that I marked and noted two discrepancies in the benchmarks. Some older configurations have been tested with an older driver. It is nearly impossible to keep all results up-to date with the latest drivers. Next to that, cards like the Titan-Z all have been returned to the company we borrowed them from, so we cannot re-test such cards. Overall the results will offer very good indicative benchmarks results, but there are some small discrepancies here and there. Again, this is a good rough overview of where the product is SLI wise in terms of raw unadulterated performance. Playing games with even one GeForce GTX 970 or 980 for the money is already pretty kick-ass. It is a solid product series that is priced right with the 970 offering the most value for money.

Our recommendation as such is simple and similar to the 970 SLI review, with a single monitor setup up-to say 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 you'd be good to go with just one card, two if you want that extra boom-boom-pow. Now, if you have that nice Ultra HD monitor with a 3840x2160 resolution, that's where a 3rd card could make a lot of sense. But A) I am inclined to recommend 970'ies for price performance and B) I am still inclined to stay away from 3-way SLI setups. I think you need to spend too much money for what you receive in return scaling wise. Processor power then. We use a X79 / Core i7 3960 Extreme processor clocked at 4600 MHz. Pretty much the equivalant of the X99 with a 6-core processor, yet clocked faster. With multi-GPU gaming these faster clocked 6-core puppies do show an increase in performance. You do need to wonder though if the 10~15% performance increase in lower resolutions really justifies that money, but obviously if you can afford two or three cards in SLI, you probably will go for the best and fastest infrastructure as well. That would be X79 and upwards to X99 with a nice 6 or 8 core processor.

Noise & Heat

Depending on your configuration the temperature target protection of the reference GeForce GTX 980 hovers in the 80 to 85 Degrees C at maximum. As explained, in a poorly ventilated chassis this can have an adverse effect, since the temperature is the top priority the cards could clock down a bit once they want to pass that 83 degrees C target. Mind you that all board partners offer 3rd party coolers available with all the AIB brands, these are a lot better in cooling performance for the most of them! But a word of advice, please do lookout if the SLI bridge will still fit ! We have seen several cooler designs that block the SLI bridge, then you'll need a flexible SLI bridge to compensate. Noise wise really, it's as good as it can be. Up-to two cards you can hear a some airflow under full GPU stress. Nothing rather irritating or annoying though. And again, with board partner cards like the ones from Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, Galax and ASUS you will be surprised how silent such a SLI setup can be.

In closing

I like the GeForce GTX 980 in SLI x2, but the truth is that I love the 970 in 2-way SLI at 2560x1440, I really do. Value for money wise that is the SLI combo to pursue. Adding 300 to 400 USD going from 970 SLI to 980 SLI simply does not justify the extra money. Then again, if you got cash to burn, who am I to judge right ? Low noise, low heat and low power consumption are the icing on top of this cake. I mean two GeForce GTX 970 or 980 cards in SLI consume roughly 300 to 350 Watts, add to that the rest of your system (processor, chipset, peripherals) at say 200 Watts and you'll find yourself in the 500 Watt power consumption region. Have you ever noticed a powerful SLI system to consume that little ? Even overclocked with our 3 Way SLI setup we never even breached 650 Watts, that is pretty crazy really. Now if you plan to overclock CPU and GPUs, then make sure you add at least another 200W onto your PSU requirements, this is why we always recommend higher Watt power supplies as you need that little extra reserve my man. There is a secondary reason, power supply efficiency is at its best at 50% load. So if your PC SLI combo eats 375 Watt on average during gaming, a nice and propoer 80-plus certified 750 Watt PSU would be a strong recommendation here. Keep that in mind okay? A good PSU can actually save you money on the long term. To be able to operate two or more cards in SLI mode you'll need a SLI compatible motherboard, most if not all Intel X58, P67, Z68, Z77, Z87, Z99, X79 and X99 motherboards are SLI certified, some older P55 motherboards as well. But if you are still on that platform then I can not stress enough that you really need to upgrade anytime soon in the future. AMD's 900 series carry SLI support as well. Please do check that out before opting for your SLI preference and thus before purchasing multiple cards. Driver Compatibility - In all our tests we had no real driver issues. Scaling wise 2-way SLI works well, and 3-way SLI has a much more difficult time scaling wise. Also we stumbled into a game or two where 3-way SLI scaling did not even kick in, Metro and Tomb raider where such examples in Ultra HD. The rest of the games all worked straight out of the box. We see a bit of a bottleneck with Hitman Absolution up-to WHQD but that is expected with so much raw graphics horsepower under the hood. You'll notice that with older game titles as well. Other than that, seriously nothing other than props. The frame-drops in FCAT we are still investigating. Rest assured you cannot see/detect these frame-drops yourself. Hence we think it could be an issue with our FCAT system.

So again, two GeForce GTX 970 cards set up in SLI will still cost you roughly 650~750 EURO, two GeForce GTX 980 cards will top 1100~1200 EURO. When using SLI the difference is there and measurable, but the question remains to be seen whether or not you find that extra cash it worth it for two 980'ies. Regardless of what option you choose, you'll gain a serious performance kicking your configuration into the highest gear performance wise. The thermals are well under control, noise levels acceptable and in SLI you can even overclock really well, especially the board partner cards offer the best cooling and performance.

Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Noise & Heat

In closing

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