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  • Michael Bay - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    So, some bugfixes and irrelevant as ever sli. Why the new branch?
  • damianrobertjones - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    Why is sli irrelevant? Is it because you don't have two cards yourself?
  • dstarr3 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    Because it's always just been a marketing ploy to sell double the GPUs? SLI doesn't make any sense unless you're buying two of the most powerful card on the market, or you're buying an old, used card to give a boost to your current old card. If there's any single card that can get you the performance you want, that will always be the less expensive and more stable choice versus buying two lower-powered cards.
  • crimsonson - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    You just stated 2 reasons to do SLI.
    I don't think we are in agreement what "irrelevant" means here.
  • dstarr3 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    I just stated the ONLY two reasons to use SLI. And I'm going to hazard a guess that most of the people reading this don't have two 1080s in their rig right now. So one of those cases don't cover a lot of people at all.
  • BurntMyBacon - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link

    @dstarr3: "I just stated the ONLY two reasons to use SLI. And I'm going to hazard a guess that most of the people reading this don't have two 1080s in their rig right now. So one of those cases don't cover a lot of people at all."

    While I generally agree with your sentiment, I seriously doubt most people who have been rocking two GTX980Ti's since before Pascal launched are going to immediately drop them and get some GTX1080s. I suspect there are people with two GTX780Ti's that are still waiting for the next generation before upgrading to another top end SLI rig. Also, two GTX1070s (or previous generation equivalents) will still get you greater performance than the fastest single card available (at the time). It would seem that your narrow group of owners of two 1080s should at least be expanded to include the following models: 1070, 980ti, 980, 970, 780ti, 780 as multi card setups using these models were all generally faster than any single card available for their generation.

    I personally recommend single card setups and shy away from multi card setups even when it affords me more absolute FPS / lower average frame time than any single card available. However, there are people who want it and are willing to pay for it. There are also plenty of people who don't know anything about SLI other than it "Doubles" performance. I've seen people buy a midrange card and come back for the second only 6 weeks later. While they may be uninformed, they still payed for the product and associated services. SLI profiles to make use of their cards in a manufacturer supported setup are still expected here.
  • close - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    It means even the GPU manufacturers stopped concentrating that much on SLI/CF. It's a cumbersome solution both hardware and software wise, it's a lot more expensive then the single card option unless you're going for the highest end boards, it consumes more power, produces more heat and noise, it brings diminishing returns for every card you add and even the first 2 don't scale that well.
    It's mostly a gimmick for people who can spend the extra buck, for enthusiasts who look for an exotic setup and for benchmarkers.
  • HomeworldFound - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    People will SLI lower end cards because of the size of them or the amount of heat two top end cards creates.
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    There's a couple more considerations about SLI beyond what dstarr3 mentioned. DirectX 12 is likely to play a pretty big role by putting the onus on game developers to build support for SLI rather than the GPU manufacturer. Game devs have their purse strings held tight by cost sensitive publishers and there just aren't enough SLI-equipped PCs out there to justify investing any money on ensuring such configurations are supported.

    Another factor (somewhat supporting what dstarr3 said and also supporting the idea of DX12 throwing a wrench in the gears of SLI) is NV's dropping of SLI connectors on lower end cards and dumping support for > 2-way SLI. In a roundabout way, NV is acknowledging and helping to nail the SLI coffin shut through their own doing.

    You've got a perfect storm of an API that puts development and support costs on the most cost sensitive link in the chain, eroding manufacturer support, poor performance boosts relative to the cost/power demand, on-going need for driver updates explictly for a marginal market segment, and a recent, large jump in single card performance due to a die shrink. Things don't look that rosy for the future of SLI or its continued relevance.

    Perhaps VR can take advantage of AFR for a time to drive SLI along another generation or two, but as single GPUs deliver more performance more reliably and more cost effectively, that too won't matter. Furthermore, VR itself has barely a toehold in the industry as a halo usage scenario without proven growth to make it an appealing profit generator and that alone will discourage investments in application and hardware development no matter how "cool" it looks.
  • BurntMyBacon - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link

    @Michael Bay: "So, some bugfixes and irrelevant as ever sli. Why the new branch?"

    FOLDING@HOME ... Seriously ... It's the only thing that got updated that you didn't list, so what else could it be.
  • austinsguitar - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    these updates become less and less exciting... nothing new ever comes out on the software front from nvidia and the drivers are becoming more barbaric as time continues... about 2 years ago id say "stick with the design. its more stable that way" but now its like "maybe nvidia is just full of a bunch of lazy program teams :/" these updates are pathetic, and you too should feel like you want more from nvidia. im not asking for performance change, but software results and things to change the game. GET ON AMD'S LEVEL NVIDIA. i like my gtx 1070. make it more enjoyable already.
  • austinsguitar - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    like even tab switching on all my devices that use nvidia is like waiting for the next coming of christ... why do i need to wait 15 seconds for the next tab to open nvidia? its dumb, and even i can create a program to interface with controller boards connected to a raspberry pi faster than these drivers can figuring out what settings to show for my device. i swere im just very disapointed by all of this little stuff and it all adds up.
  • damianrobertjones - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    I've never actually thought of driver updates being 'exciting'?! :)
  • Bronek - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    driver updates can be exciting, but not in a good way :-P
  • Wolfpup - Friday, March 24, 2017 - link

    LOL, that is unfortunately true.
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    With fresh new telemetry?
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    I though that was only a part of their Game Ready thing which was optional during driver install (box could be unchecked). I haven't updated drivers for my laptop in a while, but the GPUs are so old in those they're not exactly getting development and one is under Linux. Did NV finally integrate data collection into the driver package itself? That'd be unreasonable, I think. We get enough of that from Internet services and Windows already.
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    Dual GPU support makes it harder to sells 1080s at a high price.
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    "...possibly enough SLI profilers to make multi-GPU gamers happy."

    Is "profilers" the correct word to describe that? It seems more like "profiles" would fit better there, but mabye it's industry-specific jargon I'm not familiar with.
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    Thumbs up for fixing F@H!
    (assuming it works)
  • Wolfpup - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link

    Anyone else quit installing Geforce Experience?

    I used to use it-didn't mind seeing what settings Nvidia suggested, though mostly it just served as a way to see if there were new driver updates.

    But then they change it so you have to log in to actually use it...no thanks.

    And then I discovered that my work system had transmitted multiple GBs in a single month thanks to all the servers Geforce Experience installs. I never use them, but at least on this one system they were transmitting a ton of data.

    On top of that of course, it's potentially a giant security risk because of all those inane servers it installs.

    I'm not usually one to call things "bloated", but in this case, I'm really, really disappointed with how they're handling Geforce Experience. At least the drivers still seem to work fine without it...
  • Wolfpup - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link

    EDIT: And by a ton of data, I mean WELL over 1GB, like the number one or two data user in my system was servers installed by Geforce Experience...that's completely nuts.

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