760 2gb in SLI? Or a single 770 4gb?

[Dkboy24]

Hey everyone! I want to play my heavily modded Skyrim without stutters or FPS loss in densely rendered areas. I currently am running a single EVGA GeForce 760 2gb card and was thinking of buying a 2nd one for SLI.

 

But I got to thinking.. I think my main issue is my vRam and not my graphics so would it be better to buy a single 770 GeForce 4gb instead? I'm also gearing up for ESO in April and want to make sure I can run it on the highest possible graphics.

 

System Specs:

 

Alienware Aurora R4

i7- 3820 CPU @ 3.60 GHz

8 GB RAM

64-bit OS

 

Thanks all!!

[ZeroKing]

VRAM isn't the only thing that's affecting your performance (GPU shaders, per-pixel handling, etc.), and given that newer games will likely have better memory optimization, it's better in both the short term and in the long term to go SLI. Besides, since you already have a GTX 760, why suddenly upgrade to a GTX 770 when 2x GTX 760 can easily beat it.

 

Unless, of course, you plan to buy a GTX 770 now and wait for a while before going SLI with another GTX 770.

 

As well, considering that you have ESO in mind, you won't need 4 GB for that, but overall GPU performance, which 2x GTX 760 offers more than 1x GTX 770.

[Dkboy24]

ZeroKing, Thanks so much for your reply! I've never done SLI before and although I've been doing a lot of reading on it, I feel like I keep getting mixed reactions. The SLI option was my first idea so It's nice to have a vote for that (It's also cheaper for me as well! haha). I'm worried about my PSU or my cooling as my tower has a water cooling system and my PSU said it was built for SLI.

[ZeroKing]

Well, mixed reactions usually are given because of driver problems, lack of good PSUs for some, and that people in general are hesitant to try out SLI or CrossFire. It is troublesome to install for some, especially given you need the appropriate hardware like good PSU, motherboard, etc., whereas slapping in a single, better GPU is easier, software and hardware considering.

 

Similar to your situation, I already had a GTX 680 in my computer, so rather than get a GTX 780 Ti (725$ CAD), I saved 200$ and get myself another GTX 680. I had the hardware for SLI, so why not, right?

 

In my locale, getting a second GTX 760 would mean that I saved sufficient money to get a better PSU in any case.

 

NOTE: Do see if your case has sufficient airflow, if your PSU has enough wattage and good amp delivery for SLI, and that your motherboard supports SLI (some only support CrossFire, for instance).

[Dkboy24]

The MB is set up for SLI, but my concern will be that when I hook up the 2nd card, they will be so close to each other they may even touch. I worry about air flow... I mean, the 760 has good airflow but I'm not sure how it would react to have another card sitting on top of it. Maybe if I hooked up an extra case fan to point at the GPU's?

[Werne]

To be honest, I'd rather forget SLI and go for a single, powerful graphics card. Thing with SLI is that when it scales correctly, it'll perform very well, but when it doesn't you're looking at a ton of problems. Some games do make problems and you can't do anything about it, Skyrim is the prime example of that where Crossfire/SLI can either scale well, scale bad, or even cause worse performance than what you'd get with a single card. Most Gamebryo games act like that since it's an engine problem, although FO3/NV and older have much less problems than they used to since support for them improved in Nvidia/AMD drivers.

 

Micro-stuttering is another issue that plagues dual-card configurations, Nvidia cards are not affected as much but once the cards get stressed it may become an issue.

 

Another big problem with CF/SLI is heat. The bottom card heats up about as much as the upper card, and the upper card is sucking in the lower card's hot air which may cause it to throttle, and that in turn causes the second card to throttle as well since their GPUs and VRAM clocks are synchronized. You need good airflow to keep them cool enough, preferably with a fan on the side panel to feed them air, and make sure you can exhaust all of it or you'll be overheating your CPU and other components.

 

Finally, do check will your PSU take it. Even though some PSUs tend to say they have the wattage, they don't necessarily output the advertised wattage. I still have a 750W PSU around that can only give around 450W, and I've seen plenty of PSUs that can't give the wattage manufacturer claims they can give. Fry a PSU and you may fry the entire PC.

 

And I must say it again, going with a dual-card configuration is not a bullet-proof solution, there may be problems you can't avoid like scaling issues, driver issues, etc. Just adding another card is cheaper than getting a single-card solution but not always better.

[Dkboy24]

Thank you for your feedback Criminal Scum! You bring up a lot of valid points.. in the event a game is not set up for SLI, will it simply only use one card? Or will it try to use both cards with errors?

[Werne]

Thank you for your feedback Criminal Scum!

It's Werne actually, criminal scum would be my member title.

 

in the event a game is not set up for SLI, will it simply only use one card? Or will it try to use both cards with errors?

If SLI doesn't scale well, the game will still attempt to use both graphics processors since your hardware/software is set up that way. But you can disable SLI for certain games that don't scale well so only one card gets used on them while games that do scale well would use both cards. I'm not sure where exactly would you disable SLI since I only ever used an ATI/AMD card, but I do know for a fact that it can be disabled on individual games.

[Dkboy24]

Derp! So sorry about that Werne!! So I think I figured out what to do.. going to try the SLI config with 2 760's and see what happens. If it doesn't pan out the way I'm hoping and causes more problems than it resolves, I will donate the extra card to my girls rig since she needs an upgrade anyway. Ordered my SLI bridge today and I should have the card by next week. I'll report back to this thread and update when (or if..) I get it working. If Skynet crashes and a robot army takes over mankind... it probably means I screwed something up.

[Dkboy24]

As promised here is the update to this thread.

 

Good news: I picked up the 2nd GTX 760, hooked them both up and fired up the game. It ran perfectly! I rarely dipped below 60 FPS and had almost zero stutter issues. It even seemed to make my game more stable. I even went and installed my first ENB mod to put some more strain on it and it seemed almost unaffected. Awesome...or so I thought...

 

Bad news: After about four hours of gameplay, I exited the game and fired up EVGA's Precision tool. My bottom card was running at about 80c!! That is waaaay too hot! The main problem my mobo has is that the only two available PCI ports are right next to each other. So my two cards were pretty much sitting on one another. The way the fans are mounted, my top card was blowing hot air directly onto my bottom card, and my bottom card had only maybe an inch of space between the metal housing that holds my PSU to vent. I knew just then and there that I could not continue with that set up. No way could I risk blowing up my GPU's with that kind of crazy temp so sadly today I took the 2nd card back.

 

I ordered a PNY GeForce 770 4GB card as I read nothing but rave reviews on it. I'm hoping the extra 2GB of VRAM will help load hi-res textures faster and I'm hoping I will still continue to see smooth gameplay and a solid FPS.