I already have an Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition 8gb GDDR5x and I'd like to add a second
I've seen other Nvidia GTX 1080's with GDDR5 but no X.
Does that make a difference?
Could I SLI with an EVGA or other brand without performance loss?
Second Generation GDDR5X: More Memory Bandwidth - The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founder's Edition Review: Bigger Pascal for Better Performance
I had never heard of GDDR5x, but it apparently is significantly different from GDDR5.
I don't know whether you could SLI a GDDR5x card with a GDDR5 one. Other than that, I believe that you can mix makes. nVidia updated their drivers years ago to permit that; I hope that they haven't broken it.
Newegg has a few FE cards on offer. The only new one is rather expensive. GeForce GTX 1080 FE, Desktop Graphics Cards, Video Cards & Video Devices, Components - Newegg.com
I haven't found benchmarks, but you may be better off with a single RTX 2080 ti or RTX 2080 Super. Either has GDDR6, which is supposed to be better than GDDR5x.
I would but that's a $600 card minimum where another GTX1080FE is $400 and is slightly better in SLI. Although I guess I could sell my 1080FE and only pay $200-$300 for a 2080
Some card sellers (manufacturers like EVGA etc) offer a substantial trade in offer for older cards when buying RTX's, that may be worth looking into if you decide to "upgrade", but tbh the 1080's are not much less powerful than the 2080's (at least the non TI versions of the 2080's). I suggest you look at some recent benchmarks comparing the 1080's and 2080's, then decide what you need from your GPU before biting the bullet.
PC Gamer has such benchmarks as does Techspot.
As for SLI, it seems to be a lot less popular amongst game and app producers, although some professional level apps still support SLI with, for example Quadro cards and Titan X series, but SLI is down to the driver support, and Nvidia are killing it off.
I based my suggestion on the Newegg prices. If you can get an 1080FE for $400US, that may change the picture.
I must admit to a lack of enthusiasm for SLI. I have done it in the past, but have given up on it as not worth the trouble. I originally did it with 3dfx Voodoo2 cards, when SLI meant "scan line interleaving".
I went to the bottleneck calculation website and with the Ryzen Threadripper 1950 Im eyeballing with 2 gtx 1080fe there is almost none at all.
Are you contemplating changing out your motherboard and RAM? The MSI 970A-G46 use Socket AM3+ and DDR3 RAM. The Threadripper 1950x uses Socket sTR4 (which is an LGA type; no pins on the CPU) and DDR4.
That's probably a worthwhile upgrade, but a couple of hundred bucks on the GPU would be a small part of that.
Well ofcourse. New ddr4, mobo, watercooler. Got my wishlist all planned out. About $1200 in upgrades
Just my opinion on SLI or Crossfire issues: Back in the day of both, the mobo's only had a single PCIe x16 slot and the next slot was directly down from it and at X8. So your speed was reduced but theoretically with sli/crossfire mode it mad up the difference. Then you have to figure out the cooling aspect of both cards, do to the close proximity or the cards. So one is always regurgitating hot exhaust so the top card is always running hotter. Unless both cards where end of card discharging exhaust. Then you have to have more over all case intake air.
Then the cost effectiveness of a high end single card vs sli/crossfire mode with the added cooling....you end up about the same price point. So for me, the choice is a single high end card. Again, it just my opinion.
I would like to add my thoughts.
I have 2 ASUS GTX 1080's SLI. They run most games flawlessly, including the latest COD:Modern Warfare on the highest settings @ 70-80 FPS with normal temps under load.
I have done a thorough bit of research on the RTX 2080's, specifically the Ti version and was about to pull the trigger until I came across many reports of heat issues with the 2080's.On a whim I simply typed in Google, "problems with the RTX 2080's" and report after report shows temp issues. Nvidia is aware and are working on it but it's been a year since the first reports. I decided to wait. I was also going to sell my 2 GTX 1080's to offset the cost.
As far as the benchmarks? Go with the SLI 1080's but if your like me, you'll be itching for the faster ones :)
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