What is the Purpose of Two Graphics Cards?

CerebralFreeze · 13 Nov 2020

Thanks, pretty informative post. I know what you mean by bragging rights. I think that's a definite impetus for a lot of buyers.

badrobot said:

It is not required but some games require 2 GPU to get the full experience in terms of the smoothness and fluidity of 3D rendering at maximum settings.
For some, it is just a bragging rights for benchmark "competitions".

I used to rock 2 GPUs a very long time ago. But at this time and age, those GPUs I had are very useful as paper weights... :)

Attachment 306150

Ghot · 13 Nov 2020

bobkn said:

nVidia SLI: Scalable Link Interface - Wikipedia

AMD Crossfire: AMD CrossFire - Wikipedia

The term SLI original meant "scan line interleaving" as used by the late, lamented 3dfx. 3dfx Interactive - Wikipedia (I may still have a Voodoo 1 card in a box, somewhere.)

Multiple cards are used for 3D gaming to run higher resolutions than would be practical with a single card. It's also useful for lightening gamer's wallets.

Graphics cards can also be used for some specialized processing applications. At time high-end cards were hard to get because they were being bought up bu cryptocurrency (e. g., Bitcoin) miners. Some supercomputers have been built using many nVidia GPUs that are dedicated to processing; no graphics.

Back in the day I had a Voodoo 5 5500 (dual GPU vid card). 3dfx was awesome in those days.

After they switched to PCI-e I sold it to a collector.

CerebralFreeze · 13 Nov 2020

Nice. I can't believe a collector bought used cards. How much did they pay for it?

Ghot said:

Back in the day I had a Voodoo 5 5500 (dual GPU vid card). 3dfx was awesome in those days.

After they switched to PCI-e I sold it to a collector.

Ghot · 13 Nov 2020

CerebralFreeze said:

Nice. I can't believe a collector bought used cards. How much did they pay for it?

It was like $300 I think. He worked in a computer repair shop. He collected things like historical pieces of hardware.
It was one of the only vid cards that had TWO GPUs on one card.

I also had a Voodoo 3 3000 before that. 3dfx got bought or subsumed by Nvidia. There was no consumer Nvidia at the time. 3dfx was king. [I wasn't a fan of ATI vid cards back then. They changed their name to Radeon, then they got bought by AMD]

Here's a pic of the Voodoo 5 5500

What is the Purpose of Two Graphics Cards?-image1.jpg

/edit

There was also a Voodoo 5 6000, but at the time I couldn't (wouldn't), afford that...

What is the Purpose of Two Graphics Cards?-image1.png

I believe this was my Nvidia first vid card... down at the bottom of the stack.
I also have a GTX 780 Ti and an RTX 2070 (not shown in the pic)

What is the Purpose of Two Graphics Cards?-img_0193.jpg

Atomic1977 · 18 Nov 2020

Double the graphics card double the power.

AS185 · 20 Nov 2020

I used to have 2 GTX 1080Ti's in SLI. However, I noticed and decided that it is truly pointless nowadays. The drivers for Nvidia's SLI are practically obsolete. What's even worse, most of the games won't function properly. I sold one card and keep one for reference. Surely is a beauty

AddRAM · 20 Nov 2020

If the game supports SLI, then 2 things can happen.

1 video card will either make 1 frame or half a frame

then the other card will make the next frame, or the other half of a frame

The 2 980 Ti`s on my Z170 chew up any game I throw at them, with all settings maxed out.

bobkn · 21 Nov 2020

AddRAM said:

If the game supports SLI, then 2 things can happen.

1 video card will either make 1 frame or half a frame

then the other card will make the next frame, or the other half of a frame

The 2 980 Ti`s on my Z170 chew up any game I throw at them, with all settings maxed out.

If buying new, a single RTX 2080 Super (not a 2080ti) might have similar performance to a pair of 980 ti. An RTX 3080 ought to be significantly more powerful, if it ever can be had without dealing with scalpers (or wearing out your finger pressing F5 on a retail web site). nVidia appears to be moving away from SLI.