Any point to using 2 video cards nowadays?

Just from the form factor of cards today, it would be very difficult.
Back in the X58 days, I was a big fan of multi-gpu for rendering purposes and gpu-compute. I loved the dual gpu boards. Thermal issues were of secondary concern as waterblocks allowed the cards to be packed in place taking just a single slot. High end motherboards had 7 slots although I never had more than 4 GPUs per system (two cards). This was due to needing a full 8X slot available for caching HBA.

I never was into gaming but would run some tests on them and can confirm high frame rates in benchmarks but microstuttering galore too.

Just the thought of a dual socket 256 core EYPC system with 4TB RAM and 8 4090s crunching is eye watering indeed. Even before the switch is thrown when considering the price too ;-)
 
Dan_D summed up all the technical issues with trying to synchronize multiple GPUs today, so that's why you don't really see SLI/CrossFire anymore.

That doesn't necessarily make multiple GPUs in one computer useless, though, because if you're willing to set up a hypervisor and a few virtual machines with IOMMU passthrough, you can give each VM its own physical GPU. (And actual server-grade GPUs tend to support SR-IOV, so one physical GPU can then be broken up into multiple vGPUs.) Multiple gaming computers, one box!

The stupid huge RTX 4080 and 4090 heatsinks create a new challenge, however: simply fitting more than two inside the system. Full-cover waterblocks are effectively required, and even then, the extra height of the new cards with the new 12VHPWR connector means you still have trouble clearing the power cable without a 180-degree adapter.
 
One thing I forgot to mention was how scaling got worse with every generation of card after a certain point. While SLI was still technically being implemented, from about Maxwell or Pascal onward, it just got worse and worse. By the time the GTX 1080's came around SLI didn't work that often. It was rare a game worked with it. Even if it did the experience wasn't the smoothest. I downgraded my frame rates in some games with a single RTX 2080 Ti from my GTX 1080 Ti SLI setup but my actual gaming experience improved in almost every game I played at the time. Even at 4K.

I'm one of those guys that had 2, 3 and even 4 GPU setups over the years. Essentially, I had been buying GPU's in pairs (or more) nearly every generation since the 6800 Ultra PCIe days. I stopped with the NVIDIA 20 series. There was no point in continuing to buy GPU's that way.
 
Dan_D said:
One thing I forgot to mention was how scaling got worse with every generation of card after a certain point. While SLI was still technically being implemented, from about Maxwell or Pascal onward, it just got worse and worse. By the time the GTX 1080's came around SLI didn't work that often. It was rare a game worked with it. Even if it did the experience wasn't the smoothest. I downgraded my frame rates in some games with a single RTX 2080 Ti from my GTX 1080 Ti SLI setup but my actual gaming experience improved in almost every game I played at the time. Even at 4K.

I'm one of those guys that had 2, 3 and even 4 GPU setups over the years. Essentially, I had been buying GPU's in pairs (or more) nearly every generation since the 6800 Ultra PCIe days. I stopped with the NVIDIA 20 series. There was no point in continuing to buy GPU's that way.
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Same, jumped from 1080's in SLi to a 2080Ti and was 4K gaming then. While I loved the look of my 1080's in SLi and they did well in many games, the single 2080Ti was an overall much better experience.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Same, jumped from 1080's in SLi to a 2080Ti and was 4K gaming then. While I loved the look of my 1080's in SLi and they did well in many games, the single 2080Ti was an overall much better experience.
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Especially at space invaders! :-P

I had a bunch of 2080Tis do just that.

1080Ti was the last of SLI for me too.
 
cpufrost said:
Especially at space invaders! :-P

I had a bunch of 2080Tis do just that.

1080Ti was the last of SLI for me too.
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I lucked out as I specifically knew to look for the Samsung memory version, so I snagged mine at a local MicroCenter (so I could return if it was micron) and lucked out. Ran that card with a +1200Mhz clock on the memory and +150 on the core, was a beast of a card.

I think I got it maybe 6 months after launch, hard to recall exactly, but it was not on launch day, I know that for sure.
 
Dan_D said:
One thing I forgot to mention was how scaling got worse with every generation of card after a certain point. While SLI was still technically being implemented, from about Maxwell or Pascal onward, it just got worse and worse. By the time the GTX 1080's came around SLI didn't work that often. It was rare a game worked with it. Even if it did the experience wasn't the smoothest. I downgraded my frame rates in some games with a single RTX 2080 Ti from my GTX 1080 Ti SLI setup but my actual gaming experience improved in almost every game I played at the time. Even at 4K.

I'm one of those guys that had 2, 3 and even 4 GPU setups over the years. Essentially, I had been buying GPU's in pairs (or more) nearly every generation since the 6800 Ultra PCIe days. I stopped with the NVIDIA 20 series. There was no point in continuing to buy GPU's that way.
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There were exceptions, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Rise, at 4K scaled over 90% with two 1080Ti's. Just not enough games in the end where it was effective.
 
noko said:
There were exceptions, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and Rise, at 4K scaled over 90% with two 1080Ti's. Just not enough games in the end where it was effective.
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True. Destiny 2 did a good job with it too and that's a game I actually played at the time.
 
Dan_D said:
True. Destiny 2 did a good job with it too and that's a game I actually played at the time.
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Don’t forget the DICE games. I had 4x680 back then, out of my mind - although it cost about what a 4090 costs today.
 
4x GTX 680s? My god, man... If I remember right the original F.E.A.R. was one of the very rare games that actually scaled well over 4 GPUs. I honestly can't think of another game that does.
 
sk3tch said:
Don’t forget the DICE games. I had 4x680 back then, out of my mind - although it cost about what a 4090 costs today.
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I had three of those. I had a number of SLI, 3-Way, and Quad-SLI setups. I never did 4x cards in SLI as it was generally pointless.
Mr. Bluntman said:
4x GTX 680s? My god, man... If I remember right the original F.E.A.R. was one of the very rare games that actually scaled well over 4 GPUs. I honestly can't think of another game that does.
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There were very few that did. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was one I can recall that did well with 3 GPUs, 4 worked but you got very little out of the 4th GPU.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
4x GTX 680s? My god, man... If I remember right the original F.E.A.R. was one of the very rare games that actually scaled well over 4 GPUs. I honestly can't think of another game that does.
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Yeah it was purely "e-peen" and something fun to do. I was trying to do a blog/website back then. I sure wish I would have mined...ugh.

I had 3x of those BenQ 120Hz 1080p monitors to go with it. Man it was cool but not. Once I went back to a single, super powerful card it was like being reborn.
 
cpufrost said:
I remember having three 480s. We called that box Hibachi Grill! 🙃
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I did SLI or Crossfire X with everything from the 6800 series onward. However, I did have multiple 3-Way and Quad setups. I had 3x 8800GTX's, 2x 9800GX2's in Quad-SLI, 3x GTX 2080's, 580's, 680's, 780's and 3x 780 Ti's. After that, I had 2x Maxwell based Titan X's in SLI. I kept that setup until the GTX 1080 Ti. I had two of those and that was my final SLI setup.

On the ATi / AMD side I had a both Radeon HD X1950 XTX Crossfire setup and a X 1950 setup in another machine that were absolutely flawless. I also had a 4870x2 CrossfireX quad GPU setup which never worked properly. My last AMD multi-GPU setup was a Radeon HD 7970 Crossfire setup that wouldn't work as the Crossfire bridge didn't have enough bandwidth for a 7860x1600 (Eyefinity) setup using 3x 2560x1600 monitors. I returned one of the cards and moved the other one to another machine, replacing these with whatever NVIDIA cards were available at the time.
 
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Dan_D said:
I did 3x GTX 2080's, 580's, 680's, 780's and 3x 780 Ti's. After that, I had 2x Maxwell based Titan X's in SLI. I kept that setup until the GTX 1080 Ti. I had two of those and that was my final SLI setup.
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Still have the original 6GB Titans in SLI on my SR2. It hasn't been powered up since 2015.
I do have a Maxwell based Titan-X, great card, it's my backup. Kind of wish I kept my 1080ti reference boards. Those have to be the longest lasting GPU of late.
 
I just have a system with a RX 6700 and 6800 for GPU rendering in Blender. Nothing super fancy but still faster than 1 video card. I can't really see a use for multiple video cards for gaming purposes.
 
alyen said:
I can't really see a use for multiple video cards for gaming purposes.
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There is plenty of use for it. There isn't a single GPU in existence that can handle some of the newer AAA titles at 4K with ray tracing / path tracing at playable frame rates without DLSS. Unfortunately, game developers are not implementing it in their games and AMD and NVIDIA have pretty much given up on it.

I think the only way we will see multi-GPU return in a meaningful way (that is for gaming purposes) will be if AMD or NVIDIA can manage to implement the technology on the hardware side where it doesn't require driver level or software implementation to work.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
Didn't 3dmark scale well with 4 way SLI also? IIRC..
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Well, you naturally got higher scores with more video cards and GPU's. However, you also got more 3D Marks with faster CPU's, more RAM and even memory bandwidth. The ATi 2900XT was also a beast in 3D Mark despite being way behind its NVIDIA counterparts at the time. In short, a lot of things improved 3D Mark scores that didn't actually improve performance in games. This problem only got worse when 3D Mark versions stopped being made to use an actual game engine in their design.
 
I hear what you guys are saying but just for a second think about what it would be like to have FOUR RTX 4090s and playing on 8k monitor with 160+ fps. It would be heaven if the developers weren't so lazy.
 
Hulk said:
I hear what you guys are saying but just for a second think about what it would be like to have FOUR RTX 4090s and playing on 8k monitor with 160+ fps. It would be heaven if the developers weren't so lazy.
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It would be sweet but you'd have to use PCIe ribbon cables or something - the dang cards are so huge, lol.
 
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