Tell me about AMD GPUs

[Rich46yo]

I only owned one years ago for a dedicated video editing machine that actually relied on a third party card for real time video editing. I must have owned 8 NVidea products thru the years tho my one AMD experience was very good, "very solid drivers for XP". What are the strengths and weaknesses of the current cards ; They seem to have a dedicated following.

On another matter my next machine is probably 1 year off or maybe sooner. I just bought a GTX1070 and was considering running two in the new machine. Since VR is in my future does this make sense? I keep hearing different things about SLI configurations, both good and bad, which is strange cause its been out for so many years. How does an SLI config help and is it worth the $$. Thanks.

[Chalenge]

SLI was introduced at a time when you really needed a super system to make use of it. Most computers were bottlenecked by the PCIe bus, or the CPU. On the better systems SLI rose to a point where you could get up to about 85% additional fps by adding the second card. Scaling fell off after that. Today you really need one of the better bridges to get anything out of three-way, but two way is still useful. If Microsoft ever gets their act together there is a promise of DX12 delivering SLI-like performance without the bridge, which could potentially mean you could use Nvidia and AMD together. Most AAA gaming titles DO NOT support three-way SLI. In those games your SLI performance will drop down to just barely more fps than a single card. SLI in the near future will only be used by video rendering systems (supposedly), and number crunching (folding) systems.

Whichever Nvidia generation to introduce HBM2 memory will probably eliminate SLI, because the relative bandwidths will not benefit from the narrow patch cable between the cards. You never know, though. Nvidia may introduce something completely new.

[Rich46yo]

So a lot of hoopla and not much else right?

[Chalenge]

Right now, if you have a high-end system, then you will see a boost from SLI. However, there are extenuating circumstances like a motherboard that cannot support it, a PSU that is not powerful enough, and other things that can prevent SLI from functioning. How you read what I said and came away with "a lot of hoopla" I'll never know. Still, you would probably be happier with the more expensive cards than two of the lesser cards. I have not bought a 10## card because I believe there are even better cards coming this Spring. I am still using two 980s in SLI, and they do scale well. I can run AH3 at 4k and get 60fps. I don't run reflections, or Env., but I think those are both bugged right now anyway. I did run them both in the DSR/VSR video and it looked great and performed well.

[Rich46yo]

A "Lot of Hoopla" as in I remember when it first came out and SLI configurations were considered the answer to everyone who wanted to do a inexpensive upgrade by simply buying one identical card and forgetting the GPU is only one component in a well balanced system.

And then there were the game issues. It just strikes me that multiple GPUs have fallen out of favor since the bridging option first appeared.

[Chalenge]

The technology has grown beyond the bridge, at least. It was never the answer for everyone. The Battlefield series always benefited from SLI as much as extra CPU cores, as did Tomb Raider, although there have been SLI hitches in drivers and a few other issues. I was always able to gain some fps in AH by creating my own profile. That is the one thing that got me upset about SLI was the way Nvidia decides to provide profiles. Back when the user base of AH was getting to be above 6,000 say, the SLI profile was not available. Well, now we don't have to worry about that, because the need for SLI will be gone shortly. At least that's what I think.

[Bizman]

I'd say a single card would cause much less hassle than two or three. Less cable management, too. More cooling space inside the case. No profiles to tinker with. A smaller electricity bill. ETC.

As for which is better, AMD or Nvidia, it depends. Currently it seems that Nvidia makes the fastest cards, but AMD isn't too much behind. Some games play better with one or the other. Even the rest of the hardware can matter. The perfect match is a sum of multiple variables. This article looks like a good summary of the current top 10: http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/best-graphics-cards-1291458