SLI with 2 different brand.

[reemi]

I have this card;
MSI GeForce GTX 970 TwinFrozr V 1140/1279MHZ 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5 HDMI 2x DVI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card

I want to buy another one, for my PC,

Unfortually, I cannot buy those card anymore unless I want to pay more than the price I paid year ago...

Can I dual SLI with another GTX 970 4GB, but from a different brand?

Like those one...
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 4GB ZT-90112-10P GDDR5 PCIE
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC+ GAMING ACX 2.0 P/N: 04G-P4-2977-RX 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5
GIGABYTE Geforce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4GB PCIe Graphic Card

In case you need it, this is my motherboard: GIGABYTE Z170X-GAMING 3 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6GB/S USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Thanks for help!!

[Evildeffy]

Yes you can as long as you have the SLI certification on the board, have the SLI bridge etc.

The core and RAM frequencies will be adjusted to the lowest speed card.

[skynet1990]

You theoretically can mix up but you should not as Nvidia only delivers the GPU and every Manufacturer can do whatever he feels like for optimapl performance always use 2 same cards.

I would suggest in selling your old Graphics Card and buying a new one because the second card actually gives you aboit ~60% more Performance rather than 100%
Additionally you have to enable SLI for most Games via the Nvidia Control Panel as Games aren't designed anymore fore SLI (if they ever were) because Nvidia abandoned SLI with the new 1xxx Series.
As well as your old Series Graphics Card will always lack some of the newest Features simply beacuse they won't/can't add hardware to your card retrospectively.

If you want more Power I would recommend something like that:
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GeForce-...+gtx+1080+8+gb

(Please check if your PSU is strong enough.)

[Mythbredor]

I have this card;
MSI GeForce GTX 970 TwinFrozr V 1140/1279MHZ 4GB 7GHZ GDDR5 HDMI 2x DVI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card

I want to buy another one, for my PC,

Unfortually, I cannot buy those card anymore unless I want to pay more than the price I paid year ago...

Can I dual SLI with another GTX 970 4GB, but from a different brand?

Like those one...
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 4GB ZT-90112-10P GDDR5 PCIE
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC+ GAMING ACX 2.0 P/N: 04G-P4-2977-RX 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5
GIGABYTE Geforce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4GB PCIe Graphic Card

In case you need it, this is my motherboard: GIGABYTE Z170X-GAMING 3 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6GB/S USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Thanks for help!!

You can, It's a better investment to go ahead and go with a 1070-1080 probably. SLI doesn't always work with every games properly and you won't always get 100% performance from the second card. It's a bit iffy in most cases.

What games do you plan to be playing? And at what resolution.

You theoretically can mix up but you should not as Nvidia only delivers the GPU and every Manufacturer can do whatever he feels like for optimapl performance always use 2 same cards.

I would suggest in selling your old Graphics Card and buying a new one because the second card actually gives you aboit ~60% more Performance rather than 100%
Additionally you have to enable SLI for most Games via the Nvidia Control Panel as Games aren't designed anymore fore SLI (if they ever were) because Nvidia abandoned SLI with the new 1xxx Series.
As well as your old Series Graphics Card will always lack some of the newest Features simply beacuse they won't/can't add hardware to your card retrospectively.

If you want more Power I would recommend something like that:
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-GeForce-...+gtx+1080+8+gb

(Please check if your PSU is strong enough.)

No. You can mix and match, there are a few niche cases where two cards won't like eachother but it should work fine. Both cards will run at whatever the slowest card runs.
The second card wouldn't give full performance gain in most cases being that very few games are optimised to SLI, but there are games that he would get a big boost. However I do agree he should just buy a new GPU.
SLI is still a thing and is still supported in quite a few games that would need the extra power. SLI is still on the 1070/1080 but limited to two cards now.
His 970 is fine for running most games, I'm still using a 970 with 0 issues. And there aren't that many "features" that upgrading would give him if any at all. Upgrading would strictly be for a power boost. But I guess it's true it would like features of the pascal line but there isn't any "Groundbrekaing" features with it.

[skynet1990]

One of the most mattering Performance would be is card has only 4 GB of VRAM however if he plans to play on 2560x1440 or higher he will quickly run out of vram.

I would recommend waiting untill the 1080 Ti will be released as it was already announced.

[Mythbredor]

One of the mosz mattering Performance would be is card has only 4 GB of VRAM however if he plans to play on 2560x1440 or higher he will quickly run out of vram

Making assumptions doesn't really help, we don't know what resolution he's running at. 3.5GB of vram 500MB of slower vram on the 970. And as I said I'm running a 970 fine only game so far that gets close to maxing my vram is Witcher 3. And it's true if he wants to play graphically intensive games at 1440p he'll start to run out of vram, but we don't know what he's playing or what he's doing with his PC.

[skynet1990]

Thats why I say if he does so that does not imply he will do so but the most people who ask abbout hardware don't have much knowledge abput it so I find it important to think around the corner a little bit.

He obviously asked because the Performance lacks. You would not upgrade your PC if you did not neet to. I don't know anybody(and i've been working 7 Years in IT now) who would say I am feeling lucky today lets throw $500 out of the Window and buy an old Graphics Card.

[Mythbredor]

@reemi I would suggest waiting to do any purchases until you can provide us with a bit more information about what you actually need.

1# What resolution are you running at?
2# What games do you plan to play?
3# What CPU do you use currently?

[Elpigeon]

Was looking for something on this topic.

Don't think this was really answered, but can't you use one of the cards to run the physx or other things (video capture?).

[Mythbredor]

Was looking for something on this topic.

Don't think this was really answered, but can't you use one of the cards to run the physx or other things (video capture?).

You can run it as a physx card. You literally never should unless you just like burning your money. And no not really anything i can think of.

[reemi]

So, I guess it's not the best idea to buy another gtx970 for SLI,

I will wait for next gen instead, thanks for the help guys.

- - - Updated - - -

Making assumptions doesn't really help, we don't know what resolution he's running at. 3.5GB of vram 500MB of slower vram on the 970. And as I said I'm running a 970 fine only game so far that gets close to maxing my vram is Witcher 3. And it's true if he wants to play graphically intensive games at 1440p he'll start to run out of vram, but we don't know what he's playing or what he's doing with his PC.

ATM I still run at 1080p but I want to upgrade to 1440p@144hz too. So, it's not required right now, but in few months it will be.

- - - Updated - - -

@reemi I would suggest waiting to do any purchases until you can provide us with a bit more information about what you actually need.

1# What resolution are you running at?
2# What games do you plan to play?
3# What CPU do you use currently?

1: 1080p, plan to upgrade to 1440p
2: Mostly WoW, fallout 4, Forza Horizon 3
3: i7 6700K

[Mythbredor]

To be honest @reemi it sounds like your current GPU can do what you need until you move to 1440 and when you do I'd recommend looking at a 1070/1080.

The issue with sling a second 970 is the price of a new 970 right now, they're semi hard to come by and cost almost as much/as much as a 1070 which a 1070 is much better than a 970.

[Arbiter]

So, I guess it's not the best idea to buy another gtx970 for SLI,

I will wait for next gen instead, thanks for the help guys.

- - - Updated - - -



ATM I still run at 1080p but I want to upgrade to 1440p@144hz too. So, it's not required right now, but in few months it will be.

- - - Updated - - -



1: 1080p, plan to upgrade to 1440p
2: Mostly WoW, fallout 4, Forza Horizon 3
3: i7 6700K

As someone who used to be a fan of SLI and even had an SLI set up, I'd have to agree with others and say skip out. Support has gotten terrible over the last year or two. Ended up ditching my SLI set up for a 980ti because of it even though it wasn't that much of an upgrade over 2 GTX 770 4GBs running with 100% scaling in SLI. Problem is new games release more and more without SLI support and it's often breaking. You'd be better off investing into a better single card and selling the 970 for profit whenever you're ready to upgrade unless you can find a stupidly good deal on a 970.

I can tell you that with WoW you won't see any kind of improvement. FH3 doesn't support SLI. Fallout 4 didn't have proper SLI support for some time after the release but not sure if that ever changed.

It's frankly just not worth dealing with. It also makes upgrading a pain because you end up upgrading after being unhappy with the second 970 sitting there untouched in certain games because SLI doesn't work or barely worked and the performance of a single 970 just isn't cutting it when you've invested into 2. From there you either upgrade to yet another SLI set up or spend a lot more on a flagship card to compensate for losing the SLI performance like I did.

[Elpigeon]

Edit: Supposed to quote from the reply to my first question.

Wanna give a little more on that? Not very helpful.

I understand for this guys purposes it might not help. And for WoW it might not help. But if he were to upgrade to a 1070 or such you can run the lower card as a physx and still see a performance boost? Instead of runing two 970 in sli he could have a primary 1070 (or something), and the 970 as the physx (probalby doesn't need to do this).

[Evildeffy]

Edit: Supposed to quote from the reply to my first question.

Wanna give a little more on that? Not very helpful.

I understand for this guys purposes it might not help. And for WoW it might not help. But if he were to upgrade to a 1070 or such you can run the lower card as a physx and still see a performance boost? Instead of runing two 970 in sli he could have a primary 1070 (or something), and the 970 as the physx (probalby doesn't need to do this).

Yes he could run the 970 as a dedicated PhysX card.
Would I recommend it or would it be worth it? Not a chance.


Sums it up even though the presentation of said video is mweh.

[Mythbredor]

Edit: Supposed to quote from the reply to my first question.

Wanna give a little more on that? Not very helpful.

I understand for this guys purposes it might not help. And for WoW it might not help. But if he were to upgrade to a 1070 or such you can run the lower card as a physx and still see a performance boost? Instead of runing two 970 in sli he could have a primary 1070 (or something), and the 970 as the physx (probalby doesn't need to do this).

Again, as I said you can. You shouldn't. You'd very very minimal or a performance loss in almost everything, you'd get more out of selling the card and buying a better single card.

[Arbiter]

Edit: Supposed to quote from the reply to my first question.

Wanna give a little more on that? Not very helpful.

I understand for this guys purposes it might not help. And for WoW it might not help. But if he were to upgrade to a 1070 or such you can run the lower card as a physx and still see a performance boost? Instead of runing two 970 in sli he could have a primary 1070 (or something), and the 970 as the physx (probalby doesn't need to do this).

PhysX cards offer little to no performance increases especially for most games. The money gained from selling the 970 could just be put to buy a 1080 instead of a 1070 if he could afford the 1070 while keeping his 970. A GTX 1080 would offer much more performance overall across all games vs a GTX 1070 with GTX 970 as dedicated PhysX.

[pansertjald]

Yes you can as long as you have the SLI certification on the board, have the SLI bridge etc.

The core and RAM frequencies will be adjusted to the lowest speed card.

This has not been a thing since 2009. The Nvidia drivers let's the cards run on there own RAM frequencies now. You can check it in MSIAfterburner, if you run with two different cards. It shows the RAM frequencies for both cards, running with different RAM frequencies

But you will only have 4GB total, if you use 4GB cards and so on. It does not multipli the RAM and both cards need to have the same amount of RAM

SLI Config

[Schattenlied]

SLI cross brand unfortunately doesn't always work... It's common for it to simply not function at all, or function very poorly... This is probly the one leg up AMD has on Nvidia right now, they don't have that issue.

That being said, if you ever play something in DX12 or Vulkan that doesn't rely on SLI/Crossfire, it won't matter, because DX12 and Vulkan's multi GPU tech bypasses it completely... But on the flip side, a lot of games don't even support multi GPU right now, so you would be better off just selling your current 970 and getting a newer card, like a 1070, or waiting to see what AMD puts out with their Vega lineup.

[Evildeffy]

This has not been a thing since 2009. The Nvidia drivers let's the cards run on there own RAM frequencies now. You can check it in MSIAfterburner, if you run with two different cards. It shows the RAM frequencies for both cards, running with different RAM frequencies

But you will only have 4GB total, if you use 4GB cards and so on. It does not multipli the RAM and both cards need to have the same amount of RAM

SLI Config

Actually no, SLI still adjusts the cards to run on the same speeds when in use, when not in use it can use separate frequencies (say compute tasks).
But if you're gaming your frequency and vram speed will be adjusted to the lowest denominator.
Otherwise you will lose synchronicity between cards and frame generation, causing even more micro-stutter.

As far as VRAM total amount goes, that's because they use AFR (Alternate Frame Rendering) to accomplish what they have to do.
DX12 and Vulkan can actually change this as they use a different method and will be able to pool video card resources.

This is still in development but will be made available to everyone who has DX12/Vulkan compatible card.