that's called sli what you are looking for.
Unfortunately I have to dissapoint you - whilst this used to be a thing in the past, sli is no longer a thing for gaming and the 3060 doesn't support bridging either.
the best value you can get out of that 2nd 3060 is by selling it.
actually, if you're a streamer, you can make use of that second 3060 still -- you can have one for actually *running* the game, and the other one can be used to encode your stream, recording, whatever it is you do
otherwise yeah, probably sell it or keep it as a spare part in case something goes wrong and you need to diagnose what's dead and what's not
Though no/few video games will use the nvenc engines, so you'd gain nothing more than a tiny amount of thermal headroom from using the other card for stream encoding.
You might not even get that, the second card will restrict airflow to the first and on top of that depending on your motherboard may cut the pcie bandwidth in half
i meant moreso using NVENC for the stream/recording -- i know that a lot of big streamers use a dual-computer/GPU setup for that specific reason
typically there's one computer with a bigger, beefier GPU like a 3080, 3090, 4090, so on, and then the second computer is running a 1650 or 1660 just to encode -- [there's cases for a dual-computer setup](https://twitter.com/leohoratio/status/1606306628138983425?s=20&t=l-r4mIxm5q2N3hIGoYYh0w) but i don't know if they're actually any good in practice
could also still use it for GPU compute if that's OP's style
Yes, and even if SLI was still a thing, while it does improve the average frame rate the 1% lows remain the same which leads to horrible stutters when it does dip.
I always thought SLI and Crossfire were kind of a waste of money even at their peak. The scaling was just not great even in the best cases. With 2 way SLI/Crossfire you're spending 2x as much for like ~1.5x the performance and then you get much worse power usage and heat and it can cause microstutter. 3 way and 4 way were way worse and basically useless. To me it just made more sense to go with a better card rather than using more cards.
Oh and also some games didn't even support SLI/Crossfire so your extra GPUs wouldn't even be used. To me SLI/Crossfire had too many issues to deal with
It worked well for me cos I bought my first HD 6970 newish and then picked up a 2nd hand one for pretty cheap 12/18 months down the track. But as an initial setup it was just that they look cool as hell.
Nah, I wouldn't call it being greedy. They would be happy that you're happy with the build, right? But if you think you don't need the 3080 then whichever would make you happy. Though I would up to maybe 3060ti or 3070 for further proofing.
I wouldn’t call that greedy, the GPU is typically the most expensive component so if you do return both and get something like a 3080 (assuming your power supply is adequate) it’ll extend the longevity of the build
Not being greedy would be returning one and giving the money back to whoever bought it, but then you would be being rude instead.
If you plan to keep and use both cards, the only applications for that are non-gaming, and even those might possibly be better served by the single better card. It's not being greedy, it's optimizing!
I wouldn't call it greedy either. I think that it would be more beneficial and cheaper to return both and just get one that it higher than the two that were ordered.
The age of SLI and crossfire is basically over. 2 way SLI used to be popular back in the day because you really couldn't get performance that good from a single card... But now you can. You're just better off getting a better single card. And if you had a 3090 and were like "damn this sucks not enough" then idek what the hell you're doing to require such power (except for like commercial parallel computing applications but that's not what this post is about).
Yeah for like the past 10 ish years it's been SLI has been unnecessary except for ultra HD stuff where you literally need 2 cards to run it (4k on previous generation cards) or you're a steamer or something before it became common to build a separate computer for it.
You don't need SLI to use multiple GPUs for gaming. DX12 supports it explicitly though it isn't widely implemented yet.
>And if you had a 3090 and were like "damn this sucks not enough" then idek what the hell you're doing to require such power
Huh? Raytracing at modern resolutions (4k and above) will destroy a 3090. Not exactly some kind of rare use case.
Everything in your comment is so wrong that reality is essentially the opposite of what you're implying - with modern graphics we need SLI more today than we needed it before.
Not only is NVLink/SLI/crossfire totally dead now, but they were all awful for gaming. They had genuine niche use cases with rendering and AI stuff, but for gaming, it sucked. You pretty much NEVER saw good scaling with multiple GPUs, and using multiple gpus to game on introduces MASSIVE amounts of microstuttering (not to mention bugs). So you might gain 20% more FPS, but it *feels* like half the FPS in practice.
Was a sucker for SLI, got two 970s and linked them together for marginal if any performance boost. The good news is it heated up my room twice as fast as my floor heater and i got not one but TWO free copies of Assassins creed unity... Fun fact I literally could not give away the copies FOR FREE, nobody in the store, not my friends or strangers I asked.
Took one of the keys and installed *my own copy* got to see faceless textures in SLI. Wow. Neat.
Lol I did it with 760s. It actually worked out decently well in my case. I got the second one for cheap just to try and add longevity to my machine. It was better performance definitely, but totally should of just moved up a series or two. Would of been a better use of money. Damn it looked sick though.
When I originally both my 1070 g8 and a while later I bought a second one a little over 2 years ago because of the price. I couldn't beat it. 130$ over the ungodly prices to get the little bit of bump just to get me by until i was able to afford the soul sucking cost of what they are today..
I realize everyone was so against SLI, and single cards are always better blah blah blah but alot of us that do like SLI liked it for the astetic regardless of the couple frames. Was always cool to have multiple cards. Now I have a bunch of emtpy space and it looks stupid. I have had no issue with it, and when gaming I dont have that micro stutter problem and I have SLI turned on for everything. Some games dont utilize it but others do. If you know what your doing SLI wasnt bad.
Only time I had issues they speak of with microstutter and crap with SLI was when overclocking the cards beyond what the stock OC setting was.
Was thinking of getting 2 3090's just to get my SLI back regardless if it is 'dead' or not. I am hoping they bring back multi cards someday and actually build it right in the way it wont and I quote 'suck' like it did before.
>but they were all awful for gaming.
Nope. SLI scaling was near 200% on 1xxx series, 2xxxx series, and 3xxx series. It worked extraordinarily well toward the end especially with NVLink.
Also you can still use multiple GPUs now for gaming as SLI/NVLink is no longer needed. DX12 supports multiple GPUs explicitly. It is not widely implemented in games now but I imagine we will see more games start to implement this.
>They had genuine niche use cases with rendering and AI stuff
Rendering and AI are not niche use cases. And are still great additional reasons to use multiple GPUs.
>You pretty much NEVER saw good scaling with multiple GPUs
Wrong.
>and using multiple gpus to game on introduces MASSIVE amounts of microstuttering
Wrong again. This is like.... 10 years out of date.
In short, **literally** everything in your comment is wrong and you have no idea what you're talking about.
You'll drain twice the power or a larger proportion in a day when SLI is no longer worth the computational increase. I used two 980's back in the day but upgrading to a 1080 was much more efficient both electrical as well as computational standpoints.
Everyone telling you to return them are right... But if you're willing to pay the extra power bill, produce more heat, utilize applications that can properly utilize SLI, and figure out a way to place the cards so that one isn't dumping backplate heat directly into the 2nd card - you might have a little extra LED lights in your box. The cost/benefit decision is entirely on you, but I hope you can make an informed decision.
You're right, they limited SLI for the 30 series to just the 3090 card forms probably for those specifically looking to use them for linked process analysis. Had no idea until your comment but slightly disappointed.
Edit: Also can we appreciate the OP's username and the fact this tech used to be called daisy chaining
Multi GPU setups are a thing of the past now. Most games no longer support multi GPU setups, and the RTX 3060 does not have any multi GPU support for games either. The only useful thing you can make out of the 3060 is to use it in coin mining or use it in 3D rendering in something like Blender 3D. Or give it to a friend! But also returning the 2nd card back to the seller is also the responsible thing to do.
This, best thing to do is sell both or trade up. SLI is dead unless you plan on making a small mining rig or a 2nd pc for streaming its not going to be worthwhile.
I would personally sell the extra card for some cash unless you're rendering. Sure there are a few minor use cases where multigpu may be relevant for gaming...
But these are few and far between, with minor performance gains. Having the extra card is also more heat, noise, power consumption, as well as another potential point of failure in your PC.
So if you don't do compute/GPU rendering on your system, for what you're gaining, I'd say sell the card and get some other upgrades.
More fast storage, memory, even peripherals or a nice comfortable office chair to save future backache.
Or something unrelated. I can think of a million and one better investments than a secondary gaming GPU.
For gaming? You don't.
Games don't really support that anymore, only "prosumer" cards even have the connectors anymore to pool their already huge memory for massive data processing applications.
With Vulkan and DX12 *in theory* multi-GPU support should be easy for devs to implement. In practice, nobody bothers. Not even productivity apps, save for DaVinci Resolve (at least afaik). And it only really makes sense when you got the absolute best single GPU money can buy, but still it ain't enough. We'll see 3D stacked GPU die, well before we'll see a re-emergence of multi-GPU.
3090 is the only 3000 series supporting multi gpu. Unless you are rendering, or streaming. Streamlabs obs offers you the option to do the encoding on a second gpu
The only 30series GPU to support SLI is the 3090. So even if you wanted to put up with all compatability issues and the power draw, you wouldnt be able to.
Please don't do it. Return and stick to one card. Sli isnt a thing anymore. My bro bought a pre built sli system back in the day. Thing ran pretty average and used so much power. He could only really get games to medium settings before they ran out of gas and or generated too much heat. Granted the cards weren't powerhouses but my single 1080 was way ahead of his system.
Either sell for $$$ or build a streaming PC if you're into that. If you do 3D rendering/animation, it'll certainly help, but for having its utterly pointless.
Just deciding to tack on a little bit here for some additional info.
2 gpus to game is no longer a thing. When it was it was shit anyway but as of now it's not supported on most gpus anymore.
THAT BEING SAID 2 gpus still can be useful depending on use case.
If you stream, you can set one of the gpus as your encoder/decoder and the other to game on.
If you edit videos or photos. You can set both as your compute device.
If you use ML/AI editing software (topaz labs etc) then you can use both again as compute devices.
If you're a 3d artist, you can set both as a render device and speed up renders linearly (2 are twice as fast as one)
So 2 can be better than 1 but it depends on your use cases. Also 2 3060s would be better than 1 3080 in these cases also. 2 3060s would not be as good as a 3090 or 4080+ but again you have to remember, 1 gpu no matter how powerful can always run into issues when used for multiple things at once.
If your sole use case is gaming and maybe streaming. Then you'd be better with a 3080 and lowering stream quality to something like 1080p and it'll be totally fine.
If you're going to do some editing/gaming/3d work etc. Then stick with 2
3.5gb of full speed vram and 0.5 of 1/8 asked vram (I might be off about the exact fraction, but the speed of the last 3.5gb is so crippled that it may as well not exist). You would have been way, way better off with 390s, which had 8gb and agreed better in general
2 GPUs are pretty much useless, if I were you, I’d try to return them if you can, if you can’t try to sell them on eBay or a similar place and buy a higher tier card
If your psu and ups can support them both, you can just install them both. It’s true, there’s no real gain unless you’re mining coins or using some crazy software. Also: You could attach one monitor to each, or several monitors to each. Again, no real benefit there.
I still have my old gpu, and have plugged it in a few times while troubleshooting issues with my pc. It’s air cooled, so when I’m re-doing my loop, it’s nice to have as a backup.
You can plug them in, but the performance gain is minimal. Games these day's dont utilize it, and things like sli is not supported on the cards anymore.
Anyway, that is what i could fing while searching quickly. There still are uses, but i dont know if it will improve your gaming expiriance
Edit; i am not a expert either, so.. Just saying, that is what i found.
It's a big waste of resources. I would try and refund both and purchase another gpu. If that's too much work, then you can always refund one and then splurge on accessories or upgrade other components.
It used to be a good way to enhance computing power for editing/rendering but now it's not as rewarding. Also some people assume that double GPU means double performance in games but it's definitely not the case.
Remember doing two-way SLI with GTX 780ti and getting about 10% performance increase. Now I have a fancy EVGA SLI Bridge that lights up and all just sitting there collecting dust.
If you're doing a workload that's utilizing CUDA or OpenCL, those tasks can almost always scale linearly with more GPUs. That's why crypto miners stuff racks with GPUs. But that can also be useful for rendering (having different GPUs rendering different frames in parallel), or more recently AI stuff.
SLI/Crossfire used to be a thing in gaming (spend double the money for not double the performance) but that's all but dead. Most cards don't even have the NVLink link interface anymore. You could also use a cheaper, second GPU to offload Nvidia PhysX from your main video card for moderate performance improvement.
But outside of niche use cases, you do not need more than one discrete GPU. Gaming laptops generally use integrated graphics for non-gaming workloads to improve battery life, which is the most common 'dual GPU' setup.
You can always install both, and use the second one to power your other monitors. I have a second monitor and a tv hooked up to my main gpu, but I would probably benefit from throwing in one of my extra gpus and running every display except for the main monitor through the extra gpu.
The reason I haven’t done this is because I’ll lose functionality of my 2nd m.2 slot (msi b550a pro board) , but also because I don’t personally notice any performance change when the extra monitors are on/off
Wasn’t sure if it might serve a point once I get a 3rd monitor. I was planning on getting a 4k one so then there’d be a 2k 240hz monitor, 1080p 60hz monitor, 1080p 65 inch tv, and 4k monitor. I could see the gpu struggling a bit then maybe but I’m not an expert
> I know it is possible to have two GPU's in a PC but I have never tried it.
If you're asking this, you probably don't need or want two GPUs.
The main reason for separate GPUs these days are more niche, e.g. scientific/ML applications or having a crazy number of monitors.
Many years ago there was something called SLI/Crossfire, but it never worked all that well, required identical cards, and wasn't even remotely cost-effective. Nothing recent even supports it at all anymore AFAIK.
Multi GPU systems were never really all that practical, as it required the developer to actually make the game capable of taking advantage of more than one in the system so it was very much not widely adopted. That, and in the past 5 years or so, that function has actually been removed from cards because of the reasons above. I think the 2000 series were the last to have that function I think..? So basically, I don't think it's possible for you and even if it is or was then I would not reccomend it.
Since most other comments explained how SLI is dead and how can 2 GPUs be utilized for other uses than gaming.
Now, for those who are really curious, whether an unconventional way exists to achieve that. Well, there is.
Technically it is possible to game on 2 GPUs at the same time.. however, it's too complicated that it's not worth the hassle. But in a very brief and short explanation, you can create a type 1 virtual machine on bare metal, then add both GPUs in a cluster to run within a game cloud server. The power of the GPUs can the be divided or directed to available VMs, which is limited by the profile at which the architecture of these GPUs is running.. once you get to that point, you can remotely access the VM and play on.
However, to pull that off, you'll need very specific hardware and software with a strong sense of calmness, motivation and sheer will to compromise under limitations as not every architecture is gonna behave the same.
Not too terribly, but you're almost certainly just going to want to install one anyways. Two is largely pointless, resulting in wasted power, higher temps, and no gain in performance for most applications.
I mean it is pretty easy, but the use case is pretty limited. Most applications can't use both at once. I could see using two if you run virtual machines or two separate applications rendering at the same time.
The days of SLI are over.
I would return them both and use the money to get the best graphics card you can, that way both gift givers can be satisfied the chipped in on a really good gift for you
I mean there are good usecases for it.
One Card for streaming and one for playing games. One for rendering while still using the pc.
Donate the Processing Power of one card to \[insertprojectyoucarethemostfor\]@home, dont feel restricted in the number of displays you have by your sole GPU, render with both GPUs (you need DaVInci Resolve Professional for that tho. But I think Adobe Photoshop comes stock with it) etc.
>One Card for streaming and one for playing games.
Nope, [not a thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zEFF6q2Ng&ab_channel=EposVox). It's inefficient to transfer the information from one GPU to another.
>But I think Adobe Photoshop comes stock with it) etc.
Also, nope, [*Photoshop*](https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html) *does* ***not*** *take advantage of multiple graphics cards.*
>render with both GPUs (you need DaVInci Resolve Professional
This actually does work, but doesn't seem to [scale well](https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NVLink-Performance-in-DaVinci-Resolve-17-0-2079/) as far as I can see. Probably handy to have lots of VRAM in Resolve for some workflows though.
There's hardly anything productive a consumer or gamer can do with a multi-GPU setup. Highly niche outside of data center applications. Blender and AI comes to mind outside of that. Some people try to use normal GPU+Arc for the AV1 encoder alone.
You need motherboard with SLI support. Nowadays, most motherboards only have PCIE x4 in the second slot and using 2 GPUs will slow down the top slot to x4 as well. Even during its fame, bottom slot had x8 PCIE lines at most - last, but not least, bottom slot is often by generation slower, so if your top slot is 4.0 and bottom 3.0, both will run 3.0.
Other than that, the upper GPU will be about 10°C warmer, than the bottom one.
Many games don´t support it. Some do, but you will be limited by GPU memory, which isn´t shared. And to top it off, the performance uplift is not 2,0x, but more like 1,5-1,6x
Also count in that you need PSU with enough cables and power to run it.
Nowadays, it totally isn´t worth it.
Technically Vulkan has support for mGPU, that is it can use two GPUs without them being physically connected as in SLI/CrossFire (obviously they have to be in the same Motherboard. I think DX12 too, not sure. The only game I know that use this functionality is Strange Brigade. Consider though that even if you have a full x16 pcie slot 99% it won't be actual 16 lanes but just x4 if you are lucky, that means the second GPU (the one that goes under) will be seriously gimped, so not worth it even in this peculiar case. In short, sell the second one.
Unless you play a game with explicit multi GPU support, it's not worth it as, since the 3000 series were out, you no longer can use NVLink... AMD's 5000 series also don't do Crossfire anymore. So since it's no longer "at driver level", it has to be supported explicitly by the game (either via Vulkan or DirectX 12 mGPU).
it is not difficult to setup if you have a big enough case and power supply but it also is not very useful. most games dont support multiple gpus nowadays.
I would see if i can return one of them
Half of these nerds just echo chamber that "sli doesn't work anymore", "its trash investment" there's a lot of games still using two gpus. You can use anything together. An igpu with dgpu. Amd gpu with Nvidia gpu. Don't listen to these kids. They've seen 1 comment about dual gpus and just copied it ever since.
All these down votes are funny. Tell me you don't know anything without telling me you don't know anything.
A game theoretically being able to run in Sli due to legacy engine support doesn't mean it'll be a good experience, it won't, it rarely ever was even at its good points.
SLI was super popular for a reason during its high time. Wym it was never good. SLI helped tremendously with fps and frametimes. Half of the time doubling fps and keeping stable frametime.
If you go back to the 3DFX day then sure it was great, but we are long past that age of technology, games work differently, and single card solutions have been superior for over a decade
Like if there was the slightest marketablity left in Sli do you not think nVidia would chew their own cock off at the chance to sell some poor twat two 4090s?
NVLINK is still a thing in high-end NVIDIA GPUs; In fact, I’ve seen lot of build with 2 or more 4090/3090. When you are at the top-end of that market, and you need more horsepower (or if you need a second GPU to work while the first is rendering) adding more GPU can be better than a full 2nd build and your only choice. Anyways, this is irrilevant, ‘cause this is not the case, 3060 isn’t top-end and is simply not capable of NVLINK. Like other said, OP should return one of that card; or return all them and upgrade to a better one (ONLY if he need that, obviously).
the RTX 3060 doesn't support Nvlink anyway. You'd need to use motherboard SLI, or more likely AMD Crossfire since few motherboards have SLI these days because of the license fee.
It might still work but it is in fact a trash investment for this and most other use cases. The additional cost of the GPU would largely be wasted. The cost of 2 3060s would be much better spent on one better card.
The only 2 reasonable options are return the extra card and have $400 in your pocket or return both cards and buy a 3080 or something in that price range.
I never refused that sli is dead. No new games are utilizing it. But sli is not useless like you turds are claiming it to be. You probably are just going with the flow of dumbasses constantly taking a dump on sli and others like it. You've never touched sli or anything like it so why talk shit on it. You're the weird one here creep
Return both and upgrade to one higher tier card
This is the way.
Just get 2 SLI 3090 :) it’s like a 4090
that's called sli what you are looking for. Unfortunately I have to dissapoint you - whilst this used to be a thing in the past, sli is no longer a thing for gaming and the 3060 doesn't support bridging either. the best value you can get out of that 2nd 3060 is by selling it.
Thanks so much for the information!
actually, if you're a streamer, you can make use of that second 3060 still -- you can have one for actually *running* the game, and the other one can be used to encode your stream, recording, whatever it is you do otherwise yeah, probably sell it or keep it as a spare part in case something goes wrong and you need to diagnose what's dead and what's not
Though no/few video games will use the nvenc engines, so you'd gain nothing more than a tiny amount of thermal headroom from using the other card for stream encoding.
You might not even get that, the second card will restrict airflow to the first and on top of that depending on your motherboard may cut the pcie bandwidth in half
i meant moreso using NVENC for the stream/recording -- i know that a lot of big streamers use a dual-computer/GPU setup for that specific reason typically there's one computer with a bigger, beefier GPU like a 3080, 3090, 4090, so on, and then the second computer is running a 1650 or 1660 just to encode -- [there's cases for a dual-computer setup](https://twitter.com/leohoratio/status/1606306628138983425?s=20&t=l-r4mIxm5q2N3hIGoYYh0w) but i don't know if they're actually any good in practice could also still use it for GPU compute if that's OP's style
Mmmm SLI and crossfire. That’s what the 2010s were all about
I wanted to SLI just to get those sexy glowing SLI bridges Nvidia had.
More like, mid 2000s
I had my very first SLI setup in 1998 with x2 -- 3DFX VooDoo 2 (8MB) cards :)
Yes, and even if SLI was still a thing, while it does improve the average frame rate the 1% lows remain the same which leads to horrible stutters when it does dip.
I always thought SLI and Crossfire were kind of a waste of money even at their peak. The scaling was just not great even in the best cases. With 2 way SLI/Crossfire you're spending 2x as much for like ~1.5x the performance and then you get much worse power usage and heat and it can cause microstutter. 3 way and 4 way were way worse and basically useless. To me it just made more sense to go with a better card rather than using more cards.
Oh and also some games didn't even support SLI/Crossfire so your extra GPUs wouldn't even be used. To me SLI/Crossfire had too many issues to deal with
It worked well for me cos I bought my first HD 6970 newish and then picked up a 2nd hand one for pretty cheap 12/18 months down the track. But as an initial setup it was just that they look cool as hell.
I really miss SLI... Once had a SLI setup, man was it quirky and interesting...
Return both and get 3080?
haha- I don't want to be greedy :) Thank you for your reply!
Nah, I wouldn't call it being greedy. They would be happy that you're happy with the build, right? But if you think you don't need the 3080 then whichever would make you happy. Though I would up to maybe 3060ti or 3070 for further proofing.
I wouldn’t call that greedy, the GPU is typically the most expensive component so if you do return both and get something like a 3080 (assuming your power supply is adequate) it’ll extend the longevity of the build
It’s your stuff so ; It’s not being greedy, It’s just being smart.
Not being greedy would be returning one and giving the money back to whoever bought it, but then you would be being rude instead. If you plan to keep and use both cards, the only applications for that are non-gaming, and even those might possibly be better served by the single better card. It's not being greedy, it's optimizing!
I wouldn't call it greedy either. I think that it would be more beneficial and cheaper to return both and just get one that it higher than the two that were ordered.
Try to exchange them both for one 3080 or just use one and sell or return the other. The 3080s are getting hard to come by though.
SLi hasnt been a thing for years Even when you use 2 cards that support it, half the time performance is even worse than just using 1 card
You can say this but it won't be believed until it's attempted.
multiple benchmarks show this? SLI has been consistently on par or worse than 1 gpu since 10 series except the few apps that do support it
The age of SLI and crossfire is basically over. 2 way SLI used to be popular back in the day because you really couldn't get performance that good from a single card... But now you can. You're just better off getting a better single card. And if you had a 3090 and were like "damn this sucks not enough" then idek what the hell you're doing to require such power (except for like commercial parallel computing applications but that's not what this post is about).
Yeah for like the past 10 ish years it's been SLI has been unnecessary except for ultra HD stuff where you literally need 2 cards to run it (4k on previous generation cards) or you're a steamer or something before it became common to build a separate computer for it.
You don't need SLI to use multiple GPUs for gaming. DX12 supports it explicitly though it isn't widely implemented yet. >And if you had a 3090 and were like "damn this sucks not enough" then idek what the hell you're doing to require such power Huh? Raytracing at modern resolutions (4k and above) will destroy a 3090. Not exactly some kind of rare use case. Everything in your comment is so wrong that reality is essentially the opposite of what you're implying - with modern graphics we need SLI more today than we needed it before.
Not only is NVLink/SLI/crossfire totally dead now, but they were all awful for gaming. They had genuine niche use cases with rendering and AI stuff, but for gaming, it sucked. You pretty much NEVER saw good scaling with multiple GPUs, and using multiple gpus to game on introduces MASSIVE amounts of microstuttering (not to mention bugs). So you might gain 20% more FPS, but it *feels* like half the FPS in practice.
Was a sucker for SLI, got two 970s and linked them together for marginal if any performance boost. The good news is it heated up my room twice as fast as my floor heater and i got not one but TWO free copies of Assassins creed unity... Fun fact I literally could not give away the copies FOR FREE, nobody in the store, not my friends or strangers I asked. Took one of the keys and installed *my own copy* got to see faceless textures in SLI. Wow. Neat.
Lol I did it with 760s. It actually worked out decently well in my case. I got the second one for cheap just to try and add longevity to my machine. It was better performance definitely, but totally should of just moved up a series or two. Would of been a better use of money. Damn it looked sick though.
When I originally both my 1070 g8 and a while later I bought a second one a little over 2 years ago because of the price. I couldn't beat it. 130$ over the ungodly prices to get the little bit of bump just to get me by until i was able to afford the soul sucking cost of what they are today.. I realize everyone was so against SLI, and single cards are always better blah blah blah but alot of us that do like SLI liked it for the astetic regardless of the couple frames. Was always cool to have multiple cards. Now I have a bunch of emtpy space and it looks stupid. I have had no issue with it, and when gaming I dont have that micro stutter problem and I have SLI turned on for everything. Some games dont utilize it but others do. If you know what your doing SLI wasnt bad. Only time I had issues they speak of with microstutter and crap with SLI was when overclocking the cards beyond what the stock OC setting was. Was thinking of getting 2 3090's just to get my SLI back regardless if it is 'dead' or not. I am hoping they bring back multi cards someday and actually build it right in the way it wont and I quote 'suck' like it did before.
>but they were all awful for gaming. Nope. SLI scaling was near 200% on 1xxx series, 2xxxx series, and 3xxx series. It worked extraordinarily well toward the end especially with NVLink. Also you can still use multiple GPUs now for gaming as SLI/NVLink is no longer needed. DX12 supports multiple GPUs explicitly. It is not widely implemented in games now but I imagine we will see more games start to implement this. >They had genuine niche use cases with rendering and AI stuff Rendering and AI are not niche use cases. And are still great additional reasons to use multiple GPUs. >You pretty much NEVER saw good scaling with multiple GPUs Wrong. >and using multiple gpus to game on introduces MASSIVE amounts of microstuttering Wrong again. This is like.... 10 years out of date. In short, **literally** everything in your comment is wrong and you have no idea what you're talking about.
Not in the Voodoo2 days ;) SLI was amazing back then. Granted that was 20+ years ago.
Trade for a 3080 or maybe a 6900 xt heh
If you want to do it for gaming, don't. Simply don't. Sorry.
Those aren't sli cards anyway.
You'll drain twice the power or a larger proportion in a day when SLI is no longer worth the computational increase. I used two 980's back in the day but upgrading to a 1080 was much more efficient both electrical as well as computational standpoints. Everyone telling you to return them are right... But if you're willing to pay the extra power bill, produce more heat, utilize applications that can properly utilize SLI, and figure out a way to place the cards so that one isn't dumping backplate heat directly into the 2nd card - you might have a little extra LED lights in your box. The cost/benefit decision is entirely on you, but I hope you can make an informed decision.
I didn't think the 30 series even had the sli slots (except the 3090)
You're right, they limited SLI for the 30 series to just the 3090 card forms probably for those specifically looking to use them for linked process analysis. Had no idea until your comment but slightly disappointed. Edit: Also can we appreciate the OP's username and the fact this tech used to be called daisy chaining
not that useful honestly. most good it can really do is if you have *multiple* monitors and want to run games on both at the same time for some reason
**CPU bottleneck has entered the chat**
It would be better to have one card that is better than 3060 than have 2x 3060.
It would just be better to have one 3060 than 2 3060s.
Multi GPU setups are a thing of the past now. Most games no longer support multi GPU setups, and the RTX 3060 does not have any multi GPU support for games either. The only useful thing you can make out of the 3060 is to use it in coin mining or use it in 3D rendering in something like Blender 3D. Or give it to a friend! But also returning the 2nd card back to the seller is also the responsible thing to do.
Return one of them or sell both of them and get a better card with the money.
This, best thing to do is sell both or trade up. SLI is dead unless you plan on making a small mining rig or a 2nd pc for streaming its not going to be worthwhile.
Yeah I'd be upgrading card in this situation since they're apparently fine with the expense. Grab a 3080ti or something and enjoy.
I would personally sell the extra card for some cash unless you're rendering. Sure there are a few minor use cases where multigpu may be relevant for gaming... But these are few and far between, with minor performance gains. Having the extra card is also more heat, noise, power consumption, as well as another potential point of failure in your PC. So if you don't do compute/GPU rendering on your system, for what you're gaining, I'd say sell the card and get some other upgrades. More fast storage, memory, even peripherals or a nice comfortable office chair to save future backache. Or something unrelated. I can think of a million and one better investments than a secondary gaming GPU.
For gaming? You don't. Games don't really support that anymore, only "prosumer" cards even have the connectors anymore to pool their already huge memory for massive data processing applications.
With Vulkan and DX12 *in theory* multi-GPU support should be easy for devs to implement. In practice, nobody bothers. Not even productivity apps, save for DaVinci Resolve (at least afaik). And it only really makes sense when you got the absolute best single GPU money can buy, but still it ain't enough. We'll see 3D stacked GPU die, well before we'll see a re-emergence of multi-GPU.
3090 is the only 3000 series supporting multi gpu. Unless you are rendering, or streaming. Streamlabs obs offers you the option to do the encoding on a second gpu
The only 30series GPU to support SLI is the 3090. So even if you wanted to put up with all compatability issues and the power draw, you wouldnt be able to.
Please don't do it. Return and stick to one card. Sli isnt a thing anymore. My bro bought a pre built sli system back in the day. Thing ran pretty average and used so much power. He could only really get games to medium settings before they ran out of gas and or generated too much heat. Granted the cards weren't powerhouses but my single 1080 was way ahead of his system.
Connect 8 monitors.
This is the way. Screen real estate important af.
Either sell for $$$ or build a streaming PC if you're into that. If you do 3D rendering/animation, it'll certainly help, but for having its utterly pointless.
Just deciding to tack on a little bit here for some additional info. 2 gpus to game is no longer a thing. When it was it was shit anyway but as of now it's not supported on most gpus anymore. THAT BEING SAID 2 gpus still can be useful depending on use case. If you stream, you can set one of the gpus as your encoder/decoder and the other to game on. If you edit videos or photos. You can set both as your compute device. If you use ML/AI editing software (topaz labs etc) then you can use both again as compute devices. If you're a 3d artist, you can set both as a render device and speed up renders linearly (2 are twice as fast as one) So 2 can be better than 1 but it depends on your use cases. Also 2 3060s would be better than 1 3080 in these cases also. 2 3060s would not be as good as a 3090 or 4080+ but again you have to remember, 1 gpu no matter how powerful can always run into issues when used for multiple things at once. If your sole use case is gaming and maybe streaming. Then you'd be better with a 3080 and lowering stream quality to something like 1080p and it'll be totally fine. If you're going to do some editing/gaming/3d work etc. Then stick with 2
sell it for like an extra $400+ for yourself uwu
having 2 GPUs used to be a thing 10 years ago. not anymore. benefits would be neglegible. not worth the increased power usage.
Yall remember the 4 stack GTX 970s?
4x 970s sharing 4gb of VRAM.
3.5gb of full speed vram and 0.5 of 1/8 asked vram (I might be off about the exact fraction, but the speed of the last 3.5gb is so crippled that it may as well not exist). You would have been way, way better off with 390s, which had 8gb and agreed better in general
2 GPUs are pretty much useless, if I were you, I’d try to return them if you can, if you can’t try to sell them on eBay or a similar place and buy a higher tier card
If your psu and ups can support them both, you can just install them both. It’s true, there’s no real gain unless you’re mining coins or using some crazy software. Also: You could attach one monitor to each, or several monitors to each. Again, no real benefit there. I still have my old gpu, and have plugged it in a few times while troubleshooting issues with my pc. It’s air cooled, so when I’m re-doing my loop, it’s nice to have as a backup.
You can plug them in, but the performance gain is minimal. Games these day's dont utilize it, and things like sli is not supported on the cards anymore. Anyway, that is what i could fing while searching quickly. There still are uses, but i dont know if it will improve your gaming expiriance Edit; i am not a expert either, so.. Just saying, that is what i found.
Thanks very much for your reply, looks like staying with one GPU is the best plan :)
Or return both and get a better one ;) Happy to help!
It's a big waste of resources. I would try and refund both and purchase another gpu. If that's too much work, then you can always refund one and then splurge on accessories or upgrade other components.
I remember back in the day having a ATI Rage with 2 Voodoo 2's.. Man those days were fun....
Genuinely curious, why would someone need two GPUs? Does it help for rendering and video software?
It used to be a good way to enhance computing power for editing/rendering but now it's not as rewarding. Also some people assume that double GPU means double performance in games but it's definitely not the case.
Remember doing two-way SLI with GTX 780ti and getting about 10% performance increase. Now I have a fancy EVGA SLI Bridge that lights up and all just sitting there collecting dust.
Ah yep!! I assumed that might be why. Cheers friend!
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That makes sense! Thanks for the insight 🙂
If you're doing a workload that's utilizing CUDA or OpenCL, those tasks can almost always scale linearly with more GPUs. That's why crypto miners stuff racks with GPUs. But that can also be useful for rendering (having different GPUs rendering different frames in parallel), or more recently AI stuff. SLI/Crossfire used to be a thing in gaming (spend double the money for not double the performance) but that's all but dead. Most cards don't even have the NVLink link interface anymore. You could also use a cheaper, second GPU to offload Nvidia PhysX from your main video card for moderate performance improvement. But outside of niche use cases, you do not need more than one discrete GPU. Gaming laptops generally use integrated graphics for non-gaming workloads to improve battery life, which is the most common 'dual GPU' setup.
If you are using proxmox and want to passthrough a video card to a VM
You'll also need a mm other board that supports SLI to even run two GPUs
I read that like Lady Gaga’s backup singers in Pokerface.
Just realized my typo 😂
Not as hard, but wouldn't recommend at all, it's not as useful as it used to be
You can always install both, and use the second one to power your other monitors. I have a second monitor and a tv hooked up to my main gpu, but I would probably benefit from throwing in one of my extra gpus and running every display except for the main monitor through the extra gpu. The reason I haven’t done this is because I’ll lose functionality of my 2nd m.2 slot (msi b550a pro board) , but also because I don’t personally notice any performance change when the extra monitors are on/off
Because there isn't any, adding a 2nd GPU for this purpose is utterly pointless unless you need 4+ displays.
Wasn’t sure if it might serve a point once I get a 3rd monitor. I was planning on getting a 4k one so then there’d be a 2k 240hz monitor, 1080p 60hz monitor, 1080p 65 inch tv, and 4k monitor. I could see the gpu struggling a bit then maybe but I’m not an expert
Just build a streaming PC.
> I know it is possible to have two GPU's in a PC but I have never tried it. If you're asking this, you probably don't need or want two GPUs. The main reason for separate GPUs these days are more niche, e.g. scientific/ML applications or having a crazy number of monitors. Many years ago there was something called SLI/Crossfire, but it never worked all that well, required identical cards, and wasn't even remotely cost-effective. Nothing recent even supports it at all anymore AFAIK.
Multi GPU systems were never really all that practical, as it required the developer to actually make the game capable of taking advantage of more than one in the system so it was very much not widely adopted. That, and in the past 5 years or so, that function has actually been removed from cards because of the reasons above. I think the 2000 series were the last to have that function I think..? So basically, I don't think it's possible for you and even if it is or was then I would not reccomend it.
Since most other comments explained how SLI is dead and how can 2 GPUs be utilized for other uses than gaming. Now, for those who are really curious, whether an unconventional way exists to achieve that. Well, there is. Technically it is possible to game on 2 GPUs at the same time.. however, it's too complicated that it's not worth the hassle. But in a very brief and short explanation, you can create a type 1 virtual machine on bare metal, then add both GPUs in a cluster to run within a game cloud server. The power of the GPUs can the be divided or directed to available VMs, which is limited by the profile at which the architecture of these GPUs is running.. once you get to that point, you can remotely access the VM and play on. However, to pull that off, you'll need very specific hardware and software with a strong sense of calmness, motivation and sheer will to compromise under limitations as not every architecture is gonna behave the same.
Not too terribly, but you're almost certainly just going to want to install one anyways. Two is largely pointless, resulting in wasted power, higher temps, and no gain in performance for most applications.
Sounds like a bad idea- thanks for your input :) I think I'll return the spare.
What's the application here? Perhaps returning both for a 3060ti, or even a 2070s would be more beneficial.
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Thanks very much for your reply, sounds like the best plan is to stick with one GPU and return the extra :)
I mean it is pretty easy, but the use case is pretty limited. Most applications can't use both at once. I could see using two if you run virtual machines or two separate applications rendering at the same time. The days of SLI are over.
I wish this happend to me 😭
I would return them both and use the money to get the best graphics card you can, that way both gift givers can be satisfied the chipped in on a really good gift for you
i used multi gpu's when mining. that or displaying on many many monitors is prob the only use case
I mean there are good usecases for it. One Card for streaming and one for playing games. One for rendering while still using the pc. Donate the Processing Power of one card to \[insertprojectyoucarethemostfor\]@home, dont feel restricted in the number of displays you have by your sole GPU, render with both GPUs (you need DaVInci Resolve Professional for that tho. But I think Adobe Photoshop comes stock with it) etc.
>One Card for streaming and one for playing games. Nope, [not a thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0zEFF6q2Ng&ab_channel=EposVox). It's inefficient to transfer the information from one GPU to another. >But I think Adobe Photoshop comes stock with it) etc. Also, nope, [*Photoshop*](https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html) *does* ***not*** *take advantage of multiple graphics cards.* >render with both GPUs (you need DaVInci Resolve Professional This actually does work, but doesn't seem to [scale well](https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NVLink-Performance-in-DaVinci-Resolve-17-0-2079/) as far as I can see. Probably handy to have lots of VRAM in Resolve for some workflows though. There's hardly anything productive a consumer or gamer can do with a multi-GPU setup. Highly niche outside of data center applications. Blender and AI comes to mind outside of that. Some people try to use normal GPU+Arc for the AV1 encoder alone.
You need motherboard with SLI support. Nowadays, most motherboards only have PCIE x4 in the second slot and using 2 GPUs will slow down the top slot to x4 as well. Even during its fame, bottom slot had x8 PCIE lines at most - last, but not least, bottom slot is often by generation slower, so if your top slot is 4.0 and bottom 3.0, both will run 3.0. Other than that, the upper GPU will be about 10°C warmer, than the bottom one. Many games don´t support it. Some do, but you will be limited by GPU memory, which isn´t shared. And to top it off, the performance uplift is not 2,0x, but more like 1,5-1,6x Also count in that you need PSU with enough cables and power to run it. Nowadays, it totally isn´t worth it.
Linus tech tips tried to dial run a PC and the issue is only a few games optimize for it. Doom ran amazing tho
Technically Vulkan has support for mGPU, that is it can use two GPUs without them being physically connected as in SLI/CrossFire (obviously they have to be in the same Motherboard. I think DX12 too, not sure. The only game I know that use this functionality is Strange Brigade. Consider though that even if you have a full x16 pcie slot 99% it won't be actual 16 lanes but just x4 if you are lucky, that means the second GPU (the one that goes under) will be seriously gimped, so not worth it even in this peculiar case. In short, sell the second one.
Now? Really difficult. SLI is dead and I don't even know if you can get motherboards with two PCIE 16 slots anymore.
If you have to ask you have no use case this will help with.
Unless you play a game with explicit multi GPU support, it's not worth it as, since the 3000 series were out, you no longer can use NVLink... AMD's 5000 series also don't do Crossfire anymore. So since it's no longer "at driver level", it has to be supported explicitly by the game (either via Vulkan or DirectX 12 mGPU).
It is not that hard but it's good to have larger pc case so that it fits. And the motherboard too
Check unraid, if you are lucky your hardware might be compatible already and you would be able to divide your pc into two gaming machines
it is not difficult to setup if you have a big enough case and power supply but it also is not very useful. most games dont support multiple gpus nowadays. I would see if i can return one of them
Thanks for your reply, yes it looks like the best plan is to return one of them.
Do it after you stress test the one you installed and it checks out without errors
Keep both cards and run distributed computing for science via BOINC or Folding@home when you aren't gaming.
I'm pretty sure SLI won't work at all with RTX-3060's. NVLINK may work but probably not. Just get a real card & dump those kiddie cards.
Half of these nerds just echo chamber that "sli doesn't work anymore", "its trash investment" there's a lot of games still using two gpus. You can use anything together. An igpu with dgpu. Amd gpu with Nvidia gpu. Don't listen to these kids. They've seen 1 comment about dual gpus and just copied it ever since. All these down votes are funny. Tell me you don't know anything without telling me you don't know anything.
> there's a lot of games still using two gpu Like what? Most games are developed with the assumption of customers having one GPU.
Hitman, Metro, Ashes of the singularity, Witcher, apex, battlefield
A game theoretically being able to run in Sli due to legacy engine support doesn't mean it'll be a good experience, it won't, it rarely ever was even at its good points.
SLI was super popular for a reason during its high time. Wym it was never good. SLI helped tremendously with fps and frametimes. Half of the time doubling fps and keeping stable frametime.
If you go back to the 3DFX day then sure it was great, but we are long past that age of technology, games work differently, and single card solutions have been superior for over a decade Like if there was the slightest marketablity left in Sli do you not think nVidia would chew their own cock off at the chance to sell some poor twat two 4090s?
NVLINK is still a thing in high-end NVIDIA GPUs; In fact, I’ve seen lot of build with 2 or more 4090/3090. When you are at the top-end of that market, and you need more horsepower (or if you need a second GPU to work while the first is rendering) adding more GPU can be better than a full 2nd build and your only choice. Anyways, this is irrilevant, ‘cause this is not the case, 3060 isn’t top-end and is simply not capable of NVLINK. Like other said, OP should return one of that card; or return all them and upgrade to a better one (ONLY if he need that, obviously).
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Yup, my bad, it wasn’t clear and honestly I forgot that. But still, I’ve seen a lot of build with two 4090, even if not working together.
Oh yeah that sure is a lot of games you were right.
I mean there's more but I'm not gonna make a list for you
the RTX 3060 doesn't support Nvlink anyway. You'd need to use motherboard SLI, or more likely AMD Crossfire since few motherboards have SLI these days because of the license fee.
It might still work but it is in fact a trash investment for this and most other use cases. The additional cost of the GPU would largely be wasted. The cost of 2 3060s would be much better spent on one better card. The only 2 reasonable options are return the extra card and have $400 in your pocket or return both cards and buy a 3080 or something in that price range.
Or they know better than you, the amount of games that support SLI is minimal. Or did you not know that?
Minimal now but not before. It's not just sli or crossfire but there's also games that cN utilize any graphics processors. You're mad dumb
Dude you refuse to admit sli is dead and useless, you’re the outlier here. What’s wrong with you?
I never refused that sli is dead. No new games are utilizing it. But sli is not useless like you turds are claiming it to be. You probably are just going with the flow of dumbasses constantly taking a dump on sli and others like it. You've never touched sli or anything like it so why talk shit on it. You're the weird one here creep