Conclusion

Today we’ve had a look at SLI scaling of two custom GTX 980 graphics cards from ASUS in combination with an Intel Core i7-5960X CPU, while driving the Intel CPU at default clock speeds. Our scaling index page shows an average performance bump of 72.23 percent in the case of 1080p when using two GeForce GTX 980 cards instead of one. A glimpse at our 1440p preset quicky reveals an even better scaling where the SLI system outperforms the single-GPU setup by 76.73 percent. On the other hand it was really interesting to see that in the case of our UHD preset the performance benefit went down to 62.86 percent. We’re surprised that 1440p is benefitting to most from an SLI of two GTX 980 graphics cards. Apart from that there is a 14 percent gap between the scaling at 1440p and 2160p, which is something we really didn’t expect.

When it comes to playability we can say that one GTX 980 graphics card is sufficient to enjoy recent games on highest details and 1440p resolution. We were able to play all games, which are included in this article, smoothly without stuttering. Even Crysis 3 at 1440p and with all details maxed out didn’t drop below 40 fps. If we look at UltraHD in combination with very high details, we see that two cards are a must if you want to be able to actually play games. You might be asking why we’re testing these systems with UHD and all details maxed out, since the massively increased resolution together with a 28 inch display already make aliasing effects way less visible. Our thinking is, that we want to find out where the limits of specific configurations are and in the case of two GTX 980 graphics cards we have to torture them with UHD and highest details in order to really see frame rates tumble.

Apart from the sheer performance also power consumption is very interesting to have a look at. In idle and with one card our test setup pulled 92 Watt from the wall and in the case of SLI we measured 113 Watt, which is equal to a 22.83 percent increase. Under full load we notice that the single card setup burnt 385 Watt and the SLI system was turning 546 Watt into heat, which is a difference of 41.82 percent. In other words our test systems gaming performance was increased by 63 to 76 percent, while power consumption rose by almost 42 percent. If we only look at gaming performance of the entire system and put it into perspective with the increase in power consumption, the results are rather reasonable.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Thief
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - GRID Autosport
Page 3 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 11 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - BattleField 4	Page 12 - Metro Last Light
Page 5 - Watch Dogs	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - Tomb Raider	Page 14 - Performance
Page 7 - Sniper Elite 3	Page 15 - Prices
Page 8 - Crysis 3	Page 16 - Conclusion