Conclusion

Scaling in DX11 is decent enough, leading to impressively high, smooth framerates at 4K....

Multi-GPU usage in a consumer environment hasn't really taken off despite the best efforts of Nvidia and AMD. This sentiment's underscored by Nvidia dropping 3- and 4-way SLI support on the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 GPUs.

And the efficacy of multi-GPU usage has been further called into question as the latest gaming API from Microsoft, DX12, puts the onus on the games developer rather than GPU manufacturer to tune for multiple cards in a system.

It is against these challenging backdrops that we have evaluated a couple of MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X GPUs today. Scaling in DX11 is decent, leading to impressively high, smooth framerates at 4K, and routinely punching out numbers that a single GTX 1080 cannot ever hope to match.

Yet the current state of multi-GPU performance in leading DX12 titles can leave a lot to be desired. Performance drops substantially in Hitman and has only recently been resolved in Tomb Raider. Such an unpredictable state of play can leave the novice user befuddled. Sure, one can run back to DX11 and achieve performance gains, though that goes against the grain of API progress.

We're left wondering how much longer multi-GPU usage has a life in consumer PCs. Ever-dwindling market penetration and concerns with DX12 performance means that it's a niche market which will only get smaller. Potentially excellent yet littered with performance uncertainty, approach Pascal-based SLI with thoughtful consideration, especially if you want to use the latest APIs.

The Good		The Bad
Can be very, very fast Consistent performance in DX11 4K60 in popular titles		Potentially poor DX12 performance Serious questions regarding longevity

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MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming X graphics cards are available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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Multi GPU has always been seen as a bit of a price saver at the cost of taking the risk that some games won't support it (the x70 cards have typically been £300-350), but now with this founders day bollocks they used to rip us all off of an extra hundred quid, then not dropping it again, has made that value non-existent

I keep thinking if buying a second 970 was a smart move when I see some of the benchmarks, but then I see the prices and realise yes, yes it was.

Some games are terrible for SLI and I have no idea how they make them so bad. Planetside 2 is another example where SLI seems to make things worse - that's on DX9 though. You'd hope writing with DX12 in mind and one of the big features of that being multi-GPU, things would be better.

Well right about now, buying two 970's 18mths ago was the smartest long term purchase I made with my current PC.

In all the 5 big games that I've played over that time, SLI scaling has been superb and trouble free, giving 980Ti performance, and in some games beating it by 5-10%

I have no interest in buying any of the 10xx cards because quite frankly they're just node shrunk maxwells on steroids, take away the 50% clock speed boost that 16nm has allowed and they're not really that impressive to me TBH.

970SLI will still cut the mustard in games for at least another 12-18mths, hopefully by which time sanity will have returned to exchange rates and GPU prices.

£700 for a 1080….yeah riiiight, hell will freeze over before I'd pay that for a single GPU.

To me these results look excellent. For not much more than a 1080 this setup wipes the floor in virtually every test by a very significant margin. And that's with new cards and new drivers, things should only get better.

At least one crossfire set up for comparison would have been nice. Ideally Fury X and RX 480…