What if the 1080 Ti series could support NVLINK? SLI is now a dying platform since there's nothing in it for developers or their just to lazy to support SLI. What if a smart hacker got a hold of NVIDIA's source code for NVLINK? Would they be able to mod the 10 series cards to support NVLINK? Perhaps it could be done with a specialized bios firmware mod or driver? Or is it hardware limited and tapped out for it's time? I have heard that some game developers have written support for stacking VRAM in SLI on older cards. I don't know if any, which games would support stacking VRAM from the 10 series or older. What are the odds of AI technology scaling SLI better then said game developers who do not suppport SLI? SLI isn't completely dead. I'm hoping a mod community would rally up with new innovative ways to ultilize the 10 series. 

NVIDIA put their half bit ray tracing on the 10 series. Anything is possible with reverse engineering.  Maybe not NVLINK now.  I think that's the only good thing that came out of the 20 series cards is NVLINK. I'm just wondering if SLI scaling profile technologies will still be applied within NVLINK some how? A lot of online gamers I talk to thinks SLI is over kill. I would love to see NVIDIA's AI scale games to continue to support SLI. Perhaps an emulation scaling technology that does a better job then developers who try to poorly support the SLI technology. That would be innovation and a milestone leap in technology for dual gpu owners. NVLINK with AI SLI. 

Does anyone remember that dream we were sold in early info about Windows 10  ??  When Microshaft told people that using Win 10 we would be able to chain together any graphic card brands / cores & memory configs to expand our processing power !?
 
Oh,  they pied -pipered us on that one.........

aka_STEVE_b
Does anyone remember that dream we were sold in early info about Windows 10  ??  When Microshaft told people that using Win 10 we would be able to chain together any graphic card brands / cores & memory configs to expand our processing power !?
 
Oh,  they pied -pipered us on that one.........

Non- NVlink / SLI "No physical Bridge" - but through the PCIe bus - I thought this could be done at least with some 20 series cards & some software magic

Digital_Fuzion
What if the 1080 Ti series could support NVLINK? SLI is now a dying platform since there's nothing in it for developers or their just to lazy to support SLI. What if a smart hacker got a hold of NVIDIA's source code for NVLINK? Would they be able to mod the 10 series cards to support NVLINK? Perhaps it could be done with a specialized bios firmware mod or driver? Or is it hardware limited and tapped out for it's time? I have heard that some game developers have written support for stacking VRAM in SLI on older cards. I don't know if any, which games would support stacking VRAM from the 10 series or older. What are the odds of AI technology scaling SLI better then said game developers who do not suppport SLI? SLI isn't completely dead. I'm hoping a mod community would rally up with new innovative ways to ultilize the 10 series. 

What would be the purpose of replacing the SLI bridge with an NVlink? I don't get the point of your experiment. If SLI is dying, NVlink (which is just changing the bridge in your example) would for the same reason(s) right?

What is the point of SLI anymore when cards today are powerful enough? SLI just implemented microstuttering and scaling issues and in the long run just not worth the headache, let alone waiting for support in games. With PCI-E 4 about to hit the streets why would you ever want to go back to those days?

Why a GeForce 1080Ti? Why not just go crazy and go for the EVGA TNT2 and give it an update to NVLINK? (First EVGA graphics card)

Hoggle
Why a GeForce 1080Ti? Why not just go crazy and go for the EVGA TNT2 and give it an update to NVLINK? (First EVGA graphics card)

 
Ah, the TNT2 always brings back memories. I had one of those cards. It was in my very first PC. My mom saved for a long time to be able to finally buy me a computer. Now I make a living by troubleshooting them everyday 

Digital_Fuzion
I think NVLINK should of been offered to the 10 series cards some how. With the amount of money spent on them. It would of been nice to see the technology scratched out a little while longer. The only really selling point of upgrading to a 2080 Ti for me is the NVLink feature. Sure there's a limit to the 10 series. It's still a great card and will continue to serve me well. I hope to bleed the life out of them in SLI or none SLI. 

It is not physically possible. Something capable of roughly 3 GB/s cannot cannot compete with something else capable of roughly 25 GB/s, 50 GB/s, or more.

You really need to take my first reply into consideration and then let it go.

Moving forward, I'm glad I'm waiting out to see how things turn out with NVLINK's future revision capacities. And the new PCI-Express 5.0 on the way. Not to mention Intel is coming out with their own discrete graphics cards. Maybe the wait will be worth seeing how both will compete with one another. While the feature of NVLINK is great. That is truly the only selling point of the 20 series card. Now is a great time to wait it out to see who will be the new king of gaming between Intel and NVIDIA. Also Ray tracing is slowly adapting to the developers just like DirectX 12. The last hand full of games barley supported DirectX 12 I would also like to see developers scale graphics engines better so people don't have to spend more money on over priced graphics cards. Fortnite is a prime example of a game the scales well on looks great on just about any platform.

Another part to consider is if PCI-e 5.0 supports up to 128Gb/s will it be fast enough to share data at the 30Gb/s of NVlink? Of course PCI-E 5.0 isn't yet included on any motherboards or any video cards but it does mean that likely we would need to see NVlink 2.0 which might support up to 8K 144hz or even 240hz. It might be that bridgeless cards are able to work in SLI just over PCI-e 16X .

HeavyHemi

Digital_Fuzion
Moving forward, I'm glad I'm waiting out to see how things turn out with NVLINK's future revision capacities. And the new PCI-Express 5.0 on the way. Not to mention Intel is coming out with their own discrete graphics cards. Maybe the wait will be worth seeing how both will compete with one another. While the feature of NVLINK is great. That is truly the only selling point of the 20 series card. Now is a great time to wait it out to see who will be the new king of gaming between Intel and NVIDIA. Also Ray tracing is slowly adapting to the developers just like DirectX 12. The last hand full of games barley supported DirectX 12 I would also like to see developers scale graphics engines better so people don't have to spend more money on over priced graphics cards. Fortnite is a prime example of a game the scales well on looks great on just about any platform.

I still do not understand your desire for a  data link for a tech you claim is dying. I mean, how do you move 'forward' when your own tech is, as you said, dying?
 
Data link? Do you mean NVLINK? I never said NVLINK was dying dude. I said it's something to consider before buying. I personally love using dual GPU's. I know SLI is a slow death due to the lack of support. I figured a developer mod community could of done some SLI profiling. Where developers lack there of supporting it. Or NVIDIA's AI would scale and correct a lot of issues with SLI support. None of that is going to happen. It would be nice to see AI create some form of emulation scaling for SLI to improve dual GPU performance before it's just killed off. Basically the AI would set the proper scaling variables for SLI. The user wouldn't have to do anything. It probably doesn't even technically work that away. That would be my vision of NVIDIA's AI. If I had the developer skill set to make changes in the evolution of technology hardware and software. 

In my testing the GTX 1080 Ti cannot really run RT Benchmarks like Port Royal so not worth it in Games.
https://www.3dmark.com/pr/104612
https://www.3dmark.com/pr/104610
 

HeavyHemi

Digital_Fuzion
AI scaling exists. It's used in Samsung's QLED 8K TV's. I wish NVIDIA would enable AI SLI scaling with one of their future driver releases for poorly supported SLI games. 1080 Ti's are not cheap. This would satisfy many owners before the age of SLI is totally dead. I think NVIDIA could pull this off. But why would they want to? I know, because they want us to think we need to continue spending $2K on a single graphics card by the time the 30 series hits the streets.
t

Uh, GPU have scaling. You don't just add computational features and think you get free performance. I don't think you quite understand how all this works. Don't take offense but your ideas are not technically sound.  You don't just say golly, Samsung has AI and does 8K, surely we can just slap that on a GPU and presto, 8K at 60 FPS, absurd right? They have dedicated hardware scalers in TVs, it's not just 'some driver'. Then you end with a conspiracy theory. Come on, it's not WCCF here.

No, I get the technology side of things. I am hoping AI scaling would be something NVIDIA could implement into their future NVIDIA drivers for the 10 series cards. I don't give a whooping crap about 4K, 8K gaming, scaling at this time. I'm also talking for the support and life of NVIDIA SLI. Some thing should be done by NVIDIA to make improvements to the technology before it's just dead tech. I would like to see some possible chances before the 10 series is all tapped out. It can only be done with better drivers/software or maybe not at all. I guess these technology advances will be added in future gen cards with NVLINK and improved AI technologies directed toward scaling. 

the_Scarlet_one
NVidia keeps removing or limiting the options for SLI. I don’t think they actually care about it anymore. They use to enable the ability for 3-way, 4-way, and Quad SLI, and now they only officially support 2 way.

I doubt they will invest any time or R&D funds into something the don’t seem to care about at all. Also, only 2 of their top tier “Gaming” cards still support SLI. The 2080 and 2080ti.. why would they backdate EOL products even more when they are actively removing the option from current generations?

At this point of the conversation I have flipped it to software optimization since there is a hardware limit on the 10 series. It would be amazing to see NVIDIA revamp their drivers with AI scaling emulation modes for SLI users. Why? Because it would help gamers enjoy what they worked so hard for. If a developer doesn't want to support SLI then NV-AISE would fill in the gaps and identify how to optimize the gaming experience for the users in SLI. I figured it's a long shot but why not bring it up into this conversation among all the tech head gurus. I love to think outside the box and explore all options on the table. Good, bad? These are just ideas that lead to small beginnings.