2x GTX 680 2gb vs 1x R9 380 4gb

Hardware GPU
1

Ok, so i found a crazy deal and went ahead and bought 2 Gainward GTX 680 2gb cards with the blower design cooler, sli bridge and all for 70$ used.

I already have a Sapphire R9 380 4gb and is really happy with it. So I have some decisions to make..

I'm considering giving away one of the 680's to my younger brother and keep one for linux and attempt to pass the 380 through to a Windows VM.

Or maybe I should keep the 2 680's and run them in sli and let my younger brother borrow my 380..

Help plz. Is Sli worth it? Will I gain some performance later with Vulkan and DX12? I'm extremely torn at the moment...

2

Sli isnt worth it, the R9 380 is far better than the 680s, though a little hot.

Sell me one of them. :3

1 Like
3

Thanks for the answer. Sorry, but my brother is first in line to buy and I will keep at least one of them.

4

Sell them for $125 each and make a profit. :3

1 Like
5

I might. I will play around with them first though.

6

When SLI is working, they will smoke the R9 380. When it isn't, they don't stand a chance.

This is honestly a great answer. Flipping GPUs for a profit is one of the easiest things to do.

2 Likes
7

SLI is an awful idea.

just stick with what you have.

Source I ran 970s in SLI for 4 months before selling them

8

I would use them, personally. nVidia cards do better for linux gaming than AMD, so your plan for passthrough (at least for the games that the 680 can't effectively play native in linux) is a good one imo. Giving the spare to your brother (or lending it to him until you need it later on) is a good idea too. As long as the hardware is getting used, then good.

1 Like
9

If keeping both is an option, and you are willing to fiddle with drivers, thats really a lot of gpu power. You don't get perfect scaling in sli and cfx, but if you want to compare the amount of compute you'd be getting 13000-14000 in firestrike points with the 680's and 8500 with the R9 380. There is a lot of power there, so I would say try the the 680's in your system and see how your suite of games plays with sli. If you have them, try them out and see how those cards behave with the games you like to play. If it doesn't go well, sell one and use the 380.

1 Like
10

Sell them and get another 380.

11

Yeah. There's a LAN party in my area this weekend and my brother is running an AMD apu, so he's quite desperate. I don't know how to do the hardware pass through thing, but I'll figure it out.

12

I might do that eventually.

13

Just discovered that my Asus P9DWS motherboard doesn't support Nvidia SLI. Only 4 way CFx. So I'm testing the Gpu pass through thing with KVM. It's hard, but I'll make it work. Thanks for the suggestions!