Conclusion
Performance
The ASUS ROG Enthusiast SLI Bridge adapter performed admirably with no issues encountered operating the system in SLI mode with the dual modded EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 graphics cards. SLI performance in comparison to single card performance fell as expected with 50%+ performance gains across the board. The one performance caveat seemed to be the minimal impact the overclocked CPU speed seemed to have on performance. Performance gains were much more dramatic when overclocking the GPU by itself with the overclocked CPU netting < 5% performance increase in most cases.
Pricing
As of June 27, the ASUS ROG Enthusiast SLI Bridge adapter was available at Amazon.com for $69.95 with free shipping.
As of June 27, the EVGA 970 GTX SC ACX 2.0 graphics adapter was available at Amazon.com for $337.99 with Prime shipping. The card was also available from Newegg.com for $314.99 after $15 mail-in rebate and B&H for $337.99 with free shipping.
Courtesy of ASUS
Conclusion
ASUS did a fine job in designing the ROG Enthusiast SLI Bridge from both an aesthetic and implementation perspective. The unit is solidly constructed with a brushed aluminum cover with its embedded red ROG logo, allowing it to blend in well with almost any build. Further, ASUS designed the bridge to be powered directly from the SLI connectors on supported video cards as well as externally powered via a MOLEX connector for cards that don't have direct power support. Its availability and price is questionable currently, but that will likely change in the near future with the other enthusiast-style SLI bridges starting to flood the market.
The EVGA 970 GTX SC ACX 2.0 card performance testing in SLI illustrated some rather interesting results, especially when comparing performance of the cards with stock speed and overclocked CPUs. On average, you can expect a 50% performance gain with SLI, more with GPU-based overclocking. However, CPU overclocking appeared to have little effect on the performance of the system. Most of the tests were run at 1080p because of limitations of the testing equipment available which may have led to the lackluster results with an overclocked CPU. Further, the Corsair HX750 750 watt PSU may have been a limiting factor as well, especially when pushing both the graphics cards and CPU speeds. The take-away here is that SLI does net you some nice performance gains, but you need to be mindful of your system build as well. I'd recommend no less than an 850 to 1000 watt PSU to ensure that the PSU itself does not become a bottleneck.
Is this native advertising or
Is this native advertising or why did you test an SLI bridge?? It’s like testing a USB cable.. You only notice if it’s completely broken.
The SLI bridge was not the
The SLI bridge was not the only thing tested. If you read through the entire article, you would see that a good portion of the article is testing the performance of the GTX 970 cards in SLI.
Thanks…
Little touchy there Morry
Little touchy there Morry
What are you talking about,
What are you talking about, if anybody is touchy it’s you.
Does anyone know when the SLI
Does anyone know when the SLI bridges will actually be available to purchase at normal retail prices? All I’ve been able to find is random units popping up from shady vendors on Ebay or Amazon that mark them up +$100.
Does anyone know when the SLI
Does anyone know when the SLI bridges will actually be available to purchase at normal retail prices? All I’ve been able to find is random units popping up from shady vendors on Ebay or Amazon that mark them up +$100.
I like the sleek and
I like the sleek and simplicity over EVGA ugly ass SLI bridges
I recently got the EVGA 2.0
I recently got the EVGA 2.0 3-way SLI bridge, and though it looks great, it didn’t fit on my triple XS-PC watercooled cards without a bit of modification. The metal plate over the top was hitting the card inlet/outlet ports. It was rather unfortunate. I should probably return it for an ASUS one that would fit a lot easier.
Matter of taste and personal
Matter of taste and personal preferences. I would never, out of my free will, put anything red in my rig. That’s why if I need SLI bridge I will get EVGA not the ASUS.
And I find EVGA bridges more interesting to look at that ASUS. But we are back at the beginning. A matter of taste and personal preferences.
EVGA is obnoxious when it
EVGA is obnoxious when it comes to branding on every piece of EVGA hardware from every direction even more so when lit up.
http://static.evga.com/articles/00919/images/features_slider/SLI_bridge_slides_action_shot.jpg
Asus is just a symbol and you can mod the light to any color
With a 780 sli setup and
With a 780 sli setup and windows 10 with all drivers past 350.12 has a directX error “out of memory” playing battlefield 4. No error with sli disabled. 200 fps with 350.12, compared to 120fps with any driver past 350.12. But windows 10 keeps auto updating me to the newest driver that doesn’t work. 353.30 works great with single card but sli has to be disabled in order for me to play battlefield 4.
Terrible drivers with directX 12 in it.
Morry should try 350.12
Morry should try 350.12 drivers and see if the difference is large.
Morry Thanks for the
Morry Thanks for the article.I have a water cooled 5960x with 2 Sapphire Tri-X R9 290s with EK blocks. My cpu is at 4.4Ghz (44×10) using the Asus Suite III OCing software that sets the bios parameters. With both GPUs stock (1000/1300) my Firestrike scores are Overall: 17042;Graphic 21683;Physics 20,391 and Combined 5986
Overclocking the GPUS to 1125core/1425 mem yields the following: Overall 19099;Graphics 24317; Physics 20938 and combined 6968
Is it me or is multi gpu
Is it me or is multi gpu scaling getting worse i could have sworn that dual sli scaling with Kepler was much higher across the board
SLI bridges are so retro.
SLI bridges are so retro. When will Nvidia follow AMDs lead and eliminate them? Oh wait just one more thing to nickle and dime gamers.
What would suggest?
What would suggest?
Is this a big joke? Who in
Is this a big joke? Who in their right minds would pay 70$ for a little 3$ connector? LOL
Buy a better GPU instead, idiots.
who? they are called
who? they are called ‘enthusiasts’ L:)