This $2000 Quad-SLI still rocks! Dual GTX690 Tested in 4K

[@Dreadnoughty]

The biggest problem with the 690 is its 2gb VRAM. If Nvidia had used 4gb on each chip it would be a much more usable card. Cant wait to see the Pro Duo CF video :)

[@nexus_tech]

Hello mate! Hope you enjoyed the video. That's right. Imagine it had 4GB per core...yes, I'm looking forward to that testing, at some point next year 😀

[@StaelTek]

I agree. Nvidia should’ve made an 8 GB variant. Even if it was $100-200 on top of the 4 GB version, it will still hold some value down the road.

[@bradleyblexrude1482]

Sadly there was a server version of the gtx 690 called the tesla k10 that had 4gb per chip, and while that can be modded to play games, it cannot sli the gpus.

[@BigPandaGamer]

So far, what's killing the old flagship is the amount of VRAM, most of the times, the GPU itself it's more than capable

[@thelasthallow]

you could find GTX 680s with 4GB of ram but they are more rare, and i dont think you could quad SLI them. if so that might be an idea vs the 690s

[@ChezRG-YT]

Congrats on turning your hobby into a KZbin channel and thanks for making these great videos !

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you very much! That's very kind of you to say 🙂

[@exxor9108]

Best way to fix the stuttering issues with GTA IV, is to use dxvk. The GTX 690 is recent enough to support Vulkan, so I am certain that using dxvk for GTA IV will fix all the stuttering problems with the game.

[@nexus_tech]

Hmm, good shout! Thank you

[@sylphsylph2118]

this shows sli wasnt just a fever dream really.... if they continued to support it it couldve been great and optimised

[@mclarenf1gtr99]

Even back in those times dual GPU cards were a risk to consider as not all games took full potential of such technology, with some even presenting worst results than if used only one GPU. I always preferred weaker but single GPU card to a stronger dual GPU one because of this. Actually that is probably the main reason why they are gone, with the other one being that you now have single GPU cards that are powerful enough and consumes enough that having a dual GPU version is considered overkill and too much of a hassle to maintain for little profit(if any). It was a neat idea when 1440p60 Ultra was a struggle even with 780ti-980ti, but after the 1080ti, it was no longer a problem with it being able to do 4K60 Medium in some games. Now we have RTX4090 which can now do 4K60 High with some Ray-Tracing, and some people(including myself) still think 4K is not that important for a good gaming experience compared to 1440p+2xMSAA, specially when there is a big performance gap. Basically the mainstream audience is fine with 1440p with the enthusiast and more wealthy craving for 4K. Sadly 1080p is still not a resolution for all wallets as $200-$300 GPUs still struggle with more than medium settings. Hope that changes soon enough, because I don't know if I can keep going with UHD620 for much longer, as I am against giving money to companies for overpriced products that should really be selling for much less. $200 for 6500XT(a shittier 2019 RX580, but more expensive) and $300 for RTX3050 (2019 RTX2060...but actually worst) is not OK at all, specially when $400+ there is much more value (the problem being, it is 400+). $300 is a decent amount in my country and need something that I am sure it will last close to 5 years without much issues (Stop selling me consoles, idc).

[@usr01]

@@mclarenf1gtr99 6700xt?

[@OkiemElektroniki]

You can really see big performance step up from GTX 590. Not long ago I got mine GTX 690, and I have to say I was very positively surprised by it's performance. The best part is that this GPU is not getting as hot as previous ones did. Great video!

[@nexus_tech]

Thanks for sharing. The GTX690 isn't a bad card by no means, it was just quickly outgrown by its successors.

[@damianosplay9457]

such quality video and only 4k views? youtube ought to recommend it to more people

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you kind Sir! What needs to happen will happen :)

[@LawrenceTimme]

Great games selection. Really showed what sli can do when it uses most of the GPUs 😀

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you :) I've tried combining what worked, no point showing games that do not support SLI. Sadly, majority...

[@idied2]

gotta love the collection you have. been trying to do the same my self.

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you kindly! Everyone needs a hobby, I like collecting cards, do it!

[@marcounchained]

Another great video. Thank you for your hard work it must be a lot of work finding these cards and running these tests.

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you! That's really kind of you to say, I'm happy to both satisfy my own curiosity and then share it with you 😀

[@paskudne]

Im really glad to see someone using stalker in sli testing - xray engine is notorious for single core hammering but suprisingly scalable with multiple gpus. Altho, im not sure if stalker anomaly supports sli natively - engine was reworked heavily and its really vram hungry even in vanilla state so performance with older gpus can be questionable. But i really recommend to try clear sky - its really gpu heavy, scalable with multi gpus and there is official benchmark for it, also, call of pripyat is actually have downgraded graphics compared to cs and dx11 mode is not feature complete so better to use dx10 anyway.

[@yolkyhorizon]

In like 5 years, I will probably quad sli some rtx 2060's even though i dont game much anymore

[@redhair2784]

I remember back in 2012 when a gtx 690 was every gamers dream

[@nexus_tech]

A GTX 680 would have been lovely, GTX 690 was god tier hahah! :) Did you ever own one?

[@redhair2784]

@@nexus_tech yea even gtx 680 was a dream, nah I was like 12 years old back then and just built my first pc with like a cheap HD 7770

[@SRSpoony]

i have 2 x R9 295x2 cards sat on a shelf in my PC room if you want make me an office and do tests on them, i paid £1500 each day of release. i only changed them November last year as drivers ended 18 months before hand and new games wouldnt turn on without new drivers installed. played Darktide on 3 screens on medium settings at 45 FPS well enough. was using it with my X79 3930K 64gb ram build, and thats build isnt much slower than my ryzen 5 3600x either

[@deagt3388]

Hard to believe this SLI setup really works today! ;-)

[@Zfast4y0u]

i wish every game was optimized as dying light, enjoyed it with my 1080ti sli setup, 100% scaling..

[@nexus_tech]

Right? Agreed! Shame dual cards are no longer supported :(

[@Zfast4y0u]

@@nexus_tech they kinda are, just studios wont bother. dx12 multi gpu in shadow of the tomb raider gives 100% scaling. for example.

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

Thanks for the video. I wonder why Witcher 3 had issues. I remember it working well with the 690. Maybe it was VRAM limited at 4k? Stalker is a game that I’ve always loved in theory but I never loved as much in practice. I think the setting is probably the best you could have with the area around Chernobyl being possibly the most interesting place on earth. However I never liked the gameplay much. Some mods make it a bit better but it was never what i truly wanted. GTAIV is a very interesting game. It doesn’t seem to want to run above 60fps no matter what you throw at it. I would like to know what runs the game best. Maybe an older OS? A super high clock on one core on the CPU? There has to be some combination of hardware and software that makes the game run well no? Yet I’ve never seen it run well. I think some random videos might be interesting but personally I’m not that interested in the new stuff. At least not the high end since that is covered by all the big KZbinrs. I’m more interested in obscure, old or low end stuff. Have a happy holiday.

[@nexus_tech]

Hello mate! Hope all is well with you ? Same, have lovely holidays 🙂 I remember playing Witcher 3 with two 980's in the past, not sure what happened, maybe an update stopped the support for SLI. With GTA 4, I promised myself I would do a dedicated video just to cover all the basis...it deserves it 😄

[@spicywolf6718]

The standalone aren't too bad once you tweak them. Playing Stalker Anomaly currently, spent many hours on Misery, Lost Alpha (not great) and a few others. Total overhaul or standalone mods

[@jeffjenner5030]

I just watched to see how you went . I upgraded from this last year. If it supports SLi then the 690 has its number. though even when the 690 is not as fast as one would like the visuals are georgous. still have mine they are now sedimental. I do wonder how these cards would go in supporting an A.I..

[@nexus_tech]

Nice one! What did you upgrade to ? Not sure if there is any meaningful method of measuring this ? Like a A.I. benchmark ?

[@jeffjenner5030]

@@nexus_tech Just a 1660 super. With prices being what they are and with Nvidia trying to turn video cards into the same economy as mobile phones, I am happy to sit for a while to see where everything settles down.

[@q7frkzq7frkz14]

Hey, do you have any advice to choose the good driver ? I'm always using SLI 980ti with last drivers, should I try older drivers, and do you have a technique to test this? Very interesting video !

[@nexus_tech]

Hello mate! Good question, generally, the newest should be the best, more so with newer GPU's - but, in my case, it was not. I could not find "GTX" list but it should aid as good guide - see where you are currently and try older versions :) www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/rtx-enterprise-and-quadro-driver-branch-history/ and try couple of

[@q7frkzq7frkz14]

@@nexus_tech Thank you for answer (I gonna test)

[@mikethetight9818]

Thanks for the Video and the work you put into. 👍

[@nexus_tech]

Glad you enjoyed it!🙂

[@koreannom]

More random videos, more random purchases, testing out retro as well as modern stuff. All the works please! haha

[@nexus_tech]

Will do!

[@stefensmith9522]

I remember dual 690's was the first high end system I built back in the day. At the time those cards would chew up any game

[@leexy3395]

I thought back in a day SLI will be a dominant in the future

[@nexus_tech]

Hello mate, agreed. But at least we get to enjoy those old gems 🙂

[@zethloveless7238]

When I left sli was a dream, when I returned it’s still a dream 😂. I surely thought the same myself man.

[@spicywolf6718]

Love this. About to start playing with 4 way crossfire in my 08 rebuild. Dell XPS630i (2008) Core 2 Extreme QX9770 ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution Corsair Dominator GT 4x2GB (1600C7) 2x ATI HD-4870 X2 2x Intel X25-E 64GB (RAID O) Soundblaster XF-i Extreme Unfortunately my original XPS730 1000W supply died recently so I couldn't swap out the original 630i 750W and keep it all age appropriate. So unfortunately there's a HX1000 going in simply so all my desktops run HX and I can swap PSU between cases without changing cabling if I lose a supply I will get some 15K spinners for it at some point

[@mclarenf1gtr99]

Talking about making an old and inefficient gaming PC...😆

[@spicywolf6718]

@@mclarenf1gtr99 because a 13900K & RTX4090 are definitely required to play titles from the mid 2000's... It may be old, but it's still the best hardware of the Core 2 era. Playing old titles on modern hardware sucks.

[@eivis13]

I get that a 690 is baisically 2 680s, but i was expecting quad sli, not dual sli on dual gpu cards.

[@Apothecarii]

Quad SLI and Four Way SLI are two different things. Quad SLI references two cards with two GPUs on each card. Four way SLI is four individual cards with 1 GPU on each.

[@eivis13]

@@Apothecarii now that you mention it it does make sense. Never had an sli setup so not very litterate on the topic.

[@danthompsett2894]

it seems weird that they re-invented SLi with NVLink then pretty much at the same time killed it off, and DX12 support is pretty much non exsistant with only a hand full of rare game titles still using SLi and em not even sure if its real or somehow faked as its a specific type of DX12 i think its called DX12AFR, 6800K CPU with DDR4? my bad looks like 2011 X99 mobo's are still in production.

[@100500daniel]

waiting for the 295x2 * 2 crossfire video

[@nexus_tech]

Oh yeah!

[@theaverageblitzer4351]

If SLI didn't go belly up and this card had 4gb of vram it'd be monstrous. now its limited to 1080p and lower more like 1024x768 because of vram

[@nexus_tech]

That's right, if only it had 4GB VRAM per GPU core, that would keep the card relevant for few more years

[@zodiacthundaga7264]

2:52 I think even when you turn AA off in the settings, Crysis still uses SSAA if shaders are set to max unless you disable it.

[@user-ly8rw3gn3p]

first time seeing someone include stalker in a benchmark video, nice !

[@agualiqui3131]

Bro those frame times look like my grandpas life support 😂

[@drupiROM]

5:15 Yes, please !

[@PineyJustice]

Ah yes, a great card if you want to play gta v with textures turned down to minimum. That 2gb vram limit is harsh on this card, I have one and was sorely disappointed. My 7970 matrix platinum runs at 1270mhz core and a hefty OC on the vram too, and it absolutely demolishes the 690 for most games, but especially newer ones.

[@nexus_tech]

Hey! Thanks for sharing, the HD 7970 is beast of a card and yeah, the weakest part of GTX 690 is lack of VRAM! If only it had 4GB per core...but then TITAN Z...lol

[@zZSandManZzdis]

Dying light 2 is pretty fun. Lots of fun mechanics. and lots of mods to enhance the game even further And can stress some hardware pretty good. Recommend 👍

[@nexus_tech]

Awesome! Thank you :) I will look to purchase when on sale

[@GrumpyWolfTech]

I think you meant the cryengine was so unoptimized, lol

[@nexus_tech]

Hah!

[@lejeffe1663]

please do some stalker anomaly escape from pripryat.......my 380ti ftw was struggling to run it.

[@nexus_tech]

Oh that looks awesome! YES!

[@jamesdoe7605]

Any way you can help a brother out? I need the PLX rom file for my gtx 690.... anyway you can copy yours and send it?

[@MaTtRoSiTy]

Interesting... that power draw though, holy power bills!

[@fandyus4125]

The electricity bill is gonna rock as much as this setup I bet.

[@onlypvpcaterina-6669]

Gta 4 only ever ran good on default settings sadly on pc

[@DanielCardei]

4:34 🤔😮😱

[@nexus_tech]

Yes mate! That's gotta be done next year 😀

[@CougarCat21]

nice! I only have a single GTX 590 now.

[@nexus_tech]

That's a nice card still 👌

[@RuruFIN]

Also I'm surprised that they can run games in 4K. 2GB feels so low these days.

[@nexus_tech]

Yeah, that's true. Imagine it had 4GB....

[@LAZERS4]

Very nice video !

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you very much!

[@chrispappas3750]

I cannot find older drivers for nvidia cards, only the new ones.

[@chuck2501]

4:40 could this be anything to do with the major upgrade to the Witcher game engine that was just released?

[@enslaved87]

It's just cool. No other reason for this. Nice job.

[@nexus_tech]

I agree hah :) Thank you, much appreciated

[@lr5658]

Dying light 2 is just more of the first game. I know that is what the title suggests but I found myself putting it down after a couple of hours because It felt like the same game.

[@GeForce210]

Hey you have gt 210 why don't you compare it with hd 630

[@gyorgysimai9489]

Please make a video about radeon pro duos🙏🏽

[@nexus_tech]

Oh you bet! Have two of them, itching to be tested :)

[@_theHost]

The heat the thermal are getting to hot 80 c men that 179f

[@budiisnadi]

Only 574w? Wow, even dual - no, quad beast still consumes less energy than 4090.

[@nexus_tech]

Well, on the flipside, the warm air is welcomed during winter months, can't say I'd be happy in summer :)

[@RuruFIN]

These days you can't even get the Nvidia flagship with that amount of cash.

[@the_sjdo]

How to Make a better 690: Step 1. Buy 2 780 Ti's Step 2. But the SLi Brgide on. Step 3. Step 4.Profit and a GTX 690 whit 3gb VRAM

[@SultanOfAwesome]

I used 2 780 ti's for a couple of years. It's not a great setup these days

[@the_sjdo]

@@SultanOfAwesome but better then a singel 690 ^^

[@nexus_tech]

Wish Nvidia gave it 4GB per core...

[@the_sjdo]

@@nexus_tech like the 770 4gb edition ?

[@aymericfy4800]

Insane tearing as well

[@nexus_tech]

That's right, but for benchmarking purposes I leave Vsync off - it gets a lot better with it turned ON :)

[@jrno93]

imagine quad sli 4090

[@Panzer_Revolt]

Nice video 😎

[@nexus_tech]

Thank you! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

[@humb707ldtkali7]

Try the vulkan gta 4

[@sketchy0078]

Dying light 2 is good not great though. I would definitely give it a go if you enjoyed the first one it's just not quite as fun as the first Dying light.

[@nexus_tech]

Heey! Thank you - really? I should watch some footage, loved the first one so much!

[@sketchy0078]

@@nexus_tech Yeah same. I played the first one on PC and switch. Such a great game that I still go back to now and again. Dying light 2 is sort of more of the same. They tried a bit with the story telling to transplant it to another area and carry on. As I said it’s good just not quite as tight as the first one. Silly things like the class based armour system make it seem a bit contrived. The vertical scaling though is something else. As long as you don’t mind heights you will definitely find some fun in there.

[@iikon01]

Well just accept it 😌 Rtx 3060ti x5 times better than this card and it's 2020 midrange card Old flagship even if it's sli cards can't compete these days

[@nexus_tech]

Hmmm, 5x performance ? I would need this tested hahaha! Of course, the 3060Ti is in my view all one really needs!

[@iikon01]

@Nexus Tech yup the 3060ti is a life saver I got the peladn edition for 389$ only from newegg This edition look really cool also the temperature is amazing controlled , I will change for the rtx 4060 ti after they release it by 6 months until the prices go down Like this one I got with 389$ Some people purchased it with 600+$

[@paulpsomiadis5847]

Dying Light 2 is an excellent sequel - even better if you have an RTX capable GPU 8-)

[@Ghennesph]

384.76 master race.

[@permission1254]

what is your electricity bill after trying this?🤭

[@user-tw8jm9ov6b]

Pls add Anomaly

[@daytimerocker3808]

u should sli the r9 390x next

[@nexus_tech]

It's time for 295X2 and some Fury before we go to 3xx :)

[@hanswurst3811]

dying light with sli ??? sure that it works ? i tried it but never worked .... worst performance than with 1 GPU .... i cant run ANY game in sli - always problems or worst performance ....... my hopes died and i never tried it again after the 580 in SLI so for games it was just a marketing joke in my oppinion ..maybe its worth for workstation tasks

[@koreannom]

aaaaayyyyyyyyy

[@nexus_tech]

Here we go! Hahaha

[@Revener666]

Ugh! screen tearing.

[@Q5Grafx]

2 cards is not quad sli. i have a 3x sli evga gtx 780 sc rig and all sli does is kill framerate as the multiple cards dont sync well and then there are the pcie lanes issue. so you take a 16x card and in dual like you have becomes 8x8 my 3x runs at 8x8x8 with one card dedicated to physx. in theory 1 card renders 1 frame and the other renders the next but the sync rate even among identical cards isnt perfect. 2 of my cards have hynix ram and one has samsung ram and even with the two hynix cards its impossible to game with sli enabled without tearing and dropped frames. but 2 cards would drop about 8 fps as compared to 1 card, 3 cards drops 12 fps. only rig you can run 2x or 3x sli on is a threadripper with the 80 lanes of pcie3. and even that wont guarantee sync even though it has the available 16x bandwidth. that being said i did notice a huge boost in non gaming 3d rendering where my machine with 1 card would stutter with a 250k poly object i was able to load 1 million poly objects with no stutter or delay which i now get with 1 1080ti card.

[@LawrenceTimme]

2 cards with 2 GPUs each is quad sli. 4 cards with 1 GPU each is 4 way sli

[@kennethsheppard7874]

fake news. games dont use sli so... but quad 1080 ti's are where its at

[@LawrenceTimme]

That would be 4 way, quad is 2x2. 4 way is 4x1.

[@kennethsheppard7874]

@@LawrenceTimme what?

[@LawrenceTimme]

@@kennethsheppard7874 4 way gtx1080ti is 4 way sli, not quad sli. Quad sli is when you sli 2 dual GPU cards together.

[@kennethsheppard7874]

@@LawrenceTimme what?

[@LawrenceTimme]

@@kennethsheppard7874 what what?