I'm getting a 780 anyway at the end of the year.  Maybe v2.1 I'll get SLI.  Just quickly; is it necessary to run water through SLI setup as cards these days are so big, there may not be space for the cards to aircool?

Watercooling to be able to run cards in SLI is definitely NOT necessary. I have two 780's happily running in SLI with no problem.

 

Some motherboards may not have their PCIe slots spaced as far apart as others so there may be some variance in temps experienced based on that. From my understanding if you are running SLI and the 2 cards are going to be spaced very close together then you may be better off running cards with stock coolers so that hot air is exhausted out the back of your case, but water cooling is not needed.

Thanks to all for the advice re: the advantages of the 780.  I'm leaning that way.

 

 

Watercooling to be able to run cards in SLI is definitely NOT necessary. I have two 780's happily running in SLI with no problem.

 

If I ever go to SLI, I'll probably just run them air-cooled and limit water-cooling to the CPU loop.  Running two water loops with two pumps is more than I want to deal with - too many moving parts to get out of order.

Even if P3D V2.X supports SLI I would not bother with it. I have used SLI since the 8800GTX days and even had GTX 580's in SLI. Its a waste of money unless you are using multiple screens.

If you have 30fps and SLI gets you 40fps you won't notice any difference on the screen. Even if you can discern a difference I would challenge you to take a double blind test on that one. the difference would be so miniscule it would not be worth the cost of an Extra GPU.

I disagree. Running SLI on higher resolution monitors shows definite improvement in FPS and fluidity.

 

SLI these days is also likely to add more than just 10FPS, sometimes almost doubling performance depending on the title and will also allow you to run higher AA levels etc

 

I agree that for 1080P though that it is a waste unless running a 120Hz monitor.