I'm going to be getting new graphics cards for a desktop gaming/general workstation/hash cracker by night, So I'd like to get something that is able to reasonably perform in all these areas. I'm currently eyeing either 2x GTX970 or a single GTX980Ti for my build, the budget for graphics is about US$600-700.
It seems to me from online benchmarks that for the gaming side, 2x 970s will perform similarly to a 980ti, so that part is alright.
Based on benchmarks that I've seen around the forums, it seems that a single 970 performs at about 75% of the 980ti, in terms of hash speed.
Since 2x970 is approximately the same price as a 980ti, would the 2x970 be the better option then? I also understand that the TDP of the 2x970 is only 30W more than the 980ti, so it seems pretty comparable.
Also, on a side note, would cudahashcat be able to use both gpus if SLI was turned on? Or would I have to keep switching between SLI on/off whenever I wanted to switch from gaming to cracking...