@B6: How far down the road is official SLI support?

[jcenzano]

Tired of having invested $$$$ in two cards mainly to be able to play COD smoothly...

[RickRuski]

Yes, I too would like some official support. There have been conflicting statements from the developers about Sli/Crossfire. Early in the piece Luthier stated that they had broken the support for multi cards just prior to release and hadn't fixed it as yet. Later there was another statement from one of the team to say they thought it was working. I have experimented with Nvidia inspector and got the best that I can at the moment (which gives me nearly double the fps that of one of my single cards). Some are blaming Sli for the micro stutters that we have with the sim, strange that other sims are running smooth with Sli (RoF for one modern sim) and the stutters are still there for a lot that are only running single cards.

[tk471138]

why buy two cards when you can buy one really good and expensive card...


its not like when you use sli or Xfire, the two cards capabilities are cumulative....its not like putting 2 1gb cards together allows you to use 2gb of VMemory

its just a waste of money....

now if you buy two of the most expensive and best card and put those together that makes a little more sense...

but doing what i see alot of people doing buy cheap or middle of the road cards and puttin the two together makes no sense....might as well just buy one really good and expenseive card...

[skouras]

we don't have even a proper AA
And you ask for SLI..

[von Pilsner]

I would like proper SLI support as well.

[RickRuski]

Don't knock Sli people until you have tried it. It works fine with most sims, this is the only one that I play that stutters. If you look at some of the posts others that have only one card are having the same problems that Sli gets blamed for. I've 2 x gts 450's (don't laugh) in Sli and have good frame rates (single play London Attack 40--60fps and over water in other single missions up to 90fps). My son has a single 560ti and doesn't get those frame rates or as smooth, he's even shelved CoD until there's been some major improvement. I've found that it's the ground rendering that seems to be the problem, once I'm up over 3000 mtrs there's no noticeable stuttering. Guess that is the hight limit for missions, during the WW2 citizens said that a lot of combat was not visable from the ground just the trails of aircraft.

[Prime Time]

What settings are you using in Nvidia Inspector to get SLI to work?

[RickRuski]

Hi Prime Time,

Have a look at this post of mine, it doesn't work for all but I find it works for my setup.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=26236

[ATAG_MajorBorris]

we don't have even a proper AA
And you ask for SLI..

Have you tried the new nvidia beta drivers, use WRC 2010 from the programs list in nvidia control panel, FXAA and adaptive sync work.

Good luck!

[ATAG_Septic]

My PC was working so well I decided to fix it, will I never learn? Anyway, it eventually, inevitably, led to a format and clean install.

My reinstall has not yet included the beta Nvidia drivers (301.34), which I thought were the reason the profile editor found launcher.exe rather than naming it WRC2010 on my system. With the clean system and official release drivers it now sees launcher and keeps the correct name too.

SLI seems to work well with 1.6 here, better than 1.5, as does AA. I force alternate rendering, which results in both GPUs running at around 70% (I only use 1 GTX590 for Cliffs) and only the slightest stutter on occasion.

I used to inject FXAA before the beta Nvidia drivers but with the clean install AA is good enough on 1.6 without FXAA.

I know this is not scientific but my system had become cluttered with lots of so-called performance improving software, Beta drivers and bespoke system settings and for me a clean basic system and game installation works as well if not better than with all the game and system tweaks.

Cheers,

Septic.

[Prime Time]

Hi Prime Time,

Have a look at this post of mine, it doesn't work for all but I find it works for my setup.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=26236

Thanks, I tried this but unfortunately get bad stutters :(

[jcenzano]

Thanks, I tried this but unfortunately get bad stutters :(

So did I, and had also bad stutters

[RickRuski]

Don't know if both of your cards are from the same stable and exactly the same, if not then they may need adjustment with a software like EVGA Precision tool or similar. For Sli to work both cards must have the same V/ram (you can't mix a 1.5gb card with a 2gb card etc). My two cards are from different stables but I have clocked and voltaged them the same using Nvidia inspector, then synced both cards with PT. At the moment I have also used the fps limiter built into PT to limit the fps to 30fps. Sure I'm getting stutters but minor (micro stutters unless I'm down very low chasing a 109 or whatever) when up over about 2500 mts they virtually disappear. My two cards aren't that powerful but I'm getting good results through experimenting with settings. Don't believe what is being said about stutters being caused by Sli, if that was the case then all those running single cards wouldn't have stutters but a lot of them have (infact if they were all honest most are). My son has a quad core and a 560ti single card and has shelved Cod because of the stutters he is getting and is playing Rof where that runs silky smooth for him. I use a combination of Nvidia inspector and PT to get the results that I have, use the overclocking part of Nvidia inspector to adjust your clocks etc, it isn't just for over clocking you can use that to de-clock as well. Also in Nvidia control panel did you adjust the physics setting to CPU, this should take the load being used for physics off the Graphics cards.

[jcenzano]

Also in Nvidia control panel did you adjust the physics setting to CPU, this should take the load being used for physics off the Graphics cards.

AFAIK ClOD does not use Nvidia´s PHYSIX feature, so it should not make any difference.

[RickRuski]

I notice with your m/b that you can run 3way Sli, do you have your cards in 2x 16 slots, or 2x 8 or 1x16 and 1x 8. My m/b is running 2x 16 and the stutters are minor until I get down low, also I've tried "Auto Select" against "CPU" settings in the Sli set up and my stutters are much less with the CPU setting.

[Blackdog_kt]

I never go for dual GPU setups and always prefer a single, beefier card.

Such setups do work in many games but they are often problematic to get right and by the time they are fixed, the cards might be obsolete.

Of course i don't mean high selling FPS titles or sims like DCS that also sell software to military clients (these companies can hire more people and get more work hours per month to fix the problems faster), but flight sims that are made by small teams of 20 people or so, like CoD and RoF.

RoF had troubles with SLI too for many months (maybe more than a year actually, just like CoD), i remember reading many requests and complaints about that too. There were also other issues as well, like "shimmering" ground textures at long range, improper use of multi-core CPUs (i think it was dual cores that crashed if the OS was win7 or vista), FM issues, CTDs, no FMB documentation, limited online playability and limited offline usability (there was no dynamic campaign and the flyables were fewer than what CoD has).

It all sounds very similar to the issues CoD has and it took about 18 months to really fix.

For me this means that given time and provided the teams stay in business, things do get fixed, and that's why i remain optimistic about CoD.
The main thing that kept me away from RoF was the micro-transaction model (i prefer to pay more and get complete expansions instead of buying planes separately) and the always online requirement, otherwise i might be flying it too.

However, to get back to the topic of SLI, since my preference is for this kind of games that are usually made by small teams, i know to expect a lengthy process of optimizations and fixes. So, i don't make upgrades that i can't be sure will be working and that's why i never use dual GPU setups.

If i was also playing a good deal of shooters or action games that are better funded and have lower graphic requirements in terms of view distance, map size, etc, then by all means i would think about SLI as well, but not when my primary focus is flight sims made by dedicated but small studios.

[von Pilsner]

Luthier said it was working a long time ago so I think that politely asking for SLI support is within reason.

If you think having a SLI setup is 'wrong' or 'bad' here is why I have an SLI system.

I purchased a SLI capable MB because I enjoy triple screen gaming. FLight sims and racing sims are very nice with super wide fov and trackIR. I am not rich so I build my system a piece at a time.

I don't want to keep using softth (as great as it is) because I want a hardware solution (nVidia 2D surround is what I'm shooting for [requires SLI (http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-surround-system-requirements.html)] - just need 1 more monitor [or 3 new ones possibly :(]). MatroxTH2GO had more limitations than just buying a 2nd card. As I understand it the super multimonitor nvidia cards are 2 GPUS in SLI mode on one card so I am not left with many options...

So there are valid reasons for SLI setups (even if you enjoy flight sims).

Cheers :D

http://bs.beckament.net/files_pub/FlightSim/rof/desk-rof.jpg

[ATAG_Septic]

Hi all,

I'm using SLI with Cliffs currently (1.6 + hot-fix) and it seems with good effect. Both GPUs stay below 65c, and are used equally up to around 60%[this was incorrect, they go to 99%] . When I use one GPU it runs at 90-99% and much hotter.

Vram Memory usage is around 95% on both cards (they are on a 590). I get a few stutters but these are not from the alternate frame rendering, which appears fluid, this at very low level over London with everything on highest settings including SSAO and FXAA and all filtering off. The occasional stutter seems to occur to my unqualified eyes to be associated with loading a new map tile or object but not the SLI.

For me SLI works but might work better if we can get a proper profile.

Cheers Chaps.

Septic.

Nice setup there Von Pilsner, Congratulations! May I ask, do you need to connect and hide the X52 Joystick to enable the throttle to work? It seems I do.

[Stublerone]

I just say to everyone asking me: Warning! Shit idea with sli!!!Warning!!! :)

Just waste of time, resources, performance, money...even for triple monitoring.

As long as sli isn't working 100% which is technically not possible atm, better drive with a good single gpu. No advantage from memory, no advantage elsewhere!
Only for guys, who want to waste time in finding solutions to play instead of just playing. Please never upgrade your system with sli with the intention to safe money. It is simply a bad idea. The nerd guys with sli do not buy sli, because they need it. They just buy it to max out the limit to show others. It is their hobby to show balls in hardware. They will never buy older cards to upgrade system. So: As long as the general idea of sli will be done on other ways and with other intention(e.g. For using one gpu for one monitor seperately), it will never get satisfying. There are simply too much ideas and too much possibilities, which they would like to offer. That is, why it simply never reaches a single gpu like performance.

Just my opinion. If techniques do not change, it will not get satisfying. And you can theoretically do a quad sli with some 560's and CloD will not run much faster than before.

[Stublerone]

Just edit: Doesn't it sound strange, that your SLI is using 95% vram on both cards with 3gb each? You can simply see: With 2 lower cards with 1500 mb vram, you will be again bottlenecked, as u cannot use the other vram. Not very effective and that is, why sli isn't providing a way better performance on smaller sli rigs as desired.

And this is VERY often the case in games, that it do not take advantage of the vram. Normally the guys do not see it, as current games are not using a lot mor than 1 GB vram. But this is waste ...

[von Pilsner]

I just say to everyone asking me: Warning! Shit idea with sli!!!Warning!!! :)

Just waste of time, resources, performance, money...even for triple monitoring.

As long as sli isn't working 100% which is technically not possible atm, better drive with a good single gpu. No advantage from memory, no advantage elsewhere!
Only for guys, who want to waste time in finding solutions to play instead of just playing. Please never upgrade your system with sli with the intention to safe money. It is simply a bad idea. The nerd guys with sli do not buy sli, because they need it. They just buy it to max out the limit to show others. It is their hobby to show balls in hardware. They will never buy older cards to upgrade system. So: As long as the general idea of sli will be done on other ways and with other intention(e.g. For using one gpu for one monitor seperately), it will never get satisfying. There are simply too much ideas and too much possibilities, which they would like to offer. That is, why it simply never reaches a single gpu like performance.

Just my opinion. If techniques do not change, it will not get satisfying. And you can theoretically do a quad sli with some 560's and CloD will not run much faster than before.

OK, so how do I get nVidia surround without a SLI config?

[ATAG_Septic]

Just edit: Doesn't it sound strange, that your SLI is using 95% vram on both cards with 3gb each? You can simply see: With 2 lower cards with 1500 mb vram, you will be again bottlenecked, as u cannot use the other vram. Not very effective and that is, why sli isn't providing a way better performance on smaller sli rigs as desired.

And this is VERY often the case in games, that it do not take advantage of the vram. Normally the guys do not see it, as current games are not using a lot mor than 1 GB vram. But this is waste ...

I try not too risk a disagreement on the 1c forums but; The memory is not wasted if both GPUs are using it. Half of it would be wasted if you are not using SLI (and have two GPUs) as each GPU only accesses its own Vram.

I do of course know this to be true because I read it on the internet :-)

Cheers,

Septic.

[Stublerone]

What i wanted to say: Smaller cards are sufficiently using their vram.

A correction from my side concerning this: As cards are getting larger vram, multi gpu can be used without any limits, because every card has enough. Smaller cards in current sli state are less efficient, because they get bottlenecks and up to now and with current techniques, it will not change very soon.

That is why I always suggest not to upgrade with sli. Perhaps this changes, but i bet, that it will take several more years to take it into consideration without these doubts. I was not referring to your system, because you have too much reserves. U just can see, that it is not efficiently scaled and this is often the case.

Concerning sorround: New nvidias also have them ready for surround gaming, but sorry: I am also an nvidia guy normally, but when you talk about sorround gaming, eyefinity is the betterbsolution and ati cards are performing way better in high resolutions by nature. So, we have to wait for the real kepler :) to evaluate their behaviour.

Up to now, the 680 dies against 7970 in high res or better say ultra hgj res with triple monitor setup.

[von Pilsner]

I just say to everyone asking me: Warning! Shit idea with sli!!!Warning!!! :)
Nobody was asking you...

You are the guy who jumped into the SLI request thread to tell us our gear is shit... Obvious you are just trying to start a fight. Too bad the moderators are cool with this kind of behavior.

[Blackdog_kt]

Luthier said it was working a long time ago so I think that politely asking for SLI support is within reason.

If you think having a SLI setup is 'wrong' or 'bad' here is why I have an SLI system.

I purchased a SLI capable MB because I enjoy triple screen gaming. FLight sims and racing sims are very nice with super wide fov and trackIR. I am not rich so I build my system a piece at a time.

I don't want to keep using softth (as great as it is) because I want a hardware solution (nVidia 2D surround is what I'm shooting for [requires SLI (http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-surround-system-requirements.html)] - just need 1 more monitor [or 3 new ones possibly :(]). MatroxTH2GO had more limitations than just buying a 2nd card. As I understand it the super multimonitor nvidia cards are 2 GPUS in SLI mode on one card so I am not left with many options...

So there are valid reasons for SLI setups (even if you enjoy flight sims).

Cheers :D

http://bs.beckament.net/files_pub/FlightSim/rof/desk-rof.jpg

Sure, i'm not saying it's wrong or bad. What i was trying to point out is that it has been historically troublesome to implement properly in our gaming genre, so i'm not willing to purchase a setup with a history of under-utilization, unless i have no other choice.

Like your example illustrates, gaming on multiple monitors with specific cards may be one of those "no other choice" cases obviously and nobody can blame you for going with it.
For single screen setups however, i feel like setting myself up for trouble if i decided to go for SLI and will always prefer a single card.

[von Pilsner]

Sure, i'm not saying it's wrong or bad. What i was trying to point out is that it has been historically troublesome to implement properly in our gaming genre, so i'm not willing to purchase a setup with a history of under-utilization, unless i have no other choice.

Like your example illustrates, gaming on multiple monitors with specific cards may be one of those "no other choice" cases obviously and nobody can blame you for going with it.
For single screen setups however, i feel like setting myself up for trouble if i decided to go for SLI and will always prefer a single card.

I agree with that, more complexity = more potential problems.

But when you are in microcenter (http://www.microcenter.com/) with a bit of $$ in your pocket and you already have an SLI capable MB things are bound to happen... :D

Getting great frame rates in most of the games I enjoy is a nice side-effect.

[335th_GRAthos]

SLI is for sure the only reasonable way to handle "three monitor view" = three times the standard single monitor view = three times more pixels than a single monitor.
Unfortunately not there yet with CoD but I still hope...

Three screens, pffft!


These were the setups when real men used to fly flight sims! ;)

http://grathos.de/temp/Multiple_Monitors.jpg


PS. This was probably FS_Phat's room in his young age... :D

~S~

[RickRuski]

Results with my Sli are similar to Septic's, you are soon aware if your Sli isn't working as it should. One card will be idling with hardly any use and the other will be running near 90--99% and temps will be up. My system shows both cards in Sli using near 95---100% V/ram and the use between the 2 cards is within 2% of each other (one using the most then the other). Temps are about 57--62deg in Sli and don't normally go over that. This is the first rig that I've built with Sli and the next one will be Sli also unless technology changes to someting better, but whatever my next board is it will have the option for either. I see that a lot of modern boards (the better ones have the option for either Sli or Crossfire) are set up for multi cards so are the detractors saying the technology is wrong. A few years ago it was hard to get a M/b with this sort of technology now a lot of manufactures are doing it.

[Stublerone]

I am just saying, that they should be aware, that you will always have problem with sli and crossfire.

@Pilsener: Are you perhaps the agressive one from us? I never was agressive towards the initial poster or other sli users. I was just giving a statement about the problems and that you are not able to solve stutters etc. in CloD, only if you have high vram cards like 3 gb. Otherwise you are currently bottlenecked, even if you do a quad sli. There is just no addressing for the memory in clod, which sufficiently devides workload. So, even a quad sli rig with 1,5 gb vram will run on 100% vram load and soon bottlenecks the same way as a single card. And how much fps do u get is not important, as your sli will perform bad.

The intention behind my post originally was, that, if techniques do not change, you will never have sufficient results. No efficient results and the fact, that sli is not a massively used feature, will lead us to the result, that developer wouldn't care about that sli topic, how you wish.

My personal feeling on that: You will get an sli profile, but as all other developers as well, they wouldn' t care much about that. Please not evaluate this, as it is my opinion and just a wild shot in the dark. Yous simply have to be lucky to get agood initial profile.

[Prime Time]

I have 2xGTX580m in SLI and every other game I have runs SLI just fine, including ROF and IL2:1946. Lets face it, the CloD developers can't even get AA working, which is frankly ridiculous.

[Stublerone]

What is so important on AA in the current state of the game?

And what games are running? Perhaps these are nearly all games not exceeding 1,5 GB VRAM? This is a most common problem -»addressing vram, when it is needed. Most games running below 1,5 GB -» not that performance problem. Streaming engines are also facing the same problems up to my knowledge.

What resolution and/or monitor setup are u playing with? 1080p single monitor = normal gaming and no problem with vram capacity. But higher res, triple monitors and with this a larger fov and more polygons, textures, etc. to draw = more vram and you can get bottlenecked without a sufficient technique to devide the workload for the 2 vrams.

I just want to say, that this is the main reason, a sli behaves bad and this is the case in clod, as far as I see it right. So no sufficient or effective performance boost using cards with less than 3 GB vram, where every card is able to manage it all alone.

Technique of sli is limited and it needs to be changed. Otherwise an sli rig is not more than a fps generating maschine, where price gets to high for that boost.

I am just claiming sli as it is currently. But AA? Common, there are other problems and it is easy to implement later. :)

[von Pilsner]

I have 2xGTX580m in SLI and every other game I have runs SLI just fine, including ROF and IL2:1946. Lets face it, the CloD developers can't even get AA working, which is frankly ridiculous.

It's frustrating to be sure... Oh well, keep the faith & ignore the trolls! :D

[BigC208]

OK, so how do I get nVidia surround without a SLI config?

GTX680 to the rescue! Bought one a month ago. Turned my three landscape oriented 1680x1050 monitors around so now they're portrait. Hooked em all up to the gtx680 and voila! When I ran a single monitor (1600x1200, 22 inch crt)I had the the graphics set to the highest setting and consistently ran between 65 and 85fps. Now with Nvidia surround at 3352x1680 (custom bezzel correction resolution) I'm getting around 45-55 fps. The GTX680 also fixes the lack of good AA. FXAA looks very good and does not give a performance penalty.

[von Pilsner]

GTX680 to the rescue! Bought one a month ago. Turned my three landscape oriented 1680x1050 monitors around so now they're portrait. Hooked em all up to the gtx680 and voila! When I ran a single monitor (1600x1200, 22 inch crt)I had the the graphics set to the highest setting and consistently ran between 65 and 85fps. Now with Nvidia surround at 3352x1680 (custom bezzel correction resolution) I'm getting around 45-55 fps. The GTX680 also fixes the lack of good AA. FXAA looks very good and does not give a performance penalty.

Very nice setup! I am still using SoftTH at the moment for mine (cause my middle monitor is wrong native resolution) but I hope to get a new monitor next month (so I can properly enable nVidia surround). I noticed that when I check SLI support in Rise of FLight I get a fps boost even though I am not 'technically' in an SLI config at the moment so multi GPU support is working well for me in most games.

From: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_690/
The GTX 690 has two GK104 Kepler GPUs arranged in an internal SLI configuration.

Thanks, but again that is using SLI technology... (although it is doing it on the card itself) I don't have any problems with my setup I was just responding to someones assertion that I can have nVidia triple head without SLI.... :D

[Slayer]

OK, so how do I get nVidia surround without a SLI config?

A 680GTX or GTX 670 will run multimonitor now with only 1 card...

[Stublerone]

Just what I wanted to say. A single card can run it, too. Just be aware, that vram can get a bigger issue. So it is n1 to have them.

By the way: BigC: What is your card consuming in terms of vram. Does it get hick ups sometimes due to the small memory? This should be the case, as your setup should easily consume about 2,5GB vram. When you have hick ups, how big are they or how do they look like practically. Just for my information.