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Fellow SLI beta testers HELP!

TantrumusMaximus

TantrumusMaximus

Senior member
I just recently got my two BFG 6800GT cards flashed to the same rev3 BFG BIOS thanks to the help of folks here. 🙂

Now my question:
How the hell do you really know SLI is doing it's thing? I enabled the setting to display the green line and I'm not noticing what I would have expected. At one point the line itself moved up and down on the screen....as I changed to newer drivers it looks like it was changed to a green line across the middle with 2 measurement bars that rise and fall as the load changes. The interesting thing is that the two bars are ALWAYS the same length. I never see one card doing more than the other. When I go out to the desktop and check the temps on the GPU's the temp for the first is around 76 and the second card is like idle temp at like 54 deg.

How do you force SLI on an application? When I go into the advanced properties and look at the profiles SLI always says for each profile.... "Predefined Read" not the 4 options that I see on the forums like "SLI-Multi GPU Render" etc etc.

I have tried the settings on the DOOM3, HL2, Aquamark etc etc and all say "predefined read" My score on Aquamark goes up about 2000 points with the second card.... a guy here on the forums posted an 83,000 score with the same rig as mine with 2 lesser 6600GT boards! I can't break 80K for the life of me. DOOM3 and HL2 don't seem to do any better with the second card.

I think something is not correct. Am I missing some setting?

I am running the latest detonator drivers and tried all kinds of flavors of other drivers but nothing seems to help.

Thanks.
 
Sigh....

First of all, what driver are you using? The 2 diff lines you see with SLI are for each rendering mode, SFR and AFR. Some games do AFR, some do SFR. This is predetermined by the driver. If SLI is off, you will not see that line. The fact that you see means SLI is enabled.

What resolutions are you running your tests at? What are your system specs? Just because you have SLI does not mean you are going to have exact scores as another SLI system.

Run the Doom 3 timedemo at 16x12 with 4xAA/8xAF with SLI off and on, post those scores.
 
Originally posted by: quattro1
Sigh....

First of all, what driver are you using? The 2 diff lines you see with SLI are for each rendering mode, SFR and AFR. Some games do AFR, some do SFR. This is predetermined by the driver. If SLI is off, you will not see that line. The fact that you see means SLI is enabled.

What resolutions are you running your tests at? What are your system specs? Just because you have SLI does not mean you are going to have exact scores as another SLI system.

Run the Doom 3 timedemo at 16x12 with 4xAA/8xAF with SLI off and on, post those scores.
Click to expand...


explained ths alot recently? 😛
 
Yawn...

As I stated above: I am running the latest detonator drivers and tried all kinds of flavors of other drivers but nothing seems to help.

And YES I would expect to best the scores of an SLI system that had two 6600GT cards vs. my 6800GT cards with the same CPU. Elementary.

I think that I am not setting something up properly with the profiling or something.

Sure I'll post some numbers.

So what you are saying is the split frame rendering the line would move, the alternate frame rendering just shows the bars moving. That makes sense.
 
I dont see where you say which driver you are using. You say latest, but latest to who?

Anyway, you should not have change any other settings for SLI. Once you enable it, all you would have to do is set your AA and AF settings, nothing else. The driver will decide which rendering mode to use automatically.

Again, what resolutions are you testing and do you have AA/AF on? Posting some scores would also help, for single and SLI.

What are your system specs btw?
 
Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus
I just recently got my two BFG 6800GT cards flashed to the same rev3 BFG BIOS thanks to the help of folks here. 🙂

Now my question:
How the hell do you really know SLI is doing it's thing? I enabled the setting to display the green line and I'm not noticing what I would have expected. At one point the line itself moved up and down on the screen....as I changed to newer drivers it looks like it was changed to a green line across the middle with 2 measurement bars that rise and fall as the load changes. The interesting thing is that the two bars are ALWAYS the same length. I never see one card doing more than the other. When I go out to the desktop and check the temps on the GPU's the temp for the first is around 76 and the second card is like idle temp at like 54 deg.

How do you force SLI on an application? When I go into the advanced properties and look at the profiles SLI always says for each profile.... "Predefined Read" not the 4 options that I see on the forums like "SLI-Multi GPU Render" etc etc.

I have tried the settings on the DOOM3, HL2, Aquamark etc etc and all say "predefined read" My score on Aquamark goes up about 2000 points with the second card.... a guy here on the forums posted an 83,000 score with the same rig as mine with 2 lesser 6600GT boards! I can't break 80K for the life of me. DOOM3 and HL2 don't seem to do any better with the second card.

I think something is not correct. Am I missing some setting?

I am running the latest detonator drivers and tried all kinds of flavors of other drivers but nothing seems to help.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

You need to enable the CoolBits utility in the registry -> click me.
 
Does this sound right?
Timedemo of demo1 1600x1200 4AA = 13.7 FPS

2 6800GT
1GB RAM
3000+ A64

Drivers = 76.41 from Guru 3D.

I am going to load another set of drivers and try that.

I am fully removing them rebooting and reinstalling.
 
Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
await rollo, he will help
Click to expand...

LOL- looks like I'm too late.

As far as checking if SLI is helping, why not just run or bench the game with and without it enabled? Only good way I know of to test, watching the load balancer doesn't give you an idea of the % benefit.

In general, AFR gives more benefit than SFR. Like OhnnyJ says, enable Coolbits and "Advanced Options", select AFR.

My 6800GTSLI vs 6800GT benches
Check it out against yours and you'll know if SLI is working. If it's enabled and not, check the selector on the motherboard and the connector between the cards.

The first card is always faster than the second, heat rises, in this case into the HSF of the first card.

Use the 71.89 WHQL drivers - the betas screwed me up big time.
 
Yeah, I'd only use the newest official drivers from nVidia's site. I tried ExtremeG and yeah it didn't work right, but worked when I went back to the same version of the official nvidia drivers.

There's definitely something wrong if you're getting 13.7FPS at those settings in Doom3. A single 6800GT would be able to get that.

The only way that heat should cause one of the cards to be slower is if its being throttled due to overheating, otherwise they should be doing an even amount of work, shouldn't they?
 
You just beat me to the punch 🙂

I was just testing that LOL!!

I rolled back to the first set of drivers (66.93) I was using when I bought my first 6800GT.

My result without SLI with same test: 36.5FPS
Same test with SLI was: 46FPS

There is another issue altogether that is leading me to believe I'm going to have to just reburn the OS. As the timedemo is running he pulls out a flashlight and at that point it stutters real bad and a few other places.... every occurance looks like the HD is busy. I wonder if there is more to this. All the spots that it stutters it does not look like a spot that would be overloading the video card very much either.

I will try the drivers you suggested 71.89 as well. I think I had those loaded last night but I'll try again and post results.

Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Yeah, I'd only use the newest official drivers from nVidia's site. I tried ExtremeG and yeah it didn't work right, but worked when I went back to the same version of the official nvidia drivers.

There's definitely something wrong if you're getting 13.7FPS at those settings in Doom3. A single 6800GT would be able to get that.

The only way that heat should cause one of the cards to be slower is if its being throttled due to overheating, otherwise they should be doing an even amount of work, shouldn't they?
Click to expand...


Doesn't look like heat. I've been watching that closely. Both cards have NV Silencer 5's on them as well. The cards have been sitting around 72 +- 5C after gaming.

Also Rollo... I looked at your benches on the Hard Forum and your results are almost double mine with a 3800+. I'm running stock right now I'm hoping that when I OC my CPU that the scores will rise. I have run this 3000+ @ 2.6 stable only time will tell. Downloading drivers now.
 
Yeah, those are some low scores for even a single card I think.

Have you defragged? After doing a fresh install or actually you should do it on a regular basis (at least once a week if you game very much). It might help quite a bit.

Also, when you uninstall, do you boot into safe mode and use Driver Cleaner? Could be that there is some driver overlap, and this would help a lot.

Oh, and they just released a new driver (official nVidia one I mean) so go give it a try.

The stuttering in the time demo is normal (at least everytime I've ran it). Its just a really intensive part of the demo. Of course, it seems like its affecting you more than it should based on the framerate results you're getting.
 
Hey Rollo, thanks. I didn't even realize they had a newer one since the 71.84 rev.

My score lept from 46 to 61FPS!!! And this is with mem and CPU at stock speeds.

The defragging is good advice I will try that. Now I also DID just re-load the nForce driverset 6.53 as well so that may have played a part in the score increase as well.

I'll let you know how this goes.
 
Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus
Hey Rollo, thanks. I didn't even realize they had a newer one since the 71.84 rev.

My score lept from 46 to 61FPS!!! And this is with mem and CPU at stock speeds.

The defragging is good advice I will try that. Now I also DID just re-load the nForce driverset 6.53 as well so that may have played a part in the score increase as well.

I'll let you know how this goes.
Click to expand...

I can help you even more if you pm me pictures of your HOT wife playing fps shooters......



Heh, can't blame a guy for trying! 😉

Anyway, LMK if you need anything, I'll help if I can. 🙂
 
Looks like I'm most likely going to have to reburn...I don't know what the Frick is goin on but after a defrag I'm down to 46FPS again and the stutters are a bit better but the end result is still shoddy performance. Looks like the 71.89 drivers are here to stay though. Thanks.

Your not the first to ask about my wife and I bring it on myself...always say I'm gonna post but never get around to. I need some pics of her actually playing first 🙂
 
Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus
Looks like I'm most likely going to have to reburn...I don't know what the Frick is goin on but after a defrag I'm down to 46FPS again and the stutters are a bit better but the end result is still shoddy performance. Looks like the 71.89 drivers are here to stay though. Thanks.

Your not the first to ask about my wife and I bring it on myself...always say I'm gonna post but never get around to. I need some pics of her actually playing first 🙂
Click to expand...

There's only ONE answer- you need to have an SLI expert like me over to fix your rig.

It will be hard work, but if you will pay my travel, I will do it. 🙂

 
Originally posted by: Rollo
Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus
Looks like I'm most likely going to have to reburn...I don't know what the Frick is goin on but after a defrag I'm down to 46FPS again and the stutters are a bit better but the end result is still shoddy performance. Looks like the 71.89 drivers are here to stay though. Thanks.

Your not the first to ask about my wife and I bring it on myself...always say I'm gonna post but never get around to. I need some pics of her actually playing first 🙂
Click to expand...

There's only ONE answer- you need to have an SLI expert like me over to fix your rig.

It will be hard work, but if you will pay my travel, I will do it. 🙂
Click to expand...

You should be asking if his HOT wife has a HOT sister or HOT friend 😉.
 
Originally posted by: ohnnyj
Originally posted by: Rollo
Originally posted by: TantrumusMaximus
Looks like I'm most likely going to have to reburn...I don't know what the Frick is goin on but after a defrag I'm down to 46FPS again and the stutters are a bit better but the end result is still shoddy performance. Looks like the 71.89 drivers are here to stay though. Thanks.

Your not the first to ask about my wife and I bring it on myself...always say I'm gonna post but never get around to. I need some pics of her actually playing first 🙂
Click to expand...

There's only ONE answer- you need to have an SLI expert like me over to fix your rig.

It will be hard work, but if you will pay my travel, I will do it. 🙂
Click to expand...

You should be asking if his HOT wife has a HOT sister or HOT friend 😉.
Click to expand...

Nah, doesn't matter. I've been happily married for over a decade so I'm about as dangerous as a small soap dish.

I can still look though, even if the urge to do so only shows up about every other year...
😉

 
I would honestly back up and format after trying a huge set of drivers and still having the problem.

A clean slate would certainly help the troubleshooting.
 
Very interesting results. This kept me up perty late last night LOL! Feeling it today but both my bosses are out today 🙂 🙂 🙂 can you say "slack?"

Anyhow back to the point..

Interestingly I got the 61FPS at stock speeds after reloading 6.53 chipset and installing 71.89.

Defragged OS drive and Game drive and scores dropped to 47FPS!

Rebooted because I was daft as to why that would impact my score negatively... after reboot same thing. So I went the usual route and started disabling processes running. Turns out that McAfee Virus Scan 7.1 was robbing about 14FPS. As soon as I disabled the real time scan process the FPS jumped. I always had thought that AV software + games bumped heads but didn't really think about it here since I was so focused on the SLI.

Biggest Concern:
I still haven't been able to get rid of the pauses in the timedemo. Can anyone else comment if they get these pauses? The first big pause is when the char pulls out the flashlight the first time in the demo. Then it happens occasionally from there. All of my previous results were at 4xAA Ultra Quality (Does this use 512mb textures or something???) I dropped to High Quality and the score was the same but the stutters weren't "quite" as bad but still severely there.

I'm going to reburn the OS tonight.

Interestingly the 61FPS score I never attained again. I bumped my 3000+ back to how I had it pre-SLI to 2.6GHz and still only got like 60.7. Could this be refresh rate related?

To reiterate for anyone coming in late that doesn't want to read the entire thread:
Both card BIOS are flashed to BFG's rev3 latest: 5.40.02.36.10
Got BIOS at http://www.mvktech.net

Display Drivers at 71.89 (Official set)
Chipset Drivers at 6.53
XP SP2
3000+ @ 2.6
1GB Corsair DDR500

As a last note I wonder if my Audigy 2 drivers could be impacting anything. Going to try using onboard even though I guess the Creative card is supposed to have a lot less CPU utilization. Worth a try.




 
When you run the doom 3 timedemo, make sure you precache it so it will not rely on system bandwitdh and use purely the GPU's

type:
timedemo demo1 1

Not sure if you are precaching so just in case.
 
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