[H]ard Conclusion on current SLI support.
- Thread starter VIAN
- Start date
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
.
let's hope this isn't permanent.
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
.let's hope this isn't permanent.
Originally posted by: xtknight
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
let's hope this isn't permanent.
Yeah, like NFSU2 uses SOOO much GPU!
Plays about as good on a geforce 4 as any current hardware.
Everquest doesn't run well on anything
Believe me I play.. Edit: I can't believe they can't run EQ2 at higher settings. I am running max quality here with a 256MB 6800 NU without any trouble...
I don't know why, but I don't really put much stock into their findings. I don't know what they do, but half of their benches seem counter to what AT and other sites have found (I don't know for sure, just seems that way to me).
I absolutely hate their graphs. I don't know why they have to cluster everything together like that, it'd look much better (more professional for sure) and be more legible if they'd make it bigger than that and let the data spread out a little bit. Their current ones look like the heart monitor graph of a crackhead having a panic attack.
I absolutely hate their graphs. I don't know why they have to cluster everything together like that, it'd look much better (more professional for sure) and be more legible if they'd make it bigger than that and let the data spread out a little bit. Their current ones look like the heart monitor graph of a crackhead having a panic attack.
Originally posted by: xtknight
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
let's hope this isn't permanent.
You guys are reading the graphs wrong.
Yes, it shows that a single GT and an SLI GT have these exact same scores:
Min-- 30, Max-- 45/46, Avg-- 39
But what you're missing is that the single GT was run at 1280x1024 0xAA 16xAF, and the SLI was run at 1600x1200 0xAA 16xAF.
That's equal performance when raising resolution up.
You still think there's no improvement?
All of their graphs are that way. I'm kinda torn as to how I like it. In a way, it's refreshing to see what settings a single GT would need to have to match the perfomance of a full-blown full-details SLI setup. So, it's not a true apples-to-apples at a set res/detail.
hard ocp is useful in finding what resolution you should run your video cards but you have to read then differently than a normal reviewer's like anand or tom's. most of the time, they set different resolutions/options for every card they test. more useful to listen to them for how high you can crank that particular card, not as useful to see how another card stacks up against another.
deadseasquirrel is right.
deadseasquirrel is right.
Originally posted by: cbehnken
Originally posted by: xtknight
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
let's hope this isn't permanent.
Yeah, like NFSU2 uses SOOO much GPU!
Plays about as good on a geforce 4 as any current hardware.
Everquest doesn't run well on anything
Edit: I can't believe they can't run EQ2 at higher settings. I am running max quality here with a 256MB 6800 NU without any trouble...
its an EA game, it plays crap on anything due to their sheer lack of talent
Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
Originally posted by: cbehnken
Originally posted by: xtknight
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
let's hope this isn't permanent.
Yeah, like NFSU2 uses SOOO much GPU!
Plays about as good on a geforce 4 as any current hardware.
Everquest doesn't run well on anything
Edit: I can't believe they can't run EQ2 at higher settings. I am running max quality here with a 256MB 6800 NU without any trouble...
its an EA game, it plays crap on anything due to their sheer lack of talent
Are you talking about EQ2? It's written by Sony...
Seriously, Rollo has done an amazing job of putting together very thorough benchmarks for different SLI setups. If you would rather see data that is more conventional (comparison at the same res/detail level), let Rollo know and maybe he can add that particular game to his benches.
Sometimes these things are just hard to compare. Take Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. It's capped at 20fps. I can run it at it's highest settings, max AA and AF out, with tons of bots running around, and it still won't budge off the 20fps. Haven't tried it on a single GT, or an SLI 6600 setup, so that would be one that is interesting to see.
Just be careful reading benchmarks out there. Some are misleading, some don't know how to test, some just plain lie, and, more often than not, they won't agree with each other because of the many varied settings in both the games and drivers (as well as differences amongst independent testing rigs).
Sometimes these things are just hard to compare. Take Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. It's capped at 20fps. I can run it at it's highest settings, max AA and AF out, with tons of bots running around, and it still won't budge off the 20fps. Haven't tried it on a single GT, or an SLI 6600 setup, so that would be one that is interesting to see.
Just be careful reading benchmarks out there. Some are misleading, some don't know how to test, some just plain lie, and, more often than not, they won't agree with each other because of the many varied settings in both the games and drivers (as well as differences amongst independent testing rigs).
Originally posted by: cbehnken
Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
Originally posted by: cbehnken
Originally posted by: xtknight
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzQ3LDg=
hahahah
on chronicles of riddick and everquest, the single card is faster, and on nfsu2, there's no improvement. they still have a way to go
let's hope this isn't permanent.
Yeah, like NFSU2 uses SOOO much GPU!
Plays about as good on a geforce 4 as any current hardware.
Everquest doesn't run well on anything
Edit: I can't believe they can't run EQ2 at higher settings. I am running max quality here with a 256MB 6800 NU without any trouble...
its an EA game, it plays crap on anything due to their sheer lack of talent
Are you talking about EQ2? It's written by Sony...
nfsu 2
shocking game
Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
Seriously, Rollo has done an amazing job of putting together very thorough benchmarks for different SLI setups. If you would rather see data that is more conventional (comparison at the same res/detail level), let Rollo know and maybe he can add that particular game to his benches.
Sometimes these things are just hard to compare. Take Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. It's capped at 20fp
Just be careful reading benchmarks out there. Some are misleading, some don't know how to test, some just plain lie, and, more often than not, they won't agree with each other because of the many varied settings in both the games and drivers (as well as differences amongst independent testing rigs).
I don't think its the performance thats the problem with the current state of nVidias SLI. As obviously the horsepower is there in spades. The problem is its bugginess and the fact that it still doesn't work with Most games. Thats the deal breaker for me. It all comes down to what you spend the majority of your time doing, benchmarking or gaming.
Originally posted by: ZimZum
Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
Seriously, Rollo has done an amazing job of putting together very thorough benchmarks for different SLI setups. If you would rather see data that is more conventional (comparison at the same res/detail level), let Rollo know and maybe he can add that particular game to his benches.
Sometimes these things are just hard to compare. Take Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. It's capped at 20fp
Just be careful reading benchmarks out there. Some are misleading, some don't know how to test, some just plain lie, and, more often than not, they won't agree with each other because of the many varied settings in both the games and drivers (as well as differences amongst independent testing rigs).
I don't think its the performance thats the problem with the current state of nVidias SLI. As obviously the horsepower is there in spades. The problem is its bugginess and the fact that it still doesn't work with Most games. Thats the deal breaker for me. It all comes down to what you spend the majority of your time doing, benchmarking or gaming.
Yeah you definately need SLI for games more than 2 years old. :roll:
Originally posted by: ZimZum
The problem is its bugginess and the fact that it still doesn't work with Most games. Thats the deal breaker for me. It all comes down to what you spend the majority of your time doing, benchmarking or gaming.
I understand your position, yet, I have to ask, what games do you play? "Most" is a difficult term. You are right. Add up the total number of available games out there, and SLI makes a difference on a very small portion of them. Yet, let's look at the realistic side of it though. 80% of the games out there aren't advanced enough to require additional GPU power. Not only that, but the games that are selling the most, the games most gamers play, those are the ones that get the boost. Those are the ones out there raking in money. And, coincidentally enough, those are the ones that are graphically advanced.
HL2, D3, Far Cry, UT2k4. These are games that are popular.
So, you are right. SLI probably won't help "most" games. But I think it helps most games that the majority of gamers play.
Some aren't even here yet, but nV claims support, so I will be excited to see the improvements for those-- Battlefield 2, Splinter Cell Chaos, SWAT 4. These are high on my wish list.
And again, don't necessarily go by the nV certified list. You can force SLI settings into any game. Not enough testing has been done on every game out there, but SLI shows improvements on more games than are on nV's list and in the default nvapps xml file.
Originally posted by: ZimZum
Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
I don't think its the performance thats the problem with the current state of nVidias SLI. As obviously the horsepower is there in spades. The problem is its bugginess and the fact that it still doesn't work with Most games. Thats the deal breaker for me. It all comes down to what you spend the majority of your time doing, benchmarking or gaming.
This is misleading thoughZimZum, for several reasons:
1. You can't say SLI "still doesn't work with Most games". No one has likely tested how effective it is on "most games", and as you can force SLI on ANY game, the error of your statement is obvious. I've forced SLI on GTA VC, but the fps are capped so it's hard to tell how much it's benefitting. I've forced it on Deus Ex Invisible War- it looked like around 30-40%. So it's hard to say what it does and doesn't benefit without real data.
2. I've seen one review and one forum post of people who have made SLI work with Riddick, personally, my luck has been the same as Hs. That doesn't mean SLI is "buggy", it means it has an issue with Riddick.
3. You can't say "SLI is for benchmarking only". I'm playing UT2004, Tribes Vengeance, and HL2 for the most part these days. All work great with SLI, so whether I ever ran a benchmark or not, my gaming has been HUGELY improved by SLI.
Your post has logical issues, and smacks of "those grapes were sour anyway".
I think that for it to at least be worth it, games should be supporting SLI out of the box and/or it should have a more user friendly profile maker for games that don't have out of the box SLI support.
Originally posted by: Acanthus
Originally posted by: ZimZum
Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
Seriously, Rollo has done an amazing job of putting together very thorough benchmarks for different SLI setups. If you would rather see data that is more conventional (comparison at the same res/detail level), let Rollo know and maybe he can add that particular game to his benches.
Sometimes these things are just hard to compare. Take Star Wars: Battlefront, for example. It's capped at 20fp
Just be careful reading benchmarks out there. Some are misleading, some don't know how to test, some just plain lie, and, more often than not, they won't agree with each other because of the many varied settings in both the games and drivers (as well as differences amongst independent testing rigs).
I don't think its the performance thats the problem with the current state of nVidias SLI. As obviously the horsepower is there in spades. The problem is its bugginess and the fact that it still doesn't work with Most games. Thats the deal breaker for me. It all comes down to what you spend the majority of your time doing, benchmarking or gaming.
Yeah you definately need SLI for games more than 2 years old. :roll:
Who said anything about 2 year old games?! 30 major PC titles have been released just in the past 3 months. Can you say with certainty that SLI supports all or even most of them?
Thats my only point. If I'm going to pay $700 or more for an SLI setup I don't want it to be a crap-shoot whether or not it supports a game I may purchase.
When they work all of the kinks out. Maybe I'd be interested in putting together an SLI rig, but not in its current incarnation.
You guys could say exactly the same thing about Dual-core CPUs...
Going to be exactly the same situation as SLI
Going to be exactly the same situation as SLI
Did HOCP use FRAPS? I thought I read something that FRAPS interfered with SLI on some drivers, though I think it was fixed with the latest ones (so this may be a non-issue for the HOCP article).
I can say yes they do.
I've tried all my games here at home that have been released in the last year.
Even Halo supports it and it's considerably older now..
Here is a list of games currently supported by Nvidia
Age of Mythology
AquaNox 2: Revelation
Armed & Dangerous
Battlefield 1942
Battlefield 2
Battlefield Vietnam
Breed
Brothers In Arms
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Colin McRae Rally 4
Conan
Counter Stike: Source
Dark Age of Camelot: Atlantis
Dirt Track Racing 2
Doom 3
EverQuest
EverQuest II
Far Cry
Flat Out
Ground Control II : Operation Exodus
Half-Life 2
Halo
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles
Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
Kohan II: Kings of War
Leisure Suit Larry
Lineage II
Lock On
Madden NFL 2005
Max Payne 2
Medal of Honor
NBA Live 2005
Need for Speed: Underground 2
Painkiller
Painkiller: Battle out of Hell
Perimeter
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Quake III
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Silent Storm
Sims 2
SpellForce
Splinter Cell
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Star Wars Battlefront
Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy
Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy MultiPlayer
Star Wars Republic Commando
SWAT 4
The Chronicles of Riddick
Thief: Deadly Shadows
ToCA Race Driver 2
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
Tony Hawk's Underground
Tribes Vengeance
Tron 2.0
Unreal
Unreal 2
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2004
Vampire: Bloodlines
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
World of Warcraft
X2: the Threat
Xpand Rally
It wasn't a deal-killer for me, but I do share that wish with you, Vian, for perfect out-of-the-box support. I mean, you buy an 850XTPE, slap it in, and get killer framerates without having to do much of anything. Dual 6800GTs beat the 850 performance (in many things), yet, sometimes, it is not plug-and-play simple (Riddick is one example... and one which extra performance is badly needed). I wish it was always as simple as just installing the game, running it, and seeing the better performance. But, with the shape in which games ship these days, not much is out-of-the-box perfect anymore anyway-- KOTOR2 keeps crashing to the desktop for me... and I'm willing to be it has nothing to do with my SLI.
I went with SLI for a lot of reasons, the main one being because I consider myself a tweaker. I don't mind adjusting it here and there to garner the best performance. It's a hobby to me, and, much to my wife's dismay, I enjoy it. Those who tweak their memory timings, overclock their CPUs & GPUs, or even edit game INI files for better performance all would have no trouble adding an SLI profile. Those other things are far more complicated.
As our regular readers will know, we rely on FRAPS to record the framerate every second to create our gameplay performance over time graphs. We haven?t had any problems with FRAPS and SLI with either the previous ForceWare 66.93 or beta ForceWare 67.66 drivers in DOOM 3. However, once we installed the new ForceWare 71.84 drivers, we encountered a major problem with FRAPS. With the 71.84 drivers, we found that we were not receiving the performance benefit of SLI with FRAPS running. It was as if it was disabling the performance benefit of two video cards and running the game as if it were running on a single video card. We found performance to match that exactly of a single video card, even though SLI was enabled.
We found that this happens with any FRAPS version above 2.2.5, including the newest 2.5.3 version. However, we did have success with FRAPS version 2.2.5. Using version 2.2.5 of FRAPS we once again received the performance benefit of SLI. So if you use FRAPS yourself as a frame counter or for other reasons and you have an SLI setup in DOOM 3 with the ForceWare 71.84 drivers you will want to close down FRAPS or use version 2.2.5, or an earlier versions, of FRAPS. We have informed FRAPS.com of the problem.
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