- Jun 30, 2004
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I'm attempting to do something for which purists in either the gaming "community" or the HTPC "community" would have less patience.
I've "upgraded" one of my SB-K systems to SLI from single dGPU. I've got gaming apps on it as well as my sig.
I had previously observed that "something" was borking the power-saving features of my 970 cards: they'd get "stuck" at core-912/memory-3000 after some . . . usage sequence.
Both systems are WMC enabled -- multi-monitor -- feeding my AVR/HDTV at my choice. The desktop monitor and HDTV are both at the same resolution and same refresh rate. They are both connected as either DVI-D or HDMI. An HDMI bi-directional switch augments an old KVM which still works fine for mouse and kybd.
So I believe it's a worthy objective to explore both low-end, low-power applications as well as high-end, whether for SLI or single GPU. Put it another way: the machines are "HT-enabled" but not "HT-dedicated."
So far, there have been no insurmountable problems.
The "usage sequence" for the SLI system likely includes gaming followed by "TV," and I had also paused a game (test game is GRID), opened Media Center, minimized MC and restored the game.
As of yesterday, I thought I'd got rid of this "stuck in performance-power state" issue. It was "behaving well." Last night, without apps running, the system went to sleep, went into hibernate, woke up for my WHS client backup, went back to sleep and then hibernate.
So I raised it up this morning, couldn't get MC to display a broadcast, just a blank blue window. Checked the Afterburner monitoring, and find that the GPUs are at 40% power -- again with the 912/3000 speeds when they should have been at ~12% power, 135/324.
So I reboot the system, get my broadcast back, but find that the cards are still at 912/3000. The way that this always gets fixed: Turn off SLI then turn it back on.
I looked at NV Ctrl Panel->Manage 3D. Not sure if Multi-display mixed GPU acceleration makes a lot of difference, but I've set it to multi-display performance mode because I do, indeed, have multiple displays hooked up. yesterday, it was set to "single display" mode despite the HDTV connection, which I may not use all that much.
I also see that NVidia recommended setting for the MC application leaves me with "single GPU" rendering mode. I can imagine this could conflict with gaming apps that use SLI. I would even wonder how that would even work. So I set the MC rendering mode to "Force alternate frame-rendering 1" -- which was the choice I used to assure the Kombustor stress-test would load up both GPU cores.
I can continue to test today's "configuration" with alternate gaming, MC and both.
I'm just wondering if all you Vid & Graphics gurus have some insight into this, without dissing me for being "HT-enabled" on an SLI-configured system.
Also -- I can't replicate the problem by cycling through sleep and hibernate states. That doesn't seem to adversely affect anything.
I've "upgraded" one of my SB-K systems to SLI from single dGPU. I've got gaming apps on it as well as my sig.
I had previously observed that "something" was borking the power-saving features of my 970 cards: they'd get "stuck" at core-912/memory-3000 after some . . . usage sequence.
Both systems are WMC enabled -- multi-monitor -- feeding my AVR/HDTV at my choice. The desktop monitor and HDTV are both at the same resolution and same refresh rate. They are both connected as either DVI-D or HDMI. An HDMI bi-directional switch augments an old KVM which still works fine for mouse and kybd.
So I believe it's a worthy objective to explore both low-end, low-power applications as well as high-end, whether for SLI or single GPU. Put it another way: the machines are "HT-enabled" but not "HT-dedicated."
So far, there have been no insurmountable problems.
The "usage sequence" for the SLI system likely includes gaming followed by "TV," and I had also paused a game (test game is GRID), opened Media Center, minimized MC and restored the game.
As of yesterday, I thought I'd got rid of this "stuck in performance-power state" issue. It was "behaving well." Last night, without apps running, the system went to sleep, went into hibernate, woke up for my WHS client backup, went back to sleep and then hibernate.
So I raised it up this morning, couldn't get MC to display a broadcast, just a blank blue window. Checked the Afterburner monitoring, and find that the GPUs are at 40% power -- again with the 912/3000 speeds when they should have been at ~12% power, 135/324.
So I reboot the system, get my broadcast back, but find that the cards are still at 912/3000. The way that this always gets fixed: Turn off SLI then turn it back on.
I looked at NV Ctrl Panel->Manage 3D. Not sure if Multi-display mixed GPU acceleration makes a lot of difference, but I've set it to multi-display performance mode because I do, indeed, have multiple displays hooked up. yesterday, it was set to "single display" mode despite the HDTV connection, which I may not use all that much.
I also see that NVidia recommended setting for the MC application leaves me with "single GPU" rendering mode. I can imagine this could conflict with gaming apps that use SLI. I would even wonder how that would even work. So I set the MC rendering mode to "Force alternate frame-rendering 1" -- which was the choice I used to assure the Kombustor stress-test would load up both GPU cores.
I can continue to test today's "configuration" with alternate gaming, MC and both.
I'm just wondering if all you Vid & Graphics gurus have some insight into this, without dissing me for being "HT-enabled" on an SLI-configured system.
Also -- I can't replicate the problem by cycling through sleep and hibernate states. That doesn't seem to adversely affect anything.
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