SLI and Crossfire Support Dying?

[WT]

Company of Heroes 2 - does need SLI (even a Titan can't do 60fps @ 1080p). No SLI support for the game and NONE WILL EVER BE ADDED !!

Ohh, but we have that beautiful SNOW to look at on the winter maps, and the vehicles leave tracks as they roll across the snow. I want to blame the devs rather than the engine, as the graphics are not a huge step up from CoH 1, but for the life of me I cannot fathom why they are unable to work around the issues with SLI on the Essence 3 engine.

 

[Sohaltang]

Why can't WOT support SLI? I finally quit chasing my tail and went back to my tried and trust 780ti classy @1300mhz. No other configuration givese 100+ fps @1440

 

[Pandora's Box]

It does when you play it @ 5160x2160 (or any resolution higher than a single 4k display). It couldn't even maintain 30fps with my single GTX 980. Forcing SLI in the driver the game runs less than 10 fps :hmm:

You are probably the only person on the planet playing Sims at that resolution.

 

[BD2003]

My last hurrah with SLI was gtx 670 SLI, and I dabbled briefly with Titans in SLI too. Here's the thing. Low fps is low fps, so if a single card is getting thrashed (such as at very high resolution like you mentioned) and a second card can give you that big fps boost into playable territory, then yes that raw fps gain is absolutely worth the added latency/possibility of microstutter that may come with it. I'm not entirely bashing on multi gpu setups, I'm just saying that it's a very flawed system that I think nobody fully recognizes. I mean we are all after smoother gameplay when it's all said and done right ?

Agreed. I was appalled when I tried SLI for the first time with dual 970s and saw the microstutter - but I'm the type that settles for nothing less than a locked and vsynced 60fps. If I was comfortable with the judder of a 40ish FPS game, then I'd be all about SLI to push 4K, but you'll never get that absolutely silky smoothness with SLI.

 

[Franzi]

I went through many CF and SLI setups before finally realizing that whatever fps gains were, it was always cancelled out by increased inconsistencies in the fluidity of actual gameplay. Whether that be from microstutter, games not utilizing multi gpu properly, or just the extra overhead of communicating on extra pci-e slots aka added input lag. I think when people finally step back and discover this for themselves, all but the most extreme benchmarkers will abandon shelling out 2 and 3x the money for an actually inferior gaming experience. That I think would be the death of SLI/CF.

That was my experience too. In 2011 I had 2 580's followed by 2 680's and while I saw high FPS numbers it never really felt as smooth, only in a select few titles maybe. From the 680's I moved to a single Titan, to a single 780ti and now to SLI again with 2 980's.

I had both cards installed for 2 weeks and decided to remove and return the second card. A few games were running fantastic and very smooth in SLI but sadly many didn't. I'm very sensitive to stuttering and despite nvidias efforts I believe in the end AFR is a flawed technologoy that will never deliver the smoothness of single GPU setups.

I also noticed some side effects like video capturing and streaming being messed up with SLI (OBS and Afterburner would only capture frames off GPU1, devs of both tools said if you want to capture/stream multi-GPU is a no go).

With a single 1440p Monitor playing at 60Hz a single 980 is Ok'ish but I would have liked the performance boost in some games. I have not Overclocked mine yet, if I can hit 1500+ Mhz it should be alright.

 

[BrightCandle]

I am very sensitive to microstutter as well, I am one of the few people that found the 7970x2 setup unacceptable. For me the 680's solved the problem in almost all games. Since I got a gsync screen games really have been smooth in a way that I have never seen before. Gsync really helps with microstutter because it allows the cards to output frames as and when the GPUs have them ready. So if you haven't bought into yet you should, because it basically eliminates the problem in all the games I have tried so far, including games like Far Cry 3 which were terrible for stutter anyway.

 

[Franzi]

I am very sensitive to microstutter as well, I am one of the few people that found the 7970x2 setup unacceptable. For me the 680's solved the problem in almost all games. Since I got a gsync screen games really have been smooth in a way that I have never seen before. Gsync really helps with microstutter because it allows the cards to output frames as and when the GPUs have them ready. So if you haven't bought into yet you should, because it basically eliminates the problem in all the games I have tried so far, including games like Far Cry 3 which were terrible for stutter anyway.

I would like that ASUS Gsync Monitor but I do more than gaming and not sure if I can get along with TN again after using a pro-grade NEC AH-IPS. I need to find a local store where I can try out the ASUS Gsync. But then again with Gsync I would probably only need a single 980 anyway since 40-50 FPS would still look very smooth on it.

 

[BrightCandle]

I would like that ASUS Gsync Monitor but I do more than gaming and not sure if I can get along with TN again after using a pro-grade NEC AH-IPS. I need to find a local store where I can try out the ASUS Gsync. But then again with Gsync I would probably only need a single 980 anyway since 40-50 FPS would still look very smooth on it.

I had a Dell 2410 monitor before, that was a pretty decent calibrated 10 bit IPS monitor. I run them side by side as well as a very old Samsung TN panel and its pretty clear looking at the 3 that most of the problem with TN is its 6 bit colour. The 8 bit of the Asus really closes the gap, it doesn't eliminate it the colour contrast and accuracy is still better on IPS, but the Asus monitor is closer to an IPS than it is to the TN. There is still the whole colour shift issue and you do see that a little even straight on but its not as bad as many TNs have been in the past on that issue either.

I also tend to agree about the odd effect of gsync, that you will be happier at lower FPS, I know I am. I used to hate BF4 at anything less than about 80 fps, I would notice when it dropped below. Nowadays I don't actually notice and check the frame rate until its below 50. That is a pretty sizeable improvement in overall image quality if you just convert those frames into higher settings and you can also convert them into less hardware. Its a bit weird to say but buying an Asus ROG could save you quite a bit of money on hardware despite its price.

My advice would actually be go and have a look at one somewhere if you can, it really is a fantastic monitor and gsync really is quite amazing. Its expensive no doubt about it, I really wish it was cheaper, but it is also really good and for those that notice stutter, especially with SLI its the solution we have all wanted for a decade. Its 90% of the way to making the problem disappear, I am sure I will come across a game where it doesn't fix it but in a couple of months with the monitor it hasn't happened yet.