SLI or Crossfire benefits ONLY if games support it?

[Claudius-07]

Was just trying to understand something from the multitude of info that is out there in regards to dual video card setups. Can I say 100% with confidence that if a game is not coded to take advantage of a 2 or + GPU setup and if the drivers for the GPU's don't have profiles made for the same game, there is absolutely no improvement in performance for that game by going SLI or Crossfire? Is that close?

Would older games fall under this? Everquest, Civ, Age of Empires etc.

 

[lavaheadache]

yes, although i don't know about the games you mentioned(why the hell would you need crossfire in everquest anyways). Sometimes there are work arounds such as renaming exe's and such or forcing profiles in 3rd party programs.

 

[railven]

yes, although i don't know about the games you mentioned(why the hell would you need crossfire in everquest anyways). Sometimes there are work arounds such as renaming exe's and such or forcing profiles in 3rd party programs.

Because EQ is a resources hog and poorly coded game. Think of the Crysis of MMOs - sure it doesn't look as good as Crysis, but it's rendering everyone's armor on top of their character and you have 100+ people on screen or more.

Yeah, either way - I agree Crossfire for EQ? haha.

 

[GotNoRice]

The oldest games I play on a regular basis are Counter-Strike: Source and World of Warcraft. Though I will say that both of those games have excellent crossfire support all the way up to quad crossfire.

People give me shit all the time for having quad crossfire even though I play 90% world of warcraft, but the jokes on them when I point out how much smoother my system is during a hectic 25 man raid.

 

[Sickamore]

I believe in crossfire Or sli. It jus enhances the exprience more and on top of that you get bragging rights to.

 

[Ben90]

snip

 

[FalseChristian]

Crossfire and SLI will work on any game. The game has nothing to do with it.

 

[faxon]

everquest 2 definitely doesnt benefit from it. even if the game did support crossfire properly, you still wouldnt see any real benefit since the game is CPU limited most of the time, and when it isnt you dont need a very powerful gpu to allow it to run the FPS up nice and high.

 

[ScorcherDarkly]

People give me shit all the time for having quad crossfire even though I play 90% world of warcraft, but the jokes on them when I point out how much smoother my system is during a hectic 25 man raid.

I'm willing to bet that your WoW framerate is more a product of your super-overclocked quad core than it is your quad-xfire. WoW is a lot more dependent on CPU and HDD access speed than it is on your graphics card. If you want to turn up all the effects, then yes, GPU will matter, but I doubt a 3rd or 4th GPU would show large differences over 2 GPUs.

 

[toyota]

Crossfire and SLI will work on any game. The game has nothing to do with it.

I am pretty sure that is wrong...

 

[GotNoRice]

I'm willing to bet that your WoW framerate is more a product of your super-overclocked quad core than it is your quad-xfire. WoW is a lot more dependent on CPU and HDD access speed than it is on your graphics card. If you want to turn up all the effects, then yes, GPU will matter, but I doubt a 3rd or 4th GPU would show large differences over 2 GPUs.

Here is a review where they included numbers from the 5970, you can see WoW continues to benefit from increasingly powerful GPUs.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...est-DirectX-11-graphics-card/Reviews/?page=10

4x 4870 has similar performance to a 5970 in games that scale. If i'm not doing anything particularly GPU intensive i'll usually see utilization sitting between 25-40% on each GPU but when we're in a boss fight and 25 people are casting spells and using abilities as fast as they can, etc, I will see GPU utilization hit 90%+ on all four. I agree that the CPU and HDD are probably more important, but that doesn't mean GPU is irrelevant. I do play on Ultra settings w/ 4x AA.

 

[Lavans]

If a game doesn't have CrossFire or SLI support, then you might find some luck with forcing multi-GPU profiles such as AFR through nHancer or Radeon Pro. But the ultimate determining factor is going to be your drivers.

Crossfire and SLI will work on any game. The game has nothing to do with it.

This is entirely false. Multi-GPU support always has been, and always will be 100% driver related. If there's no multi-GPU driver support for a specific game, then the odds are that CF or SLI will not kick in for said game.

 

[solofly]

If a game doesn't have CrossFire or SLI support, then you might find some luck with forcing multi-GPU profiles such as AFR through nHancer or Radeon Pro. But the ultimate determining factor is going to be your drivers.



This is entirely false. Multi-GPU support always has been, and always will be 100% driver related. If there's no multi-GPU driver support for a specific game, then the odds are that CF or SLI will not kick in for said game.

Let me take it a step further. There isn't many games (especially the popular ones) that don't support multi GPU configs and I had been running SLI/XFire since NVIDIA released their 6800 series...

 

[AdamK47]

I am pretty sure that is wrong...

You are both right and both wrong. It has to do with the API, engine, and how the game is coded. You can apply split frame rendering or alternate frame rendering to any game. Some games work better with it, some work better without it, and some don't even work at all with it.

 

[solofly]

You are both right and both wrong. It has to do with the API, engine, and how the game is coded. You can apply split frame rendering or alternate frame rendering to any game. Some games work better with it, some work better without it, and some don't even work at all with it.

I saw your post/thread over at NVNEWS so let me ask you this, what made you switch...?

 

[Lavans]

Let me take it a step further. There isn't many games (especially the popular ones) that don't support multi GPU configs and I had been running SLI/XFire since NVIDIA released their 6800 series...

Like I said, it's entirely dependent on your drivers. Theoretically, all games run CF/SLI with two GPUs present, but that doesn't mean there will always be a gain. Sometimes, if theres no multi GPU profile coded in your drivers for said game, they will default to scissor mode, which may or may not yield benefits. There's been plenty of games that don't ( or didn't ) yield benefit from driver default multi GPU settings, such as FF14, APB, Champions Online, and Crysis. Almost all of the above games I just mentioned gained support for multi GPU systems with later driver releases.

Mind you, I'm not sure if all the above games I used as an example holds true to Nvidia, since I use AMD, but there have been plenty of instances that I've seen people complaining about SLI not kicking in with newly released games.

In short, if there's no CF/SLI profile for a specific game, it's either going to be a hit or a miss. That's just how it works.

 

[AdamK47]

I saw your post/thread over at NVNEWS so let me ask you this, what made you switch...?

Not being able create / control my own profiles. With nVidia I can set any executable to use AFR1 or AFR2, two-way or three-way, even SFR with external utilities. AMD/ATI thought it was best to encrypt their profiles so that no end user could create or modify an existing profile. nVidia is far more open minded when it comes to enthusiast tweaking.

 

[Lavans]

Not being able create / control my own profiles. With nVidia I can set any executable to use AFR1 or AFR2, two-way or three-way, even SFR with external utilities. AMD/ATI thought it was best to encrypt their profiles so that no end user could create or modify an existing profile. nVidia is far more open minded when it comes to enthusiast tweaking.

The only thing that CCC doesn't allow profile creation on is the multi GPU rendering mode, which is rectified with Radeon Pro.

 

[AdamK47]

I've used Radeon Pro before. If I remember correctly you had to have the utility running and it would not modify existing profiles. It would modify the game process to fit the profile. This made it impossible to use for Steam games when I used it.

 

[Lavans]

I've used Radeon Pro before. If I remember correctly you had to have the utility running and it would not modify existing profiles. It would modify the game process to fit the profile. This made it impossible to use for Steam games when I used it.

Nah. About 90% of the games I use RP with are on my Steam account, and none of them have any issues with it. I believe it actually sets driver level settings, because whenever a game is loaded, Win7 plays the device unplugged and device detected sound ( dunno what it's actually called ) when the executable loads. In short, it works just like nHancer, but for AMD cards.

8xSSAA & -3.0 LoD ftw

 

[AdamK47]

Do you still need Radeon Pro running in order for the profiles to be activated for an executable?

 

[Lavans]

Do you still need Radeon Pro running in order for the profiles to be activated for an executable?

I don't believe so, but I usually leave it running in the background.

 

[OCGuy]

Crossfire and SLI will work on any game. The game has nothing to do with it.

False.

Xfire/SLI works on any game, as soon as AMD/nV create drivers to allow it.

 

[AdamK47]

I don't believe so, but I usually leave it running in the background.

When I last used it I had to have it running in order for a profile to activate. Radeon Pro detects the executable and controls all of the tweaks. With nHancer it edited existing profile files and the drivers were in control of the executable detection and applied the tweaks.

 

[AdamK47]

False.

Xfire/SLI works on any game, as soon as AMD/nV create drivers to allow it.

False.

As long as you can create a profile for a game and that game uses DirectX or OpenGL, you can apply CrossFire or SLI. You don't have to wait for AMD or nVidia to do it for you. Of course they do it better and can fix any issues with the implementation.