What is going on with nvidia's crappy driver/SLI support lately ?

[Grooveriding]

These are all games released in the past month that have no SLI support.

Middle Earth Mordor
Ryse Son of Rome
NBA 2015
Alien: Isolation
Fifa 2015

What is going on with delays this long on getting some work done on SLI profiles ? Middle Earth in particular is a game I want to play but I'm not happy with the performance on a single card and I'm waiting for an SLI profile to play it. There is a nvidiainspector bits profile for the game but it causes massive issues for me with stuttering and hitching.

Nvidia needs to get a new driver out ASAP just to address the currently very poor state of SLI support in new games. Then there are the missing advertised features of Maxwell such as no DSR support on SLI configurations and their MFAA feature being totally non-existent. Maxwell has been out a month...

Time to get it together on the recent poor driver support nvidia.

 

[sxr7171]

Hey they could sell me two cards but seems like they want to sell me only one. Their loss.

Also yeah their driver support has tanked. Ryse Son of Rome runs better on AMD. Also given consoles are using AMD and future games will be optimized for their architecture I may consider switching.

 

[wand3r3r]

It's surprising, it used to be their highlight for the past couple years when they were campaigning non stop about it. I'm curious what's going on there, they're dropping the ball according to the few reviews out on SLI. Focusing on mobiles or something else?

(Not that AMD doesn't seem to have it's problems too, just different...)

 

[imaheadcase]

I would not be surprised if they phase sli out. Its pretty costly to support it in the long run, and its not really needed for the most part. very rare other than a small % of users that use it.

Its uses get smaller every year with every generation of cards.

 

[n0x1ous]

I would not be surprised if they phase sli out. Its pretty costly to support it in the long run, and its not really needed for the most part. very rare other than a small % of users that use it.

Its uses get smaller every year with every generation of cards.

ludicrous. Its more important than ever with stagnating advancements in process nodes.

 

[Rvenger]

Both camps seem to be experiencing driver issues right now which is odd, especially AMD with a card that has been released for a year now.

 

[BrightCandle]

Middle Earth Mordor - Admittedly the default profile doesn't work but if you add a profile and set it to AFR 2 it works and works really well without issues. Doubles the frame rates.

I don't disagree that its terrible games aren't coming out with SLI/xfire profiles and support to begin with. But what we are listing is a whole host of console port games, all of which have been pretty badly ported (lack of dual card support shows that). I doubt its the GPU vendors fault in this case, its more likely the dev studios are to blame for never even thinking about dual cards and doing any testing to get it working or engage with either AMD or Nvidia on the topic to do it better. Lay blame where it rightly is deserved which is the studios. SLI/Xfire is only partly the GPU vendors fault, 0 day support is definitely to do with the developers engaging with these companies and QA testing for that feature.

But because these are bad console ports it doesn't work.

 

[kasakka]

Middle Earth in particular is a game I want to play but I'm not happy with the performance on a single card and I'm waiting for an SLI profile to play it. There is a nvidiainspector bits profile for the game but it causes massive issues for me with stuttering and hitching.

Try creating a profile for the game and set alternative frame rendering 2 on it. No need to mess with nvidiainspector. Runs rather smoothly on my setup (2x GTX 770) at least.

As the profile updates usually coincide with driver releases, right now Nvidia probably has a fair bit on their table as they have to optimize the new 9xx series cards' drivers. According to Shadow of Mordor's latest patch notes, a SLI profile is coming.

 

[guskline]

Again, BrightCandle excellent point. However, it is not just console games. I own the IL2 BOS flight sim and they have had it to us in Alpha and Beta for quite some time yet multicard support is not yet recognized. Great flight sim BTW.

 

[beginner99]

ludicrous. Its more important than ever with stagnating advancements in process nodes.

And with "2k" and "4K" screens and 120hz becoming more prevalent.

EDIT:

And about console ports. It's funny. Everyone thought it will get better with them being x86. But the opposite is the fact. The completely different system arch (GDDR 5 shared RAM, eDRAM) compared to PC's and the weak cpu cores basically make the situation even worse. dGPU ram is uses as system RAM and 0 optimizations for anything else because i5's just stomp those jaguar cores regardless.

EDIT2:

To clarify yes is't probably easier to port now than before but just think what that means? Less resources being used for the port and if it's easier you will not assign the best people on this task. The result begin even worse ports in terms of support and optimizations but they also cost way less. nd the loser is the PC gamer. I doubt the games will be sold for less.

 

[wand3r3r]

Both camps seem to be experiencing driver issues right now which is odd, especially AMD with a card that has been released for a year now.

OP is on year old NV cards too, it goes for both (just different issues).

And with "2k" and "4K" screens and 120hz becoming more prevalent.

EDIT:

And about console ports. It's funny. Everyone thought it will get better with them being x86. But the opposite is the fact. The completely different system arch (GDDR 5 shared RAM, eDRAM) compared to PC's and the weak cpu cores basically make the situation even worse. dGPU ram is uses as system RAM and 0 optimizations for anything else because i5's just stomp those jaguar cores regardless.

Yes. Nothing can handle 4k and presumably sometime next year we will get sub $400 a-sync/g-sync 4k monitors. You'd think dual cards would be promoted and supported well.

 

[Carfax83]

Yeah, I think multi GPU is going the way of the dodo unfortunately. Even Unreal Engine 4 has no base support for multi GPU..

When the 20nm cards come out, I'm going to sell my Gigabyte G1 GTX 970s and get the fastest single card solution out there..

 

[realibrad]

I think that the consoles are pretty maxed out, and there is little improvements to be seen. A huge section on the gamer market just bought consoles for better or for worse. There is not a killer PC game out right now, to drive people away from consoles to PC. There is also not a huge gap from the typical gaming PC, and a console right now. I am still running a 2GB 6950 which is not too far off from the new consoles. There is not a whole lot of demand for expensive multi GPU setups, and not a whole of need at typical resolutions.

Once we see monitor prices drop for 1440 and 4k, you will see demand for multi GPU setups, unless we see big jumps in GPU power.

 

[tviceman]

And this is why I don't go with multi-card setups. No matter how much more reliable one side claims, or how much faster the other side claims, issues still exist in a frequency that would not be tolerable for me.

 

[Carfax83]

There is not a killer PC game out right now, to drive people away from consoles to PC..

Not right now, but it's coming. Star Citizen is going to be "the" AAA game, and it's PC only..

 

[Rezist]

And this is why I don't go with multi-card setups. No matter how much more reliable one side claims, or how much faster the other side claims, issues still exist in a frequency that would not be tolerable for me.

Yep, if your spending double the performance should double and at the best of times it comes close but mostly not even close with a slew of other issues tossed in.

 

[BrightCandle]

Seems to be a big load of badly made games coming out this winter. It actually happens every year. A load of games get rushed out to make it for Christmas even though they aren't ready for release. These are almost always (but not exclusively) console port games, and the PC version is hampered in the same way the console one is, whether it be 30 fps ridiculous limits but definitely things like surround/eyefinity support, 3D vision and SLI/xfire support. Some of these games are actually kind of good and in about 6 months the patches will finally be out that fixes all the rubbish and makes them playable.

It doesn't really say anything about the GPUs and SLI/xfire for the future, its happened many years before and it will happen in many autumn seasons in the future. Badly written games will keep getting pushed out before they are ready for PC technology and they will be shouted at by gamers, the devs will complain about being abused and the cycle repeats over and over. Games need to do a few changes to make them work with dual cards, its not that difficult (I have done it) to write code that scales perfectly on two GPUs, but you have to do the leg work as a developer to make it function. Simply put its not even on their radar of work to do because its mostly a console port or a rushed game.

I don't think anything we are seeing is anything we haven't seen before. Its quite normal to get a slew of badly written games around this time of year. All the stuff that is done well will come with decent dual card support from the outset, and many of the bad ones will patch it in next year. Sometimes we see one vendor be ahead on a game than the other and then its mostly the vendors problem, but in this case its across both so its the companies writing the code to begin with causing the issues. They still think PC gaming is dead, they haven't got the message yet that badly written games that don't support PC capabilities aren't acceptable. I wont ever say that is OK.

 

[Teizo]

Sure would like to know why Foreceware 340.52 and 344.11 crash immediately when I load a 3D application with SLI enabled. If I recall correctly, I think Nvidia started doing something different with SLI 340.52. I could be mistaken though. If that is the case, whatever it is it broke SLI for me with my GTX 760s.

337.88 gives me no issues whatsoever.

Is anyone else experiencing this? I use Windows 8.1 x64. I have Windows 7, but I can't be bothered to go back to it to see if those drivers are stable in W7.

 

[Carfax83]

Sure would like to know why Foreceware 340.52 and 344.11 crash immediately when I load a 3D application with SLI enabled. If I recall correctly, I think Nvidia started doing something different with SLI 340.52. I could be mistaken though. If that is the case, whatever it is it broke SLI for me with my GTX 760s.

No issues with SLI here and I'm using 8.1 pro as well. I'm using 344.16 now, but I also used 344.11when I had my 4GB GTX 770s and had no issues then either.

Might be something on your end..

 

[Teizo]

No issues with SLI here and I'm using 8.1 pro as well. I'm using 344.16 now, but I also used 344.11when I had my 4GB GTX 770s and had no issues then either.

Might be something on your end..

That is my thought as well, but I can't for the life of me figure out what. I re-installed Win8.1 after a secure erase of both of my 840s Pros thinking that surely would solve the problem, but nope...still crashed immediately upon opening a 3d application. Decided to use the 337.88 driver and have had no issues since.

Really weird. Wonder if there is some conflict with the GD65 motherboard drivers...

 

[Carfax83]

That is my thought as well, but I can't for the life of me figure out what. I re-installed Win8.1 after a secure erase of both of my 840s Pros thinking that surely would solve the problem, but nope...still crashed immediately upon opening a 3d application. Decided to use the 337.88 driver and have had no issues since.

OK I have an idea, since you mentioned that you had 840 Pros. Is Samsung Magician running in the background? Apparently there is a strange conflict between it and NVidia's drivers.

When it was running, games would refuse to run in full screen mode for me. Exiting it out fixed the problem completely, and now I no longer allow it to autostart at boot up..

So if you are running Samsung Magician, try disabling it and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[Teizo]

OK I have an idea, since you mentioned that you had 840 Pros. Is Samsung Magician running in the background? Apparently there is a strange conflict between it and NVidia's drivers.

When it was running, games would refuse to run in full screen mode for me. Exiting it out fixed the problem completely, and now I no longer allow it to autostart at boot up..

So if you are running Samsung Magician, try disabling it and see if that fixes the problem.

Yeah, I had the same issue too, but disabling RAPID and exiting out of Magician fixed that issue. I don't recall having it installed before re-testing after my reformat using 344.11.

I actually went back to 340.52 and now it is fine. It wouldn't work earlier. I just updated 337.88 without removing it first (which I normally don't do), and it is doing OK now. Hopefully it stays that way, but I am hesitant to use 344.11 because everytime I use that driver I have issues.

 

[stahlhart]

desprado, 3DVagabond, Wild Thing -- stay out of this thread.
-- stahlhart

 

[ProchargeMe]

I bought my laptop specifically because it had 2 nvidia gt750 in sli, and I'm extremely disappointed that I can't even use it in 95% of the games I play.

 

[moonbogg]

As long as it works for Far Cry 4, I'll be good. If not, GTX 980 here I come.