Nvidia SLI performance for DCS and LO comparision

[G3]

time for a discussion on anything worth knowing about the current state of nvidia SLI with DCS or Lockon,

especially interested in big resolutions.

 

do the new 197.13 drivers properly support DCS in SLI

 

looking for tests with single, dual and even triple card configs

 

i still need a few key components like psu and ddr3

and will then be tested using the th2go @ 3840x1024 on the following pc

e8500 c2d

asus striker II extreme 790i ultra (tri-sli)

3x gtx280

4gig 1600 ddr3

1200w psu

 

for those with multiple nvidia cards,

please share your SLI experience here while i wait for parts :thumbup:

Edited July 2, 2010 by G3

[*Rage*]

As far as i remember SLI/Crossfire makes no difference to FPS...Infact it can cause problems.

[cesthree]

I'm currently rolling with the following:

 

EVGA P55 FTW

i7 860 @ 4.0Ghz w/ Swiftech Apogee XT

Corsair Dominator GT's 4GB

2x EVGA GTX 285's

3x120 Swiftech Rad in top of HAF 932

DD CPX-Pro

Corsair TX750

 

I had a 780i FTW and 790i Ultra. I would gladly go back in time and smack my self silly for purchasing those.

 

If you have a 790i, return it, ebay it, or just give it to your grandma. Go get an i7 based system and run SLI on it.

 

Don't run SLI if you only plan to run sims.

 

The 197.13's work fine on BS, and I will be testing them with FC2 later tonight.

 

Also, I always disable SLI for BS, FSX, and LOMAC:FC.

 

Really, those GTX 280's will just turn your room into a hotbox. You'll only need one.

 

An E8400 or Q9550 will easily push a GTX 285 at stock speeds, especially with just playing sims.

 

If I was you, I would be less worried about GPU's, and more worried about getting a CPU that has more cores. That's just me, though.

 

You could probably unload those GTX 280's and that 790i Ultra and get an X58/P55 + i7 + a single GOOD GPU, with the money you would save from having to get a monster PSU to push those old-school 280's.

 

Again, my opinions.

 

If you really want SLI, don't go past 2 cards. Most all games don't scale well past 2 cards, especially sims.

 

Good luck, and have fun.

[G3]

agree with you on all points, a new i7 pc will be xmas time for me.

and i appreciate you being straight to the point.

i would never have intentionally gone this route but the hardware is there

for the testing, and rumour has it that sli could be making a difference these days?

and with big resolutions i figure that could be worth the investigation.

 

agreed it is definitely just an power hungry room heater.

 

my current setup is an e8500 with gtx 280's in sli with 1000w antec

but i get sick of swapping between sli and multi monitor and input devices

so i decided to build a dedicated dcs pc out of older bits and pieces when

another gtx280 fell into my clutches and so did the aging 790i mb

 

after testing out the tri sli i intend to go back to a single card in the dcs pc and leave my other one in sli for racing

and therefor not have to swap things around any longer.

 

i read here somewhere that evga has a patch out to help newer games support sli.

thanks to Gozr for this one.

http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/

Edited March 30, 2010 by G3

[G3]

well still no SLI review as yet,

the final parts are slowly arriving

all i need now is some ram and a hdd

 

so anyway, i see some discussion in the russian forums on the same topic

and my roughly translated impression of what is being said there is very similar to what Cesthree mentioned above.

 

it was asked if a third card could be used for physics, if that helped

and the answer seemed to be no.

 

lucky it's winter because the new room heater is nearly ready :)

 

stay tuned.

[G3]

finally all together, and not a moment to soon :)

here's a brief summary of the action so far.

 

ended up with an antec 1200w quattro psu to feed the beast

installed win7 x64

4gig of corsair 1600 dominator ram

 

the motherboards own auto overclocking features along with

some ram settings got it running at a rock solid 3.8Ghz

(that's the e8500 with a fsb of 400, default is 333 so not to shabby i thought)

took it up to 4Ghz but it eventually locked up so back to 3.8 it was.

 

hooked it up to the projector and ran it in a single output tri sli config

 

then i added a 17" screen to the same card and disabled sli

so i could just run the small monitor for messing about instead of

racking up lamp time for no reason while testing stuff out.

 

so then i found 2 more 17" screens and set them up 3 across

i could run all 3 individually as in have something open on all 3

but the 177.xx series drivers had no options to span the desktop like good old xp could.

yes sure i could make all 3 screens enabled and lined up horizontally

but the actual desktop was still only the middle screen

and games just did not want a bar of using all the real estate.

(i actually did get it to span 2 but not 3 screens.)

 

 

now wouldn't it be nice to be able to get all 3 working together in sli

enter the beta driver 258.69

 

after some wrestling with install i got it all sorted and went to see what new options were available

 

well i found the settings i had hoped long and hard for, 3 way sli spanned

this is wicked, finally it becomes a reality and maybe makes those

crazy sli setups no so crazy any more

 

tried it out on a few (which is 3 in this case :) ) 17" and sure enough, well you would think its a th2go/eyefinity/softTH

yet it's 3 cards, 3 screens, 1 big view in game in either portrait or landscape mode and up to full HD resolutions

 

and from what i can gather it's using the power of all 3 cards,

or you can dedicate some gpu time to physics processing

 

currently it flickers around a bit changing from in game to desktop etc but

we must understand it doesn't say beta driver for nothing :D

 

really looking forward to messing around some more, so far so good

 

 

 

 

Edited July 2, 2010 by G3

[Alex_rcpilot]

I'm using SoftTH and it works great for single player even with older driver versions. Problem with multi-player mode is the server selection menue will span across all three monitors, and only the center monitor area is clickable. I even had to bring up task manager to exit that screen.

[bumfire]

The only thing that I found sli did for lockon a few years ago was sli AA, that was the only option that was any good, it gave you more AA without a fps hit, the other sli modes did basically nothing, from my experience.

[G3]

with that beta driver 258.69 i managed a 3way sli 3072x1280 portrait mode

 

simply disabled sli and extended and rotated all 3 screens

then switched back to sli surround mode and it loves it

 

unfortunately as others report it seems to lock up the pc now and then

but it is a beta and i look forward to the next whql release

 

impressed it also offered to add resolution width for bezel compensation

individually adjustable between each screen

Edited July 5, 2010 by G3

[memento10]

any comparison of fps compared to using a triplehead2go on 1 video card compared to this nvidia sli solution?

 

I always thought that DCS would be more limited by the CPU than the GPU as most sims are...?

[G3]

yes, comparing th2go and the nvidia solution is now my primary objective as it

really has me wondering if "3way" or "tri-sli + th2go" is the way to go

 

sadly to my knowledge the th2go analog does not support portrait mode

so for testing i will revert back to lanscape to keep things uniform while testing.

 

the monitors i am using have both vga and dvi inputs

so the th2go on vga and 3way using dvi will reduce the

amount of plugging and unplugging so to speak.

should be a simple nvidia cntrl panel change to jump between the 2 configs,

and in game should require no edits between the 2 setups, swt.

 

i have noticed with the 3way sli (one card to each screen)

there seems to be a slight vertical lag and a momentary misalignment

of the images between screens as i move the view around with the trackir

 

also picked up a new cpu trying to do my best to eliminate the apparent cpu bottleneck,

and i have to add i was pretty stoked to finally manage to hit 4Ghz rock solid :)

cpu is a C2D E8600 with a 10x multi so i simply cranked the fsb from 333 to 400, do the math.

Edited August 18, 2010 by G3