LO & DCS: SLI & CrossFire

[Rhinox]

I did not find any benchmarks, that's why I'm asking here:

 

How is LockOn & DCS scaling up with SLI (NVidia) and/or CrossFire (AMD/ATI)?

 

How much could one obtain with buying 2nd graphic cards? I know there are games where performance of sli/crossfire is really impressive, one can gain 80-90% more fps, compared to single card. On the other side, there are games where benefit of sli/crossfire is negligible, not worth buying the 2nd card (~10%). So how is it in LockOn and DCS?

[EtherealN]

Not sue about actual benchmarks, but since these products will generally bottleneck at the CPU you will likely only find major benefits with SLI/CF if you run at very high resolutions, multi-monitor or want to use supersampling.

 

Obviously though it does depend on which card specifically you are looking at. The relative gains of SLI-ing two 460's will be greater than SLI-ing two 580's.

[Bolt-1]

 

Obviously though it does depend on which card specifically you are looking at. The relative gains of SLI-ing two 460's will be greater than SLI-ing two 580's.

 

I assume your talking percentage wise. The gains of two 1GB 460's in SLI is minimal over a single 580. Even the gains over a single 570 is minimal.

From looking at a bunch of BM's on the almighty internet. I only see a 3% to 12% gain. Yet the $$$ of "2" 1GB 460's over a single 570 is about the same depending where you buy...

Edited May 30, 2011 by Bolt-1

[metalnwood]

There are a few things to think about. What graphics card do you have would be one? I have two 6970's and I dont see any real difference with crossfire or without. Thats running at 7890x1900.

 

Because of that I decided that I would run on only one card in windowed mode so that I could export my mfd's etc on to another screen.

 

I say this because it seems that you have a card and are willing to spend some $$ on furthering the game. If you have a higher end card already then I would suggest keep the money or buy something like a touchscreen like I did and use helios.

 

If you have a lower end card I am still not sure sli or crossfire will give you any gains. It seems to be recognized that crossfire does not really benefit DCS:a10.

 

I am not sure about nvidia though, there may be a way to get performance from SLI but I have not keep in touch with the nvidia side.

[Pilotasso]

My single GTX 470 gets 25-30% load in LOMAC and DCS. Imagine what will happen when you couple 2 of even more powerful cards... NADA. :)

[TwoLate]

My single GTX 470 gets 25-30% load in LOMAC and DCS. Imagine what will happen when you couple 2 of even more powerful cards... NADA. :)

A lot depends on your CPU.

 

My 480GTX is pegged at 99% most of the time.

[EtherealN]

I assume your talking percentage wise.

 

Yes...

 

The relative gains of SLI-ing two 460's will be greater than SLI-ing two 580's.

 

;)

 

Even the gains over a single 570 is minimal. [...] Yet the $$$ of "2" 1GB 460's over a single 570 is about the same depending where you buy...

 

A SLI setup of 460's would generally be caused by already having a 460 though, where getting another 460 becomes cheaper than getting a 570 as replacement. But yes, if starting carte blanche, purchasing a single 570 is most definitely better than a dual 460 - hell, even though it's more money I'd say a single 580 is more value for the money than buying two 460's. (And with the 460's we have to watch out for the versions with less than 1GB of VRAM. They tank easily.) But if there already is a 460 present in the system this might be different.

[EtherealN]

A lot depends on your CPU.

 

My 480GTX is pegged at 99% most of the time.

 

Also, there is a good bit of difference between DCS:A-10C and DCS:BS 1.0.2. With the latter my old e8500 with it's 9800GTX+ had a lot of freedom to use AF and AA at high settings. In DCS:A-10C there are sufficiently more functions graphically that the old 512MB card just couldn't give me the eye candy I wanted. (Still worked well at lower settings though, ofc.)

 

With DCS A-10C the only component that maxes out on my GPU is the vRAM, though that's when running the processor at stock. I never did that check with the processor OC'd (since I don't use the OC while testing).

[Rhinox]

Thanks for all answers, now I'll turn my question to practical side. I have GTX460 (rest: i7/870 4x2.67GHz, 4GB ram, full-hd screen). Now which option is better from LO/DCS-user point of view:

 

1. to buy one more GTX460 (~170€ here) and have them both running in SLI

2. or to buy some other card in ~200€ price level (GTX560Ti, HD6870, etc), use it "solo", and sell my old GTX460 for a few bucks?

 

According to some common graphics-focused benchmarks (unfortunatelly, no LO/DCS) GTX560Ti is ~30% faster than GTX460 in high resolutions. Do you think the 2nd GTX460 in SLI brings less, or more than that?

[Succellus]

I got an 480 Hawk twin frozen blah blah blah.

For now i ll acquire a TV/monitor so my actual monitor will be for MFD instrument purpose.

 

But in an unknown future (maybe end of year ) i pretend to add 2 monitors on portrait to set a 3 onitors set.

I don t like 3 monitors 16:9 they flatten a little too much (unless your on 40"+++) so i intend to put some portrait monitor to not stretch too much on wideness.

 

So the boubt is:

Would a 580 go for tripple monitor and the 460 for MFD ?

Or a set like that wouldn t work ?

[Succellus]

Thanks for all answers, now I'll turn my question to practical side. I have GTX460 (rest: i7/870 4x2.67GHz, 4GB ram, full-hd screen). Now which option is better from LO/DCS-user point of view:

 

1. to buy one more GTX460 (~170€ here) and have them both running in SLI

2. or to buy some other card in ~200€ price level (GTX560Ti, HD6870, etc), use it "solo", and sell my old GTX460 for a few bucks?

 

According to some common graphics-focused benchmarks (unfortunatelly, no LO/DCS) GTX560Ti is ~30% faster than GTX460 in high resolutions. Do you think the 2nd GTX460 in SLI brings less, or more than that?

 

In the scenário you describe, i would sell my 460 and acquire a 5XX.

But some question arises:

Will you go Multi-monitors ?

Which settings (3 monitors for view, 2 monitors 1 view other system ? 4 monitors ?)

And which resolution your system will be draining on your card.

1900/1080 ?, 1650X1050? , 3547895734X523478 ?

 

How do you plan to use your PC beyond A10 for example / Do you play extreme video card dependent games ?

 

And what do you plan in a less than a year from now ? New cards tend to be released near Xmass or Q1 of the year. This mean your setting will depreciate at years end. Can you wait and save till new batch of cards ? (i usually wait till Q1/Q2 when boosted cards come to the market)

Edited May 31, 2011 by Succellus