Do all games support SLI or is it a driver waiting game. Is SLI worth it?
Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.
Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 09:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.[/quote]
For the most part I, personally, don't have many problems with 2x SLi in 3D. People do, however, have problems. As I understand it gets worse with tri and quad sli. As far as is it worth it? In my opinion definitly. Being able to run the newest games out at full settings and get good fps, which in 3D you frame rate is basically halved, is great and sli makes this much more possible. Plus, if the early reviews are right, sli scales really well on the 480.
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 09:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.
For the most part I, personally, don't have many problems with 2x SLi in 3D. People do, however, have problems. As I understand it gets worse with tri and quad sli. As far as is it worth it? In my opinion definitly. Being able to run the newest games out at full settings and get good fps, which in 3D you frame rate is basically halved, is great and sli makes this much more possible. Plus, if the early reviews are right, sli scales really well on the 480.
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 10:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.[/quote]
SLI needs profile flags in order to work to tell the driver which frames to send to which GPU for rendering. SLI support generally works for most games because Nvidia probably sets a general compatibility flag for AFR which will work for most games, but some games require specific compatibility flags in order to get AFR to work, or to work more efficiently.
SLI in 3D seems to be a bit different though, the Stereo driver seems to have its own SLI mode, in nHancer it says SLI Stereo Mode and it seems as if the driver just takes the same frame, sends it to each GPU and applies the necessary offsets to give the 3D depth effect. End result is that it doesn't put any additional burden on the CPU or game engine to produce additional frames per second.
Overall I've found SLI makes 3D Vision a much better experience with GTX 280s in SLI, mainly because it will nearly double your FPS in games that suffer from low FPS (Dragon Age, Dawn of War 2, etc), but there are a few exceptions where SLI actually makes gameplay worst, probably due to a broken 3D Stereo SLI profile, like in Avatar. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to mess with the SLI Stereo flag values for compatibility like forcing AA or SLI to get it to work.
I'm in a similar situation as you however trying to decide whether to go 470 SLI or 480 SLI, as there's still some games I'd like more FPS in 3D. The ideal 3D gaming experience is enough GPU horsepower to prevent your minimum FPS from dropping below 60FPS, as 3D Vision caps frame rates to 60 and everything is much smoother in 3D at 60FPS compared to 40FPS or lower. A single 480 is about the equivalent of what I'm using now (but with much higher minimums), but 2x480 may very well be overkill. I may go with 1x480 to start, at first I was thinking 2x470 due to the fan noise/GPU temp concerns, but after doing a bit more research it seems like those concerns are just due to the poorly conceived AUTO fan profile. Setting the fan manually to ~70% as I do with my 280s should prevent any excessive GPU temps at a bearable noise level.
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 10:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.
SLI needs profile flags in order to work to tell the driver which frames to send to which GPU for rendering. SLI support generally works for most games because Nvidia probably sets a general compatibility flag for AFR which will work for most games, but some games require specific compatibility flags in order to get AFR to work, or to work more efficiently.
SLI in 3D seems to be a bit different though, the Stereo driver seems to have its own SLI mode, in nHancer it says SLI Stereo Mode and it seems as if the driver just takes the same frame, sends it to each GPU and applies the necessary offsets to give the 3D depth effect. End result is that it doesn't put any additional burden on the CPU or game engine to produce additional frames per second.
Overall I've found SLI makes 3D Vision a much better experience with GTX 280s in SLI, mainly because it will nearly double your FPS in games that suffer from low FPS (Dragon Age, Dawn of War 2, etc), but there are a few exceptions where SLI actually makes gameplay worst, probably due to a broken 3D Stereo SLI profile, like in Avatar. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to mess with the SLI Stereo flag values for compatibility like forcing AA or SLI to get it to work.
I'm in a similar situation as you however trying to decide whether to go 470 SLI or 480 SLI, as there's still some games I'd like more FPS in 3D. The ideal 3D gaming experience is enough GPU horsepower to prevent your minimum FPS from dropping below 60FPS, as 3D Vision caps frame rates to 60 and everything is much smoother in 3D at 60FPS compared to 40FPS or lower. A single 480 is about the equivalent of what I'm using now (but with much higher minimums), but 2x480 may very well be overkill. I may go with 1x480 to start, at first I was thinking 2x470 due to the fan noise/GPU temp concerns, but after doing a bit more research it seems like those concerns are just due to the poorly conceived AUTO fan profile. Setting the fan manually to ~70% as I do with my 280s should prevent any excessive GPU temps at a bearable noise level.
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 10:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.[/quote]
I have found that if the game supports sli then sli will work very well in 3DVision typically giving excellent framerates.
SLI is a pretty mature and widely adopted technology (all dual gpu cards such as GTX295 depend on it). Consequently Nvidia has generally been very prompt in providing sli support in the drivers for newest games or via sli updates to drivers.
Occasionally there is a delay in updating drivers to provide sli profile for newest games, you can try to force simple sli modes such as AFR2 (which generally works 75% of time) or search fourm such as nvidia sli or nhancer to find a custom profile which can be easily activated using nhancer.
Rarely game will simply not support sli (avatar, gta, connan hyborian).
I am planning to upgrade my system to 2xGTX480s in SLI if I could ever buy them.
baragon
[size=1][color="#FFCC00"]MOTHERBOARD: EVGA 780I SLI A2 P-06Bios
CPU: Intel 2 Core Quad QX9650 45nm(OC @ 3.83GHz FSB:1333 @ 1.3200V set in bios)prime95 all day
CPU Cooler: Gigabyte 3D Mercury case with integrated watercooling (cpu only at present)
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ PC8000 SLI (Timing:5-5-5-15-2T@ 2.0V, FSB:DRAM Ratio=2:3)
GRAPHICS: 2X EVGA GTX 285ssc(clocks: 720/1624/1370, stock heatsinks)
Physx: GTS250 512MB 756MHz stock
HDD1: 2X Western Digital Caviar SATA II 250GB 7200 rpm Raid 0
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar SATA II 500GB 7200 rpm
SOUND: On board
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP2
MONITOR: Dell 3008wfp 30" Native Res: 2560X1600 @ 60Hz, Acer235Hz120Hz-3D
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W
CASE: Gigabyte 3D Mercury
3DMARK Vantage: 24,920p Current Display Driver:197.13[/color][/size]
[quote name='conan48' post='1033658' date='Apr 4 2010, 10:35 AM']Im thinking of getting 2 gtx 480s to get the best performance possible. Do all games support SLI from the get go or do you have to wait for specific drivers to come out? Are there alot of issues when running 3D with SLI? Ive heard of people having issues with flickering.
I have found that if the game supports sli then sli will work very well in 3DVision typically giving excellent framerates.
SLI is a pretty mature and widely adopted technology (all dual gpu cards such as GTX295 depend on it). Consequently Nvidia has generally been very prompt in providing sli support in the drivers for newest games or via sli updates to drivers.
Occasionally there is a delay in updating drivers to provide sli profile for newest games, you can try to force simple sli modes such as AFR2 (which generally works 75% of time) or search fourm such as nvidia sli or nhancer to find a custom profile which can be easily activated using nhancer.
Rarely game will simply not support sli (avatar, gta, connan hyborian).
I am planning to upgrade my system to 2xGTX480s in SLI if I could ever buy them.
baragon
MOTHERBOARD: EVGA 780I SLI A2 P-06Bios
CPU: Intel 2 Core Quad QX9650 45nm(OC @ 3.83GHz FSB:1333 @ 1.3200V set in bios)prime95 all day
CPU Cooler: Gigabyte 3D Mercury case with integrated watercooling (cpu only at present)
thanks guys. I'll be getting two 480!!. I read some reviews that acutally used SLI and the performance was almost doubled!! I want to play Metro cranked to the max with tessellation and DX11, and one 480 won't cut it. Also, Crysis 2 comes out in the summer and Crytek have stated that it will have 3D support built into the engine.
Now, I just hope my Antec 850watt power supply will be up to the task. Reviews mentioned that two 480 under load will consume just under 700watt for the entire system load. I do have 4 hard drives but If they are in sleep mode I should have enough juice. Hopefully?
thanks guys. I'll be getting two 480!!. I read some reviews that acutally used SLI and the performance was almost doubled!! I want to play Metro cranked to the max with tessellation and DX11, and one 480 won't cut it. Also, Crysis 2 comes out in the summer and Crytek have stated that it will have 3D support built into the engine.
Now, I just hope my Antec 850watt power supply will be up to the task. Reviews mentioned that two 480 under load will consume just under 700watt for the entire system load. I do have 4 hard drives but If they are in sleep mode I should have enough juice. Hopefully?
For the most part I, personally, don't have many problems with 2x SLi in 3D. People do, however, have problems. As I understand it gets worse with tri and quad sli. As far as is it worth it? In my opinion definitly. Being able to run the newest games out at full settings and get good fps, which in 3D you frame rate is basically halved, is great and sli makes this much more possible. Plus, if the early reviews are right, sli scales really well on the 480.
For the most part I, personally, don't have many problems with 2x SLi in 3D. People do, however, have problems. As I understand it gets worse with tri and quad sli. As far as is it worth it? In my opinion definitly. Being able to run the newest games out at full settings and get good fps, which in 3D you frame rate is basically halved, is great and sli makes this much more possible. Plus, if the early reviews are right, sli scales really well on the 480.
Ussualy tho these drivers are the things that give you massive preformance increases ussauly around %40.
Ussualy tho these drivers are the things that give you massive preformance increases ussauly around %40.
SLI needs profile flags in order to work to tell the driver which frames to send to which GPU for rendering. SLI support generally works for most games because Nvidia probably sets a general compatibility flag for AFR which will work for most games, but some games require specific compatibility flags in order to get AFR to work, or to work more efficiently.
SLI in 3D seems to be a bit different though, the Stereo driver seems to have its own SLI mode, in nHancer it says SLI Stereo Mode and it seems as if the driver just takes the same frame, sends it to each GPU and applies the necessary offsets to give the 3D depth effect. End result is that it doesn't put any additional burden on the CPU or game engine to produce additional frames per second.
Overall I've found SLI makes 3D Vision a much better experience with GTX 280s in SLI, mainly because it will nearly double your FPS in games that suffer from low FPS (Dragon Age, Dawn of War 2, etc), but there are a few exceptions where SLI actually makes gameplay worst, probably due to a broken 3D Stereo SLI profile, like in Avatar. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to mess with the SLI Stereo flag values for compatibility like forcing AA or SLI to get it to work.
I'm in a similar situation as you however trying to decide whether to go 470 SLI or 480 SLI, as there's still some games I'd like more FPS in 3D. The ideal 3D gaming experience is enough GPU horsepower to prevent your minimum FPS from dropping below 60FPS, as 3D Vision caps frame rates to 60 and everything is much smoother in 3D at 60FPS compared to 40FPS or lower. A single 480 is about the equivalent of what I'm using now (but with much higher minimums), but 2x480 may very well be overkill. I may go with 1x480 to start, at first I was thinking 2x470 due to the fan noise/GPU temp concerns, but after doing a bit more research it seems like those concerns are just due to the poorly conceived AUTO fan profile. Setting the fan manually to ~70% as I do with my 280s should prevent any excessive GPU temps at a bearable noise level.
SLI needs profile flags in order to work to tell the driver which frames to send to which GPU for rendering. SLI support generally works for most games because Nvidia probably sets a general compatibility flag for AFR which will work for most games, but some games require specific compatibility flags in order to get AFR to work, or to work more efficiently.
SLI in 3D seems to be a bit different though, the Stereo driver seems to have its own SLI mode, in nHancer it says SLI Stereo Mode and it seems as if the driver just takes the same frame, sends it to each GPU and applies the necessary offsets to give the 3D depth effect. End result is that it doesn't put any additional burden on the CPU or game engine to produce additional frames per second.
Overall I've found SLI makes 3D Vision a much better experience with GTX 280s in SLI, mainly because it will nearly double your FPS in games that suffer from low FPS (Dragon Age, Dawn of War 2, etc), but there are a few exceptions where SLI actually makes gameplay worst, probably due to a broken 3D Stereo SLI profile, like in Avatar. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to mess with the SLI Stereo flag values for compatibility like forcing AA or SLI to get it to work.
I'm in a similar situation as you however trying to decide whether to go 470 SLI or 480 SLI, as there's still some games I'd like more FPS in 3D. The ideal 3D gaming experience is enough GPU horsepower to prevent your minimum FPS from dropping below 60FPS, as 3D Vision caps frame rates to 60 and everything is much smoother in 3D at 60FPS compared to 40FPS or lower. A single 480 is about the equivalent of what I'm using now (but with much higher minimums), but 2x480 may very well be overkill. I may go with 1x480 to start, at first I was thinking 2x470 due to the fan noise/GPU temp concerns, but after doing a bit more research it seems like those concerns are just due to the poorly conceived AUTO fan profile. Setting the fan manually to ~70% as I do with my 280s should prevent any excessive GPU temps at a bearable noise level.
-=HeliX=- Mod 3DV Game Fixes
My 3D Vision Games List Ratings
Intel Core i7 5930K @4.5GHz | Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5 | Win10 x64 Pro | Corsair H105
Nvidia GeForce Titan X SLI Hybrid | ROG Swift PG278Q 144Hz + 3D Vision/G-Sync | 32GB Adata DDR4 2666
Intel Samsung 950Pro SSD | Samsung EVO 4x1 RAID 0 |
Yamaha VX-677 A/V Receiver | Polk Audio RM6880 7.1 | LG Blu-Ray
Auzen X-Fi HT HD | Logitech G710/G502/G27 | Corsair Air 540 | EVGA P2-1200W
I have found that if the game supports sli then sli will work very well in 3DVision typically giving excellent framerates.
SLI is a pretty mature and widely adopted technology (all dual gpu cards such as GTX295 depend on it). Consequently Nvidia has generally been very prompt in providing sli support in the drivers for newest games or via sli updates to drivers.
Occasionally there is a delay in updating drivers to provide sli profile for newest games, you can try to force simple sli modes such as AFR2 (which generally works 75% of time) or search fourm such as nvidia sli or nhancer to find a custom profile which can be easily activated using nhancer.
Rarely game will simply not support sli (avatar, gta, connan hyborian).
I am planning to upgrade my system to 2xGTX480s in SLI if I could ever buy them.
baragon
[size=1][color="#FFCC00"]MOTHERBOARD: EVGA 780I SLI A2 P-06Bios
CPU: Intel 2 Core Quad QX9650 45nm(OC @ 3.83GHz FSB:1333 @ 1.3200V set in bios)prime95 all day
CPU Cooler: Gigabyte 3D Mercury case with integrated watercooling (cpu only at present)
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ PC8000 SLI (Timing:5-5-5-15-2T@ 2.0V, FSB:DRAM Ratio=2:3)
GRAPHICS: 2X EVGA GTX 285ssc(clocks: 720/1624/1370, stock heatsinks)
Physx: GTS250 512MB 756MHz stock
HDD1: 2X Western Digital Caviar SATA II 250GB 7200 rpm Raid 0
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar SATA II 500GB 7200 rpm
SOUND: On board
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP2
MONITOR: Dell 3008wfp 30" Native Res: 2560X1600 @ 60Hz, Acer235Hz120Hz-3D
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W
CASE: Gigabyte 3D Mercury
3DMARK Vantage: 24,920p Current Display Driver:197.13[/color][/size]
I have found that if the game supports sli then sli will work very well in 3DVision typically giving excellent framerates.
SLI is a pretty mature and widely adopted technology (all dual gpu cards such as GTX295 depend on it). Consequently Nvidia has generally been very prompt in providing sli support in the drivers for newest games or via sli updates to drivers.
Occasionally there is a delay in updating drivers to provide sli profile for newest games, you can try to force simple sli modes such as AFR2 (which generally works 75% of time) or search fourm such as nvidia sli or nhancer to find a custom profile which can be easily activated using nhancer.
Rarely game will simply not support sli (avatar, gta, connan hyborian).
I am planning to upgrade my system to 2xGTX480s in SLI if I could ever buy them.
baragon
MOTHERBOARD: EVGA 780I SLI A2 P-06Bios
CPU: Intel 2 Core Quad QX9650 45nm(OC @ 3.83GHz FSB:1333 @ 1.3200V set in bios)prime95 all day
CPU Cooler: Gigabyte 3D Mercury case with integrated watercooling (cpu only at present)
RAM: 2x2GB OCZ PC8000 SLI (Timing:5-5-5-15-2T@ 2.0V, FSB:DRAM Ratio=2:3)
GRAPHICS: 2X EVGA GTX 285ssc(clocks: 720/1624/1370, stock heatsinks)
Physx: GTS250 512MB 756MHz stock
HDD1: 2X Western Digital Caviar SATA II 250GB 7200 rpm Raid 0
HDD2: Western Digital Caviar SATA II 500GB 7200 rpm
SOUND: On board
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP2
MONITOR: Dell 3008wfp 30" Native Res: 2560X1600 @ 60Hz, Acer235Hz120Hz-3D
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W
CASE: Gigabyte 3D Mercury
3DMARK Vantage: 24,920p Current Display Driver:197.13
Now, I just hope my Antec 850watt power supply will be up to the task. Reviews mentioned that two 480 under load will consume just under 700watt for the entire system load. I do have 4 hard drives but If they are in sleep mode I should have enough juice. Hopefully?
Now, I just hope my Antec 850watt power supply will be up to the task. Reviews mentioned that two 480 under load will consume just under 700watt for the entire system load. I do have 4 hard drives but If they are in sleep mode I should have enough juice. Hopefully?