3D vision SLI vs. non-SLI performance Is there a advantage in 3D drivers for SLI systems?
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SLI scaling in 3D Vision is generally excellent as others have indicated, however, in some games its quite a bit less and the most annoying part is that many of those games are where additioal performance is needed the most. Typically however, SLI will negate the 50% performance hit that you would see with a single-GPU, so if 3D Vision halves your FPS then SLI would double it again giving you what you would expect from a single GPU in non-S3D. There are some exceptions however, particularly in DX10/11 titles where scaling is less than expected and less than DX9. Personally I think these SLI scaling are issues with the 3D stereo driver's efficiency, so hopefully they continue to tweak them.
If I had to recommend an ideal rig today for 3D Vision I would start at 2xGTX 460 1GB, which should be a good bit faster than GT200 in SLI and enough to run most games at 1920x1080 in 3D Vision at close to 60FPS per eye. GTX 470/480 in SLI would be ideal however. 2x460 would also be better than 1x480 for 3D Vision in most games however, although you will run into a few games that don't scale as well in SLI so a single 480 might be slightly better.
[quote name='DanielJoy' post='1108377' date='Aug 24 2010, 05:21 PM']just trying to help others make sound choices. i was quite annoyed when i discovered quad sli's poor performance in 3d.
i seriously hope they get 3-way SLI working better with 3d vision surround! this would be the optimum GPU configuration for surround IMO. so far all users have reported it works great in 2d, but in 3d the performance is poor.[/quote]
I know this was the case for a long time but I've read numerous reports that one of the more recent drivers, maybe CD 1.33 with the 258.96 drivers fixed 3-way and 4-way 3D Vision scaling performance.
SLI scaling in 3D Vision is generally excellent as others have indicated, however, in some games its quite a bit less and the most annoying part is that many of those games are where additioal performance is needed the most. Typically however, SLI will negate the 50% performance hit that you would see with a single-GPU, so if 3D Vision halves your FPS then SLI would double it again giving you what you would expect from a single GPU in non-S3D. There are some exceptions however, particularly in DX10/11 titles where scaling is less than expected and less than DX9. Personally I think these SLI scaling are issues with the 3D stereo driver's efficiency, so hopefully they continue to tweak them.
If I had to recommend an ideal rig today for 3D Vision I would start at 2xGTX 460 1GB, which should be a good bit faster than GT200 in SLI and enough to run most games at 1920x1080 in 3D Vision at close to 60FPS per eye. GTX 470/480 in SLI would be ideal however. 2x460 would also be better than 1x480 for 3D Vision in most games however, although you will run into a few games that don't scale as well in SLI so a single 480 might be slightly better.
[quote name='DanielJoy' post='1108377' date='Aug 24 2010, 05:21 PM']just trying to help others make sound choices. i was quite annoyed when i discovered quad sli's poor performance in 3d.
i seriously hope they get 3-way SLI working better with 3d vision surround! this would be the optimum GPU configuration for surround IMO. so far all users have reported it works great in 2d, but in 3d the performance is poor.
I know this was the case for a long time but I've read numerous reports that one of the more recent drivers, maybe CD 1.33 with the 258.96 drivers fixed 3-way and 4-way 3D Vision scaling performance.
I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108570' date='Aug 25 2010, 04:23 AM']I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?[/quote]
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108570' date='Aug 25 2010, 04:23 AM']I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108570' date='Aug 25 2010, 04:23 AM']I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?[/quote]
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108570' date='Aug 25 2010, 04:23 AM']I know that SLI performance are in general Game dependent, but my initial question was about SLI specifics when it comes to the 3D vision rendering. I.e would stereo3D performance be somewhat similar on a high-end GPU card compared to a SLI(2x) setup with card at half performace each. Or would it still be Game depenent even in stereo3D mode? Then it all comes down to basic raw performance again...
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
[quote name='Arioch' post='1108601' date='Aug 25 2010, 06:36 AM']I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.[/quote]
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
[quote name='Arioch' post='1108601' date='Aug 25 2010, 06:36 AM']I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
[quote name='Arioch' post='1108601' date='Aug 25 2010, 06:36 AM']I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.[/quote]
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
[quote name='Arioch' post='1108601' date='Aug 25 2010, 06:36 AM']I don't think the stereo drivers do anything special on a SLI setup compared to a single GPU. It would be nice if that were the case but it's probably something the driver writers would put way down on their list of priorities after things like game compability and SLI scaling in general.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
[quote name='chiz' post='1108785' date='Aug 25 2010, 09:45 PM']Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient[/quote]
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
[quote name='chiz' post='1108785' date='Aug 25 2010, 09:45 PM']Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
[quote name='chiz' post='1108785' date='Aug 25 2010, 09:45 PM']Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient[/quote]
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
[quote name='chiz' post='1108785' date='Aug 25 2010, 09:45 PM']Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
[quote name='tolou' post='1108976' date='Aug 26 2010, 03:15 AM']Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?[/quote]
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: [url="http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert"]http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert[/url]
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr1.jpg[/img]
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr2.jpg[/img]
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108976' date='Aug 26 2010, 03:15 AM']Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108976' date='Aug 26 2010, 03:15 AM']Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?[/quote]
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: [url="http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert"]http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert[/url]
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr1.jpg[/img]
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr2.jpg[/img]
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
[quote name='tolou' post='1108976' date='Aug 26 2010, 03:15 AM']Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
OK..
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
OK..
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
If I had to recommend an ideal rig today for 3D Vision I would start at 2xGTX 460 1GB, which should be a good bit faster than GT200 in SLI and enough to run most games at 1920x1080 in 3D Vision at close to 60FPS per eye. GTX 470/480 in SLI would be ideal however. 2x460 would also be better than 1x480 for 3D Vision in most games however, although you will run into a few games that don't scale as well in SLI so a single 480 might be slightly better.
[quote name='DanielJoy' post='1108377' date='Aug 24 2010, 05:21 PM']just trying to help others make sound choices. i was quite annoyed when i discovered quad sli's poor performance in 3d.
i seriously hope they get 3-way SLI working better with 3d vision surround! this would be the optimum GPU configuration for surround IMO. so far all users have reported it works great in 2d, but in 3d the performance is poor.[/quote]
I know this was the case for a long time but I've read numerous reports that one of the more recent drivers, maybe CD 1.33 with the 258.96 drivers fixed 3-way and 4-way 3D Vision scaling performance.
If I had to recommend an ideal rig today for 3D Vision I would start at 2xGTX 460 1GB, which should be a good bit faster than GT200 in SLI and enough to run most games at 1920x1080 in 3D Vision at close to 60FPS per eye. GTX 470/480 in SLI would be ideal however. 2x460 would also be better than 1x480 for 3D Vision in most games however, although you will run into a few games that don't scale as well in SLI so a single 480 might be slightly better.
[quote name='DanielJoy' post='1108377' date='Aug 24 2010, 05:21 PM']just trying to help others make sound choices. i was quite annoyed when i discovered quad sli's poor performance in 3d.
i seriously hope they get 3-way SLI working better with 3d vision surround! this would be the optimum GPU configuration for surround IMO. so far all users have reported it works great in 2d, but in 3d the performance is poor.
I know this was the case for a long time but I've read numerous reports that one of the more recent drivers, maybe CD 1.33 with the 258.96 drivers fixed 3-way and 4-way 3D Vision scaling performance.
-=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´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?[/quote]
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
-=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´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?[/quote]
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
I´ll even consider a dual-GPU card for that reason (aiming at dual GF104) if scaling would be efficient in stereo3D. Is it? Are the 3D drivers considering each card setup and reroutes calculations to either SLI or dual-GPU setup?
Yes its still game dependent due to SLI efficiency in 3D Stereo. For example, if you had 2xGTX 280, in some games a single GTX 480 will be faster because the SLI set-up might only be utilized at ~70-80% due to scaling and the 480 will be closer to ~100%. In other games, the reverse will be true where the SLI set-up with two slower cards will be better than the single card. The problem is performance dependencies are not as simple as just SLI scaling anymore because you add another layer of complexity into the mix with the sync rate cap and the 3D Stereo driver.
SLI profiles are still important for SLI scaling, but after that there's unexposed timing mechanisms determined by either the game engine or the driver that also impact overall FPS, which again are tied to the synchronization that needs to occur between the GPUs, game, driver and monitor/glasses @ 60Hz per eye. There's more than a few games that do not seem to adjust this timing/tick rate from 1xGPU to 2xGPU in SLI, meaning you will get the performance of 1xGPU no matter what. Avatar in DX10 is a good example of this, but there's quite a few others that show low GPU utilization and less than 60FPS per eye in some games with 2xGTX 480.
-=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
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.[/quote]
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
-=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
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.[/quote]
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
For me personally, having SLI offsets the performance loss that enabling 3D takes away.
Well the main difference in SLI and 3D from what I've read is that each GPU renders both eye views of the same frame sequentially, then the next GPU renders the next frame for both eyes. So essentially, a GPU is rendering 2 frames in a row instead of alternating load between GPUs for every frame. This to me seems very inefficient, and would become more of a problem as you started getting into 3DVS and the massive resolutions involved there. But I think this is also why we end up with poor scaling in some games, because if the game engine is only sending frames at a set tick rate (say 60Hz instead of 120Hz) or the stereo 3D driver isn't capable of setting up stereo frames fast enough, you end up with really poor scaling in SLI.
-=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
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Thanks chiz for your detailed answers.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?[/quote]
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: [url="http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert"]http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert[/url]
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr1.jpg[/img]
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr2.jpg[/img]
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
-=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
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?[/quote]
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: [url="http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert"]http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert[/url]
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr1.jpg[/img]
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
[img]http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/946/afr2.jpg[/img]
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
Hence my initial question in this topic. And I would hereby like to put forward this particular issue to anyone working with the 3D vision drivers.
Or can someone confirm the above statement? Do we have the source of this information anyware?
Yep np, I've also been trying to figure out exactly what the stereo 3D drivers are able to fix (and break) in their actual support of 3D Vision games in terms of both performance and compatibility, and the recent 3D Vision Surround articles helped to at least clarify some of the performance problems involved with SLI. You can see the AFR sequence at the bottom of the link below from PCPER, who probably had the best write-up on 3D Vision Surround: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=946&type=expert
This is normal SLI with AFR, notice how each GPU renders each frame alternately:
Andi this is SLI with 3D Vision, notice how each GPU is actually rendering both eye views sequentially and not 1 frame per eye:
While the above are for Surround, I don't see any reason why SLI rendering would be different for a single monitor. But this makes sense to me because in the case of 3D, if the Stereo 3D Driver or the game engine is still only producing frames at 60Hz (120 frames, 60 per eye), then when that load is distributed to 2xGPU, you'll still only end up with 60Hz but split between 2 GPUs which only do ~30FPS each. Normally this isn't a problem because all you can get is 60Hz per eye on current 3D panels, the problem comes into play in games that ARE NOT getting 60 FPS per eye, and instead get something like 40, 30, 20FPS. I personally think this is just a result of whatever Vsync mechanism they're using to sync to 60/120Hz, but the 3D driver is set to what it thinks a single GPU can handle instead of doubling that tick rate for SLI (or tripling/quadrupling it for 3-way and 4-way).
The problems Nvidia has had with scaling to 3-way and 4-way SLI would also substantiate this, but it sounds like they've fixed or improved this is recent drivers. I still have some issues however with poor scaling and for whatever reason, its worst in DX10/11 titles compared to DX9 titles. Also, I tend to think its the actual Stereo 3D driver because in some games simply turning off the Stereo 3D driver or disabling 3D (120Hz cap but green light off), you'll see you get 120+ FPS and the GPUs are at 100% utilization, but as soon as you turn on 3D Vision, you may see less than 60FPS and GPU utilization drops to 50% or lower. Lastly, I've referenced a 120Hz/3D Sync cap a few times, and this cap seems to be a 3rd "Vsync" type control (game and NVCP being the other two) that we don't have a setting for, but it seems its getting worst as I see more and more "tearing" in 3D which looks like smudging/smearing that is typically worst in SLI. When recording with FRAPs in stereo, its even more obvious with massive screen tearing. Forcing Vsync in both the game and Nvidia Control Panel helps a lot, but not completely and its better/worst depending on game.
Anyways, hope that helps, as you can see I don't have all the answers and Nvidia has not really been forthcoming in what their Stereo 3D driver is responsible for or capable of controlling. I have played with the normal SLI profiles enough to know they can only do so much when it comes to SLI performance and scaling with 3D Vision. I've also seen they're able to selectively render which elements in the screen-space are rendered in 3D with separation, and which are rendered in 2D (we saw this in StarCraft 2 with an updated profile). I just wish they exposed the S3D controls and bit flags similar to their normal NVCP controls for SLI and AA.
-=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
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?
What about dual-GPU cards then? Are they actually to be considered "double capacity" cards with somewhat double performance compared to their corresponding singles? Or could they actually be subject to a more specific handling with some type of parallell processing in the 3D drivers?