Can GPU Transcoding be used with RAGE on SLI setups?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by Darren Hodgson, May 25, 2012.

  1. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    RAGE with one GTX 680 card can be set to use GPU Transcoding and it works great, making the texture virtually unnoticeable.

    However, RAGE's game profile in the driver has SLI disabled, which is fine as the game still manages 60 fps anyway on one card. The only snag is that, for some reason, GPU Transcoding is greyed out and can no longer be selected despite the fact it is running effectively on one GTX 680.

    I've no idea why it was done that way but it's annoying as without GPU Transcoding the texture pop is much more noticeable. The benchmark returns 94 on my system (with GPU Transcoding disabled) vs. 352+ with GPU Transcoding enabled (when I had a single GTX 580).

    Is there any way to enable or force GPU Transcoding for SLI setups?
     
  2. remicius

    remicius Guest

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    i have the same problem,and its sooooo annoying.
     
  3. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    It's stupid!

    Regardless of whether you use SLI or not, the game will only run on one card but discriminates against the use of GPU Transcoding if you happen to have a disabled card installed. I just cannot see the logic of that decision. I mean I could understand it maybe if the game supported SLI.

    This is really the only issue I've come across since I got a second GTX 680 for SLI.
     
  4. kakarot

    kakarot Maha Guru

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    I couldn't figure it out either when I played it. You have to completely remove one card for the option to work again. It kept telling me I did not have sufficient memory or something.
     

  5. pimp_gimp

    pimp_gimp Ancient Guru

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    @Darren, it is stupid that it doesn't work, and honestly I believe that ID Software could make it work, but who knows if they ever will. Their track record with the PC version of the game is pretty bad.
     
  6. snowdweller

    snowdweller Guest

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    Darren mate I still can't do it with 1 card or 2. Whenever I hit it it says not enough memory...
     
  7. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Transcoding worked for me when I had a single GTX 580 and it also worked on my single GTX 680.
     
  8. SSJBillClinton

    SSJBillClinton Master Guru

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    A bit of a different issue for me, but I didn't want to make another thread.
    I'm confused as to why in places this game drops to 30-50FPS when firing a gun at a close up enemy, or shooting at water etc.
    GPU boost doesn't kick in, and GPU usage is never over 70%. I have "Prefer maximum performance" on, but it doesn't help since the core clock sticks at 1006.
     
  9. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    CPU limitation?
     
  10. SSJBillClinton

    SSJBillClinton Master Guru

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    Is it possible a 3930k 4.3GHz could do that?
    It wasn't like this on my old Phenom II X6 3.5GHz with an HD6950, or my current 3930k with the same HD6950.
     

  11. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Sorry, I didn't see what CPU you had. I guess it's unlikely to be a CPU limitation in that case.

    Have you got the Power Limit set to 132%? Which areas do these framerate drops occur as I could perhaps check it on my system, bearing in mind that RAGE only uses one card due to SLI being disabled?
     
  12. SSJBillClinton

    SSJBillClinton Master Guru

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    Haha, it's cool I should have said to begin with really.

    Yeah, I have power limit 132% etc, every other game runs fine. BF3 (everything maxed except MSAA which is at 2x) I get 60+FPS almost all times in Multiplayer with lots of junk going on, all other games are fine too (except some UE3 titles and Fable 3, which Nvidia know about already).

    In RAGE, it's been a while since I played the game but I recently decided to jump back on it so I don't know the names of the places exactly, but when a mutant gets up close in the City of the Dead and I shoot them with my shotgun, I notice the FPS drop to around 40. I'm pretty sure it's the same anywhere, if you get up close to an enemy with the assault rifle and shoot them point blank repeatedly you should see the FPS drop with no jump in GPU usage to stop that from happening.

    The Well in Wellspring where you retrieve some toxins for the Mayor was the worst, the water effects (just the puddles, not the drips coming down) caused it to drop down to 30FPS if I shot it while looking at it, or even just stood in it, eventually it'd climb back up to 60. It would never drop under 30FPS though, which is odd.


    Edit: Back when the game was launched (when I was first playing it with an AMD card) were there any config file tweaks or whatever that people used to use? Maybe I applied one of those and it is conflicting with my new card? Though, I am looking around my installation folder and I can't see anything I could tweak.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2012
  13. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Any tweaks would either be in Steam's Launch options and/or the RageConfig.cfg file in the game's Base folder. Are you forcing 16K textures or anything like that?
     
  14. SSJBillClinton

    SSJBillClinton Master Guru

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    Yeah, no rageconfig.cfg file for me. Is there supposed to be one even if you didn't do any texture detail forcing? I'm pretty sure I had no problem with the game back on my HD6950 so I don't think I did any tweaks, but it didn't hurt to look.

    Edit:
    Made a maxed out Rageconfig.cfg with the dontargue cfg creator, GPU usage gets up to about 70-80% but the framerate dips most when there's explosions happening while in a car. Quite irritating!
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2012
  15. Brendruis

    Brendruis Maha Guru

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    They disabled the GPU transcoding on multi-GPU setups because it caused big stuttering problems in SLI setups on release of the game. I remember the problem cause I was using 580 SLI at the time. The game would choose to use GPU2 for transcoding in error and it would cause a latency problem in the game. It was difficult/confusing for most users to use the in game console commands to figure out which GPU is which to assign CUDA functions to... so in the end they disabled it in a patch.

    Even with SLI disabled, it would still misassign CUDA processing to the wrong GPU. I agree, it should have been fixed in another way...but there you go.. I guess they figure most people don't have SLI.. In fact I think John Carmack was quoted that the high-end setups were not what they were aiming at. Don't have that quote anymore.

    Hope that clears it up
     

  16. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Very interesting, Brendruis. I guess that makes sense so thanks for sharing that info. I guess it's really a driver issue (bug?) then if CUDA GPU Transcoding is being assigned to a graphics card that has been disabled in SLI.

    It's an odd issue though, you'd think that it would work fine having GPU1 rendering the graphics and the transcoding being done by GPU2 (SLI disabled), kind of like how PhysX can be assigned to a dedicated card. And if transcoding is being done on GPU1 as well as the rendering then that too would work exactly like single GPU systems.

    Oh well. Guess I'm just going to have to accept I can't use transcoding with a SLI setup.
     
  17. gloves085

    gloves085 Guest

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    Semi-Workaround for Sli Setups

    Darren,

    There is a way to enable GPU transcoding without physically removing your second card, you can just disable the card in Device manager. It works just fine this way as if you had only one card installed and you should be able to re-enable the card when your finished and re-enable Sli without a reboot.

    It's absolutely ridiculous that the pioneers of PC gaming can't code an engine for modern setups and then complaining that they need low level access to hardware seemed a wek comeback for such a poor effort.

    I desperately wanted to like Rage but I really felt let down by Id on this one.
     
  18. Brendruis

    Brendruis Maha Guru

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    That's a good suggestion.
     
  19. ArCElM

    ArCElM Banned

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    well this answer my questions.

    Great.
     
  20. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Missed this reply, sorry.

    Thanks for the suggestion. Seems daft that the developers can't code in a hack that makes the game think the card is disabled then rather than having to actually do it manually. Guess the reality is that id just can't be bothered to support something less than 1% of RAGE players actually have.
     

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