I just started using NI and found there are several ways to set SLI. I am a bit confused about the advanced settings under the heading SLI. Anti SLI AA Number of GPS to use on SLI rendering Nvidia predefined number of GPUs to use on SLI rendering (10x, ect) Nvidia predefined SLI mode on dx 10 Nvidia predefined SLI mode I am running three 980's so should I set all those to three (some were set to four). Also I set Nvidia predefined SLI mode in 10x to auto but not sure if that is what I want. Anyone with SLI let me know what you are doing with this advanced settings, or if there is a guide for these settings that would help (I searched but could only find general guides with no or little mention of these advanced settings) Thanks
Honestly you should not play with those except if encounter a problem with the default SLI profile proposed by Nvidia (or create one if it is missing) The most important parameter is "SLI compatibility bits (DX1x)" or without DX1x if your game is a DX9 one. That is the one that defines the way SLI will work. That value will change from game to game (game family since many games share same compatibility bits) But it is extremely hard to find a good SLI bit value on your own.
Not the compatibility bits I am changing, only the number of GPU's selected. I have played with SLI AA in some games that us only one GPU and that does let the other two GPU's run.
SLI AA is also available in Nvidia control panel normally. It is spreading AA computing across cards but is that really increasing the performance of your game? SLI AA are usually high AA settings like x16 or x32 Moreover this type of AA is not compatible with most of deferred rendering engines (will have no impact on the image) I could be wrong but the "Number of GPUs to use on SLI rendering" is seen as a max value. If it is 4 and have only 3 cards it will obviously use only 3 cards. But if have an issue with your 3way SLI (like I did with my previous 4way-sli) you can try to force a 2-way sli with it. I'm not sure when the predefined parameters are used. Those are default values and it seems that they are always overridden but other parameters. The "SLI rendering mode" should present an extra SFR option which is not available in Nvidia control panel. SFR could work in engines where you have dependencies between consecutive frames but I'm not sure about the performance.
Thanks, I am setting up NI for FSX and FSX only uses one card so in the Nvidia panel I set SLI AA up. Now, using NI, I am not sure if I want to or not. NI did take care of a bad vc panel shimmering that I had and could not remove with any Nvidia control panel settings so I am sold on NI. I just needed clarification, being new at this software, about the different SLI settings in NI.
The number of gpus is into the first bit in SLI compatibility bits value. 0x00000004 -> one gpu 0x00000001 -> two gpus 0x00000006 -> three gpus 0x00000005 -> four gpus
I am now using all my gpu's in FSX because of that change so I think it is not a bad thing. That is what NI is all about, experimenting.
You probably know that trick but you can try to rename the executable of your application to "AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe" This will disable any type of synchronization between cards and max-out the performance. In theory you should not be able to get more performance than in this mode. On the other hand, there is high chance to see glitches and artifacts. I'm not sure there is an engine fully compatible with AFR. You can have a look at this document from NVidia: http://developer.download.nvidia.com/whitepapers/2011/SLI_Best_Practices_2011_Feb.pdf
SLI AA will only work properly in OpenGL games. In Direct3D, you won't get any increase in IQ over what is rendered by one card alone. This is a known driver limitation or "bug". As far as other advanced inspector settings, you might want to take a look at my NVIDIA master thread It also has an entry regarding driver forced AA in FSX. http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4908843&postcount=1
So your saying I should actually rename FSX.exe to AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe ? Is there any chance of a global meltdown if I do ?
