Nvidia canned driver support for TRI SLI end of 2017

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by LesserHellspawn, Sep 16, 2019.

  1. LesserHellspawn

    LesserHellspawn Master Guru

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    One of my 3 GTX 980ti has died after 6 years faithful service.

    To my surprise only DX12 performance took an instant 28% hit with just two cards remaining.
    DX11 performance stayed the same or became even slightly better.
    Now we know, DX11 and below rely on the driver support for SLI, DX12 must have multi GPU Support in the application to work.

    So I digged through my 3DMark results. Consistent Fire Strike Ultra (DX11) results over 10000 points up to the end of 2017. After that, bang, barely 7000, until the one card died. Now suddenly almost 8000 points. Time Spy Extreme (DX12) always scored around 6500 until that one card died. Now it's slightly below 5000.

    I still call this a dick move by Nvidia. Was it not enough to simply limit 10 series and beyond cards to a maximum of two ? Or does that hardware setup for TRI and QUAD SLI still work flawlessly and can't be capped, so they have do do it forcefully in the driver ?
     
  2. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    old news, welcome to 2016.
     
  3. jbscotchman

    jbscotchman Guest

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    Buying 3 980ti's was your first mistake.
     
  4. Mda400

    Mda400 Maha Guru

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    Power efficiency. Up to 50% more performance by adding a third card and up to 25% more performance adding a fourth didn't make sense with the 100% added power draw from each additional card after 2.

    That and complexity to pass frame painting work between three or more cards was a bigger challenge to keep everything in sync with as little microstutter as possible. Now its down to the developer when using low-level API's like DX12 or Vulkan. If the developer wants it, they can work on it themselves. They are the one's who dictate how taxing their application is on hardware.

    I remember my old 3x 9800 GTX+ configuration. Was my first and only attempt at 3-way SLI and the disadvantage was the low video memory amount that cards had at the time, for the performance they pushed when combined.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2019

  5. LesserHellspawn

    LesserHellspawn Master Guru

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    It was a lot of fun while it lasted, which is 6 years. Zero issues either.
    Possibly. I'm no tech guru. I build the machine, and when it works I install the drivers, that's it. Maybe forcing TRI SLI on a few games, but not diving into the finer compatibilty bits.

    Be it as it may, that 3rd card won't get a replacement, old tech. The remaining two cards still do fine in the games I play. Once one of them eventually dies I'm just going to go for two of what is current by then.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2019
  6. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    SLI was double edge sword great when it WORK how it was intended to work, but a utter waste when it didnt, which is why there were so many posts of SLI not working back in the day
     
  7. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    Every percentage you quoted is based on a different quantity.

    Adding a 3rd GPU gives up to 50% more performance than 2 GPUs.

    A 4th GPU constitutes up to 25% of the total performance offered by all 4 GPUs. However, it gives up to 33.33% more performance than 3 GPUs.

    A 3rd or 4th GPU adds 100% power draw relative to a single GPU. However, the 3rd GPU, again, adds up to 50% more power draw than 2 GPUs. A 4th GPU adds up to 33.33% more power draw than 3 GPUs.
     
  8. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

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    Hello there, Nice thread going here.

    Very interestingly enough you brought this whole thing up about they canned the driver support back in 2017, originally thought they canned both 3-way and 4-way back in mid 2016, but here whats very interesting:

    When I was looking at some nvidia quadro drivers .pdf manual, I found some something that would be extremely interesting to who's still in this:

    On that .pdf driver manual, it stated under Quad Sli: No changes in performance from previous drivers, or something within those lines.

    I tried looking back at several quadro drivers that I have used, looked in their .pdf manual, I couldn't find it, but I did clearly remember seeing something about Quad Sli had no performance increase from the previous drivers.

    So I guess this means from what I understand is that, quad sli is still going on, I do know through past several testing on my 4-way 970 setup, several games worked right off the back without no tuning, Hitman: Absolution was one, Dead Space 1 was another, but still requires tuning in the end, but was awfully surprised they worked right off the back, very amazing.

    I have a Thread going on specifically for 4-way 970's, So far its going Alot better then I originally expected, Just in the end, Just takes Alot of time and Work, but even then, don't expect nothing out of it, I know I ain't but its going alot better then I hoped for originally, so, so far so good.

    Also compare to performance differences from benchmark like unigine heaven 4.0.

    3 gtx 970 Oc'ed = 1 1080ti Oc'ed

    And games in general:

    2 980 ti's Oc'ed = Roughly on par on Oc'ed 1080 ti, give or take

    My 2 980 ti's are in my old system, and still currently own 2 1080ti Aio's.

    Depending on how much Time and Effort you put into tuning 3-way or 4-way, but you have to be constantly on this all the time and not playing games, I mean you are still playing but the main primary focus is tuning/scaling,etc.

    Really to get something out of it, its taking me half a year just to break it in and really understand how things work.

    Thanks again.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2019
  9. mbk1969

    mbk1969 Ancient Guru

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    Don`t forget that Windows 10 changed exclusive full screen mode for many games, and IIRC that mode is mandatory for SLI.
     

  10. Mda400

    Mda400 Maha Guru

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    This is how I meant it:

    Every additional GPU after 2 has theoretical potential to add half of the performance to the original configuration before it.

    Adding another card to a single GPU configuration has the theoretical limit to be 100% faster than the single GPU configuration.

    Adding another card to a 2-way configuration has the theoretical limit to be 50% faster than the 2-way SLI configuration.

    Adding another to a 3-way configuration has the theoretical limit to be 25% faster than the 3-way SLI configuration.

    I can see where you may be getting 33.33% from, but that doesn't make sense if the FPS on this article's chart is ~45fps for 3-way SLI and ~60fps for 4-way SLI (45 is 75% of 60, the difference is 25% between 3-way and 4-way).

    nvidia-gtx-980-3-way-and-4-way-sli-performance



    You are right on the power consumption part, I don't know what I was thinking there.
    A card will only take as much power for the work it is doing (unless you force max clockspeed or have an older card without GPU Boost or less P-States).
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2019
  11. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    45FPS is 75% of 60FPS. That's 25% less. But 60FPS is 33.33% higher than 45FPS. The baseline is the performance of 3 GPUs, not the performance of 4 GPUs.
     
  12. Mda400

    Mda400 Maha Guru

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    I see how you are thinking now. 60/45 is 1.33333333333 and 45/60 is 0.75.

    I think we have a disagreement on the denominator.
    I think it should be 45/60 and you think it should be 60/45.

    My thought process is that the difference between 45 and 60 is 15.
    15 is 25% of 60 and 33.33% of 45.

    Since we know the highest number is 60, I believe the difference should be taken from that number.

    But i'm interested to know why it should be the opposite.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2019

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