Extreme 4-Way Sli Tuning

UPDATE ON HITMAN: ABSOLUTION (ENHANCED EDITION)/QUADRO DRIVERS: 441.12 - 4-WAY SLI - 11/15/19:

The moment we all been waiting for and guess what folks, you all guess it, just like the other games tested with these drivers:

IT DOES NOT WORK PERIOD!!!

So people under 4-way Sli viewing this particular thread and perhaps using the same gpu's as I, fair warning, ONLY use Quadro Drivers from 416.30 to 431.94 until further notice.

Again thanks for reading, I knew this game wasn't going to scale, and this game scales 4-way right off the back with no tuning on other drivers, so I know something is 110% defin't wrong here.

They are defin't doing something in the drivers to prevent 4-way to work properly or just sli in general and its now starting to show, again, maybe someone had talked to nvidia and they added counter-measure to the problem that I would be perhaps trouble in the future.

What amazed and shocked me is that, they added tons and tons and tons of stuttering/hitching effect to all the games I tested with these drivers, seems like they did it on purpose, Games were NEVER this bad, not like this, absolutely positively not.

Stay tune for future updates on ECHO, reverting back drivers in the meantime.

Again, the games tested with this drivers:

Yakuza Kimawi 2
Rise of tomb raider
Echo(Work in progress)
RE2(Remake)
Lords of Fallen

And of course, HITMAN: Absolution.

Drivers 440.94 games tested(Only few):

Yakuza Kimawi 2
Echo(Work in progress)

UPDATE:

Forgot to mention this eariler, desktop drivers: 436.48, 4-way works perfectly under 2 games I have tested but they were just quick test to see if 4-way kicks in and it does and they are:

Yakuza Kiwami 2

&

Rise of tomb raider

So I would NOT go higher the 436.48, thank you.

 

Like the other poster had said, they are defin't wasting their technology, and not only that, they are from what I understand, trying to eliminate sli in general, well, looks like time might be perhaps here, it is defin't showing...

Yes I fully understand that single gpu is the most defin't route to go because it solves all the problems out the way, that part I highly agree 100%.

The purpose of this entire 4-way sli project is to see if it can actually make it work fully, even with just one game is very amazing to say at least.

Despite a great deal of tuning is involved, seems like it very well be from here on out, cut out.

Talking to other people to see if it is still possible to bring the scaling up to speed with these newer drivers and the future to come drivers, there is absolutely no guarantee that these new upcoming drivers will even in fact work at all, I highly suspect any new drivers from here on out, will not work.

BUT alot of it has to do with money, of course it is.

UPDATE:

The people who is seriously tuning under 4-way sli in general, take it from me:

Download your drivers while you still can and back it up, cause if you try to download vintage drivers from their site, more then likely they probably implemented something to prevent 4-way sli to work properly.

But you can always download drivers from other site, just saying, heads up, I believe this is where SLI will be going down the hill.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Just went back to Modified Quadro Drivers: 416.30 and tested the following games that I personally tested, and these games were the same ones as Modified Quadro Drivers: 441.12:

Yakuza Kiwami 2
Echo(Work in progess)
RE2(Work in Progress)
Rise of tomb raider
Lords of fallen
Hitman: Absolution(Enhanced Edition)

Only did quick test on all the games mentioned above, and as a reminder to all, Basically all the games mentioned above were fine tuned on another Quadro drivers and not 416.30, and in the end of these quick tests, guess what???

Everything works Perfectly and the stuttering part??? Just like how I originally tuned them and last saw them.

WOW, Absolute BIG BIG BIG difference, Holy _e_u_, shakes head.

 

ECHO - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 11-5-19:

Final conclusion will be up by thursday or friday, be sure to look for it.

Also, in the meantime, I will be trying a Very very old drivers for this particular game to see if anything in the scaling dept. changes, if anything significant happens, I'll post heads up.

 

UPDATE ON MODIFIED QUADRO DRIVERS 391.74 + ECHO UNDER 4-WAY SLI - 11-5-19:

Just heads up, I know I mentioned if anything significant changes, I will give heads up but just to let everyone know, These particular drivers(Which I have never used under the entire 4-way sli project), 416.30 & 431.94, all perform pretty much the exact same.

I was hoping these particular drivers will help me in the certain areas but all 3 drivers performed the exactly the same fashion = no difference whatsoever.

So I can say now, being safe, these drivers should have absolutely no problems with this game but I ain't done tuning this game yet, almost done, then need to do final check on overall stability of the game but its not finished yet, almost done tuning.

UPDATE:

Just tried Rise of tomb raider with these drivers and boy does the scaling hits HARD and PACKED DOWN!!!

Seems like these performs lil better then the drivers I was using on this game.

Also, the very minimal graphic anomalies, mainly some flashing on certain things, seems to be non-existent on these drivers.

Played for a bit, Plays Extremely well, No stuttering whatsoever and no crashes whatsoever.

Used my Custom made profile, the 2nd one(SMAA performance profile).

A++

 

UPDATE ON ASUS RIBBON CABLES - 4-WAY SLI - 11-6-19:

Going to give this a try and will give heads up soon, thanks.

The linkup cables do NOT WORK, so these should work, hopefully.

UPDATE:

As expected, even with the official asus Sli Ribbon/flexible cable, they do NOT WORK.

Although they worked ALOT better then the Linkup cables.

I ran Rise of tomb raider(Both Afr and Sfr modes) and Echo(SFR).

Rise of tomb raider scales perfect but the graphic problems is way out of control, I have managed to reduce it by a bit, I think it was one of the graphic settings, after messing with it, it came back.

Also, I tried Echo, which was tuned in SFR and AFR modes, but for this, SFR, Soon as I got to the title screen, scaling went way up and then after a bit, it hanged, and had to do a hard reset, at one time, I got a bsod: IRQ_NO_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

I even did dsr mode instead of custom resolution which I normally always use and its a complete DUD.

So there for everyone, if your doing Sli Projects, especially 4-way, you might want to use the hard ones that came with your motherboards, that is which I am using or you could try other brands but make sure its the hard one, all in one, not the flex cables, they DO NOT WORK PERIOD, be forewarned about this, so this is from my own testing experiences, go with the hard connector NOT the flex cables, you will have problems.

Was worth trying though, so now I know 100%, it DOES NOT WORK.

 

A suggestion with the soft SLI cables.
As a test concept, wrap foil round the length of the ribbons, being careful it wont touch anything conductive and see if that improves them.
The issue might be too much EM noise exiting them affecting something else, or the cables picking up too much EM radiation.
The idea is to create an EM shield.
A shield can have positive and negative effects, the positive being less interference and less emissions.
But it can also reduce high frequency content enough to make the leading edges of clocks and signals slightly late and reduce stability.
It depends what matters and what matters most.

No need to ground the foil yet, this is just to see if there is any positive change.
A different shield material can be used and see if grounding it helps, should the above prove acceptable.
fyi

 

Well bought some high quality ones a lil while back but the moment I turned on the game, hanged right off the back, the asus cable provided much better overall stability and graphic control but still both bad.

this one:

https://linkup.one/linkup-flexible-...hm-design-for-nvidia-gpus-graphic-cards-4-cm/

https://www.amazon.com/LINKUP-High-Speed-Twin-axial-Technology-Shielding/dp/B07SZ9CH53?th=1

Look at the shielding on that one.

 

I cant tell if there is any EM shielding, the plastic looking surround could be to protect it from physical damage only.

 

Basically with the linkup, it was mainly a black screen right off the back and some flashing colors and a complete hang then had to do a hard restart, whereas the asus ribbon cables, at least I got some pictures showing up and I got it to scale perfectly but no where being perfect, some kind of unusual looking static looking anomalies or something within those lines.

So you want me to try the foil technique? I wanted to originally space the card out more around the vrm's, so the vrm heatsink can be more exposed and help improve the overall cooling of the vrm's, that was my original idea, cause I have spacers on the right side of the pcb/card, and my overall temps, just on the spacers alone, helped up to at least 7c, huge difference, even though I am against anyone doing it, but I also very highly recommend doing it and far's I can tell, I have absolutely 0 problems, but of course on top of the that, all 4 gpu's, the black plate, behind the card, all been removed months ago, that right there is probably another 4-5c+ drop in temps, and yes, another big difference, just that cut in gap makes the card breath a bit better instead of all being sandwiched so close together, yes it is helping alot.

 

You dig deep to get results and are hampered by temps.
You bought bridges to cure this but cant use them atm.
Its up to you but its worth a try.

Be careful the foil doesnt touch anything metal on the cards.
You could put foil between 2 sheets of paper and cut to a shape that can wrap round the ribbons.
Stick in place with Sellotape.

 

When your saying foil, you mean Aluminum foil correct?

So 2 sheets of like paper that you write on??? Then wrap it with Aluminum foil??? Then hold it in place with the Sellotape, correct?

Question, have you personally encountered this problem that I am having with the sli ribbons before and have tried this method and confirm it fixes the problem???

 

lol, yes, as you say but I mean wrap a sheet of foil in paper. This is to protect anything from touching the foil.
No I havent encountered this issue but I'm an Electrical/Electronic Engineer, its my kind of troubleshooting

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'll try this later.

I'll keep the one I been using, works perfectly, but will give heads up on it later, thanks again.

 

@A M D BugBear hi, which game is in your radar now?? I want to see AC:O SLI ASAP.so that it will be a slap on Ubisoft's face. they have given SLI support in all previous AC games but no SLI in this and not in Oddessy. NVIDIA + UBISOFT Making SLI DEAD. money making policy to sell their rtx cards.I m dying to see AC:Origins game SLI Capable.

 

Again, once Echo is complete I will be looking into Vanishing of Ethan Carter which Venturi asked me personally to look into, at that time, I will look into doing AC:O, don't worry, that game is still on my mind.

Speaking about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Thanks Venturi for making me aware of this game, didn't until you messaged me about it, saw some trailers, looks very good, can't wait to try it out.

Speaking about echo, I hope to have a final conclusion up and running probably by tomorrow, more then likely not.

Although the game is basically done tuning, Certain things I can not fix, certain places are very very stubborn.

 

UPDATE ON ECHO - 4-WAY SLI - 11-7-19:

Just heads up on this game, Hoping to have final conclusion up and running in few days tops.

The Tuning of this particular game is basically all finished, although, I only played it to chapter 2, scene 3.

In Chapter 2, scene 1, I still can not get the scaling to fix in certain given situations, I tried doing many things to to the windowsNOfolder and to gameusersettings, NOPE.

I also added tons of other stuff within this file and shut them all off, to see if has any reaction to the scaling, NOPE, basically the same.

Although the scaling in chapter 2, scene 3 seems overall pretty decent, game is far from being perfect.

Chapter 1, scene 1 and 2 scales excellent.

I am guessing more then likely it has something to do with the lightning source, speaking about the areas where you use your shoulder lights, like chapter 2, scene 1.

I also put the post processing effect off and then turn it back on to see if any scaling changes in certain areas, NOPE.

This is the very best I can do, so in certain situations, it acts like 3-way performance, certain times in this area scaling is a monster, so its really a mixed bag in certain scene, very interesting game we have here.

Anyhow, look for it later, final conclusion is heading our way.

Just doing last final touches on tuning and then check for overall game stability long term play.

And yes, both sfr and afr is very playable with basically no graphic anomalies.

Also you can also do from what I understand through nvidia inspector:

SLI_RENDERING_MODE_FORCE_AFR_OF_SFR__FALLBACK_3AFR

This one works as well.

UPDATE:

As I am in the final touches tuning this game, I will be testing another Very old drivers to see what kind of reaction this game will give me.

Modified Quadro Drivers: 387.95

Stay tuned.

UPDATE ON QUADRO DRIVERS: 387.95:

Was very curious about what changes it will give and I was kinda expecting the same results, yes, performance results in chapter 1, scene 1 were pretty much the same.

The Sekiro fps drop wanna be when loading up the saved file in this area is roughly about 10 fps difference, give or take, one might me 92 fps, the other tiimes can be 100 or 102, it is not constant, Sekiro was very well known of this on my tuning side.

Again, final check will be done on this drivers, not switching drivers back, so I should have no problems from here on out.

 

UPDATE - ECHO - 4-WAY SLI - 11-7-19:

Several things I have fixed in chapter 2, scene 1, the overlay imprint that's left on the screen, also some of the flashing on the fences on the corner, while its really not to bad cause the scene is mostly dark and only your lights are viewing in front of you, I manage to get rid of it.

So what I did for reference, I looked up some stuff for Ark Evolved and the tweaks involved in regards to .ini, Under the engine .ini within the windowsNOfolder:

Add this below:

[/Script/Engine.RendererSettings]
r.SSR.Quality=0

This is your Screen Space Reflection Settings, MUST be set to = 0.

I add many many many more stuff on top of this but mostly set to 0, I am going through each one of them to see If I can get it to scale better in this scene, Something is defin't going on within this scene so I am now doing closer investigation on it, check back for more updates.

 

UPDATE - ECHO - 4-WAY SLI - 11-7-19:

Got GREAT NEWS!!!:

Thought I could never get this area to scale properly, I just did some quick test with certain changes within the engine.ini file

Before, when facing foward, in certain locations in this area, I was getting up to 3-way'ish performance, now I can confirm I am hitting the 4th card.

Just checked, 43 fps one card, 136-145 all 4 gpu's.

All though some settings were shut off, some were not.

The one that changed all of this and I also messed with this particular setting within Mass Effect 3:

r.oneframethreadlag

and MUST set to =1, No Exceptions...

This was the game changer in this area, I don't know about the other areas within chapter 2, Have to go and check, but the one with the scaling problems were in this scene so I was mostly focusing in this area.

So add:

r.oneframethreadlag=1 to

[/Script/Engine.RendererSettings]

In your engine .ini file, if its not in there, add below it.

As a remainder, Some of the settings seems like its running on right off the back, for instance:

Screen Space Reflections, even though I don't see it within the gameusersettings or the Engine .ini file, seems like its turned on by default, but in this area it MUST be set to =0 in order for the graphic problems to go away in this area, then again, this area is dark, you probably won't even pay attn. to it while playing.

Looking good so far, check back for more updates.

UPDATE:

Found another setting that causes the scaling to go down in this scene(chapter 2, scene 1):

Under Engine .ini file

Do NOT use:

r.DistanceFieldAO=1

In fact, don't even use it at all, both ultra and off shadows in this area will hinder performance, best not to even put it within the engine .ini file.

UPDATE:

Like Sekiro, there seems to be still that fps bounce like effect while loading up the saved game.

Lowest in this area is like 116, then one time I see high as 130'ish or so.

Took several times over to get this, Sekiro is much worse when it comes to this, that can take 10 times + over to get the desired fps, whereas this only took several times over.

Scaling in this area is ALOT better, your not kidding.

Alot of work was also done within the windowsnofolder and its settings, but overall, its looking alot better now.

 

ECHO - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 11-8-19:

Couple of things here:

First of all, I used these sites as references to my tuning process:

http://www.kosmokleaner.de/ownsoft/UE4CVarBrowser.html

https://wiki.nitrado.net/en/Performance_Boost_for_ARK:_Survival_Evolved_Client

https://www.reddit.com/r/theislands...squeeze_out_more_fps_from_your_gpu_heres_how/

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Performance/Scalability/ScalabilityReference/index.html

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Content/Types/Textures/Streaming/Config/index.html

I have used a tool called Cpu Unpark, and seems to give me very little boost.

https://coderbag.com/programming-c/disable-cpu-core-parking-utility

Also, using the launch options(properties) in steam:

-useallavailablecores

Next part is very interesting.

In Chapter 2, area 2, certain viewing areas I see some scaling drop, drops to like 3-way'ish.

First before I address this issue, what seems to causing the massive scaling drop in this area is:

r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=
r.AmbientOcclusionSampleSetQuality=
r.HZBOcclusion=

If I said these all to 0, scaling drops big time but the moment I change them, everything changes.

Also, in this area, I tried some work around but can not fix the issue.

If shadow is turned on in any way shape or form in this region of play, massive stuttering while moving your camera left or right but when walking forward is fine.

Shadow set to ultra helps the overall scaling potential in this region of play but I shut them off, but in turn you can turn on Screen Space Reflections, in this region, my setting is this:

r.SSR.Quality=4
r.SSR.Temporal=1

This will help the overall scaling power in this region overall...

Also speaking of these settings mentioned above, in chapter 2, area 1, If I set the shadows set to ultra, and everything mentioned above, the overall scaling power in this area, a good deal amount of this area, = top notch scaling.

My focus of this whole thing is scaling, no matter what settings has to be reduced, changed, or anything within those lines, All about scaling, that is the main primary focus and looking pretty solid.

Also, Double checked the ship scene, chapter 1, area 1, shadows MUST be turned off, otherwise Massive stuttering/hitching, also, you will see some kind of overlay imprint left on the screen while playing, to fix this, simply change your AA setting to ultra, notch by notch, then to off then back to ultra, should be all fixed, looked clean..

I haven't double checked the snow area yet, will though soon, that's in chapter 1, area 2.

Also, the screen space reflections settings:

r.SSR.Quality=4
r.SSR.Temporal=1

You may see very very lil graphic anomaly, mainly small minute of flashing on certain objects but nothing to be concerned about.

there is some in Chapter 2, area 1, but not to bad, if the SSR is turned on, you can turn it off, this will provide absolute clean overall picture but the scaling won't be as packed down in the entire area of this region.

I have found some crashing in the beginning of the game before the title screen hits, at times, it will do a massive hang, you can do CTRL+ALT+DEL, but it may take a bit to get the screen or screen may go black and have to do a hard reset, but that's rare.

Another fair warning here, since the SLI Broadcast bits 0x00000000<<~~ was the game changer in certain areas, in turn, you will experience massive load/temp increase while playing, be absolutely sure your cooling is in check with your 4-way sli setup, you will be extremely sorry in the end, trust me, you will notice within 2 mins of play.., at times, this game hits HARD on temps.., nothing to be played around with...

Trying to get this game done so I can move on to the next, need to check other areas to see if they are working fine.

Overall, I would say everything how its looking, on scaling in general = Very Good/Excellent.

Chapter 1 was the easy part, Although chapter 1, area 2 took some time to kick in, but once you get into chapter 2 and its areas = Totally different animal to deal with, lots and lots and lots of tuning/changes within the windowsNOfolder settings, 98% of your tuning will be in this area of focus.

So check back later as this game is still:

----------WORK IN PROGRESS----------

 

This is a fantastic thread! I've run 4-Way SLI since the 580 days (2011) and my last config with 4-Way SLI was the Titan Xp (2017 edition). I'm now running Titan RTX SLI and 2080 Ti SLI in both my rigs. Used to run 4x 1080 Ti on the 2nd rig and 4x Titan Xp in my main rig.

Have you had any luck in getting MGPU to work with Red Dead Redemption 2?

I've been able to get it to work scaling-wise but there is some flickering (snowy areas) and the sky-box flickers occasionally -

If you do have luck with AC Origins or AC Odyssey, that would be great.

Here's me running Metro Last Light Redux in 4K Surround with 4x GTX Titan in 4-Way SLI:

Great work on the thread so far - looking forward to more updates!