580 SLI pwn'ed by 6950 CF in Shogun 2 and The Witcher 2

Just upgraded from 6950 2GB x 2 to GTX580 3GB x 2 for greater good. Tried 275.27 beta, 275.33 whql, and 275.36 inf mod, but still have the following problems:

Total War Shogun 2: slightly worse performance than 6950 2GB x 2 in the benchmark. This is np, as long as it's not much slower. The bigger problem is that I get very serious lag spikes when I try to scroll the campaign map. Fraps/MSI AB reports 40+ fps when I don't scroll the campaign map, but single-digit-fps when I scroll. Selecting troops/cities takes ages to respond. Am I the only one to suffer from this problem? I understand it's an AMD's game, but Dragon Age 2 didn't take so long for a driver fix? I have to use DX9 mode to avoid such problems for now.

The Witcher 2: it's the steam version with the latest patches as of today. As long as I don't use nv inspector, the GPU usage on both cards are rather low (around 60% each), and I get much worse fps than 6950 2GB x 2. What just happened to nVidia? It's an nVidia's game which is supposed to work like HAWX 2 and Crysis 2. Why let AMD to offer official CrossfireX support first?

The only gain I have received is just Metro 2033, for which the playing experience has become more smooth, but it's not surprising for an nVidia's game.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the PhysX in Mafia 2 sux. As long as I do not disable SLI and specify card 2 for dedicated PhysX, the fps is rather low, forcing me to turn off PhysX. Can't say it's a nice experience.

Now I think the best usage of these GTX580s are for CUDA programming until 28nm soon.

 

well for me re shogun2 camp map is laggy but battles are fine around 70-80fps tops. everything is quick to select...so not sure whats happening there. i am not surprised it runs faster on an amd rig as amd completely did the aa and dx11 etc. p.s thats the reason we waited 2 months for a patch!!!!!!!!

i ran physx on medium on the gpu with the 580 and mafia2 was one of my favourite games recently. i thought the physx really added...was tempted to get an extra physx card but thought as there are only 2 games i really like that use its not worth it.

so dunno most results say 580's in sli beat 6950's but perhaps its just the particular games you mentioned...

you clean out your drivers with driver sweeper? might be worth a shot..

 

Yes, shogun 2 dx11 suffer from stutter in campaign battle. It was also present in dx9 but later it was fixed. Land battles run ok, but naval battles are a mess.
Regarding Mafia 2, I already posted a fix for performance in Nvidia driver thread, http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=345117

 

When everything fails. Try OS reinstall. You may have some conflicts changing from one brand of GPU to another. I had some issues too changin from AMD to nVidia. Didnt performed well enough until i reinstalled Win 7.

 

When going from AMD to nVidia and vice versa always uninstall drivers in safe mode and run driver sweeper... and very important to remember... DO NOT RESTART your PC after uninstalling the drivers ! else windows will just find and use default drivers to the card and enter them in the registration database.
Totally shut down the PC after uninstalling driver and having run driver sweeper, and the swap cards... and run driver driver after boot one last time.

With that said, you will always find games that run better on one brand of card than the other mainly due to how the shader work is coded and made in the game engine.

 

Thanks for your help guys. I can't really afford to do a clean OS reinstall - forgot my Windows cdkey (and don't like to backup the activation files), forgot how to recompile BLAS with Intel MKL, got a sh1t load of games to deactivate, reinstall and reactivate, got so many software to reconfigure. Just hate it.

It's not my first time switching side - what I do is usually uninstall the driver, shutdown system, swap cards and power on computer. I don't think there's any performance impact from driver rubbish - I get reasonable 3DMark11 scores and many good results in other game benchmarks. It's just the specific games I listed.

[/IMG]

 

No problems in Shogun 2 here - apart from the fact that it boosts the temps into the low 80s even on the map screen which Im not so keen on.

I havent tried Mafia 2 on the 580s but I did play it on 480 SLI when it was released and it was butter smooth with Apex PhysX enabled.

 

Try a temporary new OS install on a spare drive to see if it does fix any of your problems, you dont need a key, it will work for at least 1 month.
If you find it does help, you know its worth troubleshooting your main OS installation.

I keep an extra working copy of my OS on a second drive to test with and make a full backup of my main OS every month.
This way I can verify problems more easily and track approximately when they started occuring.

 

The most idiotic change that I've ever seen in my life

I understand if a man change the 1st generation videocards to the 2nd from another manufacturer is ok, but THIS ...

P.S. How stupid some people are who do not even consider THIS ... :bang:

 

Well, it's his dime to spend. I changed from Ati 5970 to 2 GTX 580 due to ATI/AMDs crappy drivers and they took forever to get the driver fixed for the games i'm playing. Sure, they release on monthly basis but i dont't want to wait 3-9 months to play.

 

def do as suggested with driver sweeper in safe mode. i changed from xfire 5780 and cleaned out all the amd stuff. manually deleted folders n did driver sweeper x2 to be on the safe side.

i always run a res evil benchmark n aliens v predator and then play a few cods. or games that i know are well optmised and smooth (brothers in arms etc...). that tells me if there is anything basically wrong.

total wars shouldnt be a game to base perf on, they are notoriously fickle.

so os install is always good but i didnt need to..

p.s its not an idiotic change. just might need some fiddling. mafia2 should be brill...i would set one of the cards to run the phys on max and the other for the rest. am sure you tried this...wierd that it doesnt work. but i did have times when i didnt set the physx right that it would be a lagfest. but its a great game when you get it working.

 

Well, if you like stuttery campaign map and crap naval battles peformance it runs fine and no problems

 

Nah if you think I change only for gaming then you are too naive Read the last sentence in the OP~ But Believe me, regarding gaming, it's extremely hard to beat 6950 CF!

 

You are welcome. It's your money and things what you will do

 

Same here, only I ditched HD 5870 CFX for a single GTX 580 due to the lacklustre CFX support from AMD. I haven't looked back since, the GTX 580 and drivers are awesome.

 

Just did a clean install of Win7 on a separate disk and tried the games. No performance improvement at all.

 

I already told you that Shogun 2 dx11 is broken, Witcher 2 sli is underperforming and Mafia 2 can be fixed.
You could avoid the trouble of reinstalling windows.

 

For you maybe, I don't have these problems and The Witcher 2 also runs perfectly for me so sounds like it's something on your end.

 

Make sure you have the latest SLI profile update.. That helps to improve Witcher 2 SLI performance, until Nvidia actually releases some optimized drivers for the game.

 

Thanks It's good to know that I don't have to reinstall my main OS

Where do I get the latest SLI profile update? Could you post me a link please? (preferably official site)