Sli gives a performance decease of almost 50% when enabled in DX10. DX9 gives a performance increase with sli enabled. My results Default DX9 with 1920-1200 DX9 1920-1200 everything max (8times AA gives me 6times AA :S)
Bansh33nl: Your report of DX10 and SLi reducing performance is inaccurate. Anyone who is still unable to enable SLi support for this game in DX10 I will further the explanation that Luvbud posted earlier in this thread. So there ya have it =] 3-way SLi enabled; BOOYA! :banana: *You're correct on the AA feature Bansh33nl... Even when you select 8xAA it will only do 6xAA :3eyes: I don't feel like manually enabling it...*
Well i dunno why but it reduces the framerates dramatically on my pc. I will post the dx10 scores within the hour. I followed the explaination that Luvbud posted (bye the way thx for posting dude). It works great with dx9 but dx10 it sucks. I will also post some screen shots from mij setting in nhancer.
I was having issues with it initially as well... My dumb mistake was selecting tropics.exe instead of unigine.exe from the program files folder when I was 'adding' the profile to the nvidia program part... I had a few screenshots to post but ImageShack is being difficult atm... Basically, for anyone who still hasn't got this to work in DX10; 1) make sure SLi is enabled... duh 2a) open your nvidia control panel -> manage 3d settings -> program settings 2b) 'add' unigine.exe NOT tropics.exe from c:\ yadda yadda... 3) when you've added it, scroll down and find your 'SLI performance mode' and select 'Force alternate frame rendering 2' from the settings table 4) download/install nhancer http://www.nhancer.com/?dat=downloads 5) run nhancer, and in the main window, under application you should see unigine.exe and beside it the summary 6) select unigine.exe and on the right panel select 'SLI DX10' tab 7) there is a button to enable it and then select alternate frame rendering from the drop down box 8) select options 4,5,6,7,16 from the compatibility flags and then X out of nhancer - SLi SHOULD be working now... If it's not, repeat the steps or fix my errors =] ---------------------------- 9a) *optional* enable your SLi indicators from your nvidia control panel 9b) open the nvidia control panel, and click on manage 3d settings 9c) at the top you'll see 3d settings... open that drop down and then select show sli visual indicators I run this to see how the SLi is actually working or not working in various applications... It's annoying, so remember to turn it off in-game :nerd:
Well for some reason it's working now. Only thing i did was restarting my pc. I matched the settings you used FTProtocal. Well here are the DX10 results 1 GTX 260+ no sli 2 GTX 260+'s in sli 2 GTX 260+'s in sli with 6x AA (still weird that it's not 8x aa) My GTX260+ (stock 666core, 1404shader, 1150mem) should be as fast as a stock GTX 280. Are you overclocking your GTX 280's FTProtocal? The scaling from 1 gtx260+ to 2 GTX 260+'s isn't that bad, it gives a 51% increase in fps. According to your results FTProtocal, going from 1 gtx 280 to 3 gtx 280's gives a +- 100% boost. It maybe time for me to get another GTX 260+ when the prices come down this month or next month with the 55nm gtx 260 and 280's. FTProtocal, could you run a 2 way sli test for me? same settings as 3 way (No aa). I would appreciate it very much. I will try your drivers 178.24 instead of the 180.47 beta drivers.
Yup I will =D I'm going to load up the new beta drivers and test it. I only ran the 178's because I was messing around with dedicated PPU and PhysX ;\ I do have my cards O/C... I'll give you the exact amount when I get these new beta drivers installed and the eVGA Performance thingy loaded =D BTW, that is seriously sweet O/C on your CPU... What's your FSB running at?
Thx for testing. I just installed the 178.24 drivers. Gonna give them a try. Na my cpu oc actually sucks beacause it is a C0 stepping. It doesn't want to go higher than 4.3 ghz even with 1.5 or 1.6 volts. It just isn't stable above 4.3ghz. I'm running on a 453 fsb (452.7 to be accact) with a 9.5 multiplier and 1.384v. Thanks to watercooling it runs pretty cool. The E8500 overclocks like hell with low voltages. You can overclock it to 3.6ghz without giving it more voltage. I previously had a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz but the core 2 duo's clock way higher and are cheap. In games a core 2 duo is as good ore even better than a quad core. But be assured to get a E0 stepping. Under 4 ghz my gpu's are cpu bound and don't reach there full potential in games. Offcourse Unigine Tropics Benchmark is not cpu bound.
I was thinking of getting an E8500 actually... However, I do more than games =D I'm waiting for the i7's now... Waiting for them to become somewhat reasonable. My cards are SSC models to begin with. I have them O/C to: 675/1462/1200 (648/1404/1161 stock) SLi benchmark with 180.43
Oke new benches with older drivers. 5 FPS! increase over the beta drivers. So don't use the beta drivers. They also give corruption in cod4 and cod5 from time to time and the error that the display driver had stopped working on cod5. 1 GTX 260+ no sli 2 GTX 260+'s in sli 2 GTX 260+'s in sli with 6x AA To sum up the performance increase from going from 108.43 beta drivers to 178.24: 1 GTX 260+ no sli: 2.2fps increase 2 GTX 260+'s in sli: 5.4fps increase 2 GTX 260+'s in sli with 6x AA: 0.9fps increase 5 FPS! increase over the beta drivers. So don't use the beta drivers. They also give corruption in cod4 and cod5 from time to time and the error that the display driver had stopped working on cod5. Well what do you know, my gtx's in sli score actually higher than your gtx 280's in sli. That is until you start using the 178.24 drivers again. They are actually better thann the beta drivers. So time to go back to the stable drivers.
I did SLi w/6xAA to see how it matches up with yours: Kinda disappointing seeing as though the only real performance gain is with 3... But then again, you don't have 3 260's... I'd be interested to see those benchmarks.
Jeah I'm deffinatly going to get a 3rd but thats not until Januari or Februari. First I gotta get rid of my 24 inch screen and buy a matrox tripplehead 2 go and 3 22inch monitors. The perdormance gain from 1 to 2 gtx 260's is still more than 50%. But than again the performance increase from 1 to 3 gtx 280's is over 100%. Sounds about right. I tested the 178.24 drivers on the Far Cry 2 benchmark and i got 4 fps LESS. I also tested them on 3dmark vantage and got almost 4000 points LESS. Really weird that the Unigine Tropics Benchmark doens't like the new beta drivers. A well time to go back to the beta drivers again.
Overclocked my 2 GTX 260+'s to 730/1538/1201 and ran the 6x aa bench again. It gives me an aditional 1 fps increase.
Windows 7 Hey there. I originally found this wouldn't install as well. However I re-downloaded the install program from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1244/Unigine_Tropics_Demo_v1.1.html instead (I think I used the French mirror) and it installed perfectly. I'm using Windows 7 32 bit FYI Cheers! *UPDATE* Won't initialise with any DirectX. Some error about failing to initialise wrappers. OpenGL works though... Strange.
