Extreme 4-Way Sli Tuning

Current 4 way SLI challenges:

titles using Ray Tracing (on FULL or ULTRA and get over 60fps at 4k with max eye candy, max lighting, max shadows, max textures, max AF (and no crappy blurfest DLSS, no DoF, and no Motion Blur, AA set to SMAA or TXAA or less) for MAX image quality and resolution.

SOTTR (only does shadows), METRO, and Control

Why? Because ray tracing (as sold by nvidia) sucks and can't really run max and 4k (designed at best for 1920x1080). The Titan RTX (had a pair) runs slower than the Titan V and in ray tracing it takes a nose dive compared to the V. Although, to be fair, the Titan V uses HBM2 and has a mem bus of 4096. So 4 way sli gets it well up and over the 60fps mark, but I've had challenges and I'm venturing all alone here (for now).



https://i.**********/7hzDG3vf/IMG-9230.jpg

 

First of all, through my own 4-Way experience, titles such as Rise of Tomb Raider, the Nvidia hairworks, 4-Way doesn't like it, I mean it can be turned on but the game will react abnormal in some instances, so I have it off, same goes for Shadow of tomb raider, hair reacts very very crazy.

Although I do alot more tuning now then ever, I could probably fix some of the stuff but it would take a great deal of time, personally I have it off and it runs fine.

And yes, your system is awesome, I do like the stand but one thing caught my eye, the front plexi glass, If I was really using this personally, I would personally take it off, put some nice fans in front, and on the sides of the cards, Like before, Cooling is the #1 priority in a 4-Way Sli gaming, Absolutely no question about it, Black plates removed, put some spacers in-between the cards, just those 2 mentioned, will drop your gpu temps by 10c or higher easy, along with Thermal Grizzly's Kyronaut, another up to 10c easy, And the Fans themselves in front, Adds more reduction to the overall temps, I am not kidding around here either.

Speaking about your case stand, does any other company makes something like this for motherboards but a much taller stand, tall as the Phantek Enthoo Prime at least? What I like about yours is open air/outside.

Titan V's??? I am not up there yet, I am working myself very slowly but surely.

I'll start from the lowest first then work myself up, I am in no rush whatsoever.

Hopefully when I get to those levels, I will learn alot more then I ever did currently.

So Titan V's runs better then the RTX when it comes to overall performance in ray tracing???

Very interesting stuff.

But I am always here to help, perhaps we both can make your 4-way Titan V's to good use but like I said, I don't have those cards in hand so Tuning will be very different on both end and their overall reaction will be different of course but we both can toss info and see what we come up with, always here to help out.

UPDATE:

Venturi just sent me a message in regards of two games he is trying to get them scale, I will personally look into these titles once Yakuza 2 and Nioh is complete.

Those games are: ECHO & The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and to top it off, so much fun.

 

Thank you
the front is actually tempered glass. I don't use any additional fans because the systems runs very cool and basically silent ( I like silence).
I may consider two front 120mm noctua when they come out in black and replace the beige/poopoo ones on the CPUs as well.

The back plates of the cards are all removed.
All the cards were rebuilt with the kryonaut tim and the Argonaut heat conducting putty for the other parts. the pair of 8180M cpus are also using the kryonaut.

The case is a thermaltake P1 and it is heavily modified and balanced. Basically the motherboard IS the size of the case.
Unfortunately no, I have found no other cases that can do what I want. Yes, I could use the p3, p4, and p9 but they are huge. I like small and quiet (mac like)
my prior build uses the P3, that was a taller build.

and lastly, yes, the new Titan RTX is slower than the Titan V at higher resolutions. Again, pretty sure its because the titan V has 32GB of ram and 4096 bit mem bus, Titan V 12Gb has also HBM2 mem and 3072 mem bus.
I had 2 Titan RTX and was disappointed on many levels in myself for believing marketing hype.

 

Is that right in regards about the Titan V's. Sounds delicious.

Wish I had those, perhaps one of these days, lol, but then again I don't think so.

Also for cpu's, I am using the Kingpin's KPx thermal paste, Sh_! is good stuff my friend.

Can not wait to try it on my future gpu's. But yes, that pexi glass up front looks nice, good for pc shows and stuff if you know what I am saying, but if you want all out cooling performance, that glass needs to go, but that would be be.

Noctua Cooling Heatsinks are very good to, my personal favorite before I got into AIO's, were Thermalright, They are still considered king in my book, every design they invented years back, I see alot of companies making similar or identical looking designs.

I have a question here, Why you need so much ram? Is there something your doing specifically taking advantage of all that ram, that is massive amounts of main physical ram you got there, holy moly.

 

I am not using HB connectors, those are for pascal cards really, I am using Maxwell based gpu's, and mine don't have steel shroud that your referring to and works perfectly.

Msi looks like they make one:

https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/4WAY-SLI-BRIDGE-KIT

And the one I am using right now, looks like this:

https://www.ebay.com/i/362682672088...MInpits--P5QIVpBitBh1iZQAnEAQYBiABEgIH_PD_BwE

 

4-WAY SLI - REFRESHING/TUNING BITS - UPDATE - 10/9/19:

Just to let everyone know, how I tune my bits and hexs:

Lets say I am tuning a particular hex within SLI Broadcast bits:

0x0000000<<~~ This one for instance, after I am done tuning this particular hex and went through all the digits(Including letters A,B,C,D,E and F, before I even thinking about moving to another hex to tune, I Refresh my profile by loading up my last saved good working/latest nvidia inspector profile for that particular program, this ensures the peakest performance before tuning another particular hex or anything else, because there has been times, changing certain things within inspector and then I reverted back to last good settings(Not loading the profile), just revert back normally, and guess what? It didn't revert back, infact, the performance was lessen a bit, so this is the reason why I use this very strict method to ensure your tuning is at its peakest before moving on to the next part of your tuning, very very important.

 

I need that much ram because its not really a gaming rig. I use it as my personal home station, but end up bringing a lot of work home with me: Nuclear medicine, isotope manufacture, PACS / medical imaging, and I'm doing a dissertation for my PhD in machine learning (AI) in diagnostic imaging/ radiology (NLP, ML , NN can use every ounce of ram almost instantly)

thank goodness there are 36 hours in a day.

--> then --> when work, wife, kids, and school are satisfied and happy - I attempt to catch up on some video gaming.

 

Could you show me some videos of your work??? I would love to see all that ram being fully utilized.

Love to see your work, upload it one time if you could if you don't mind, would love to see it, thanks.

 

YAKUZA KIWAMI 2 - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 10/9/19:

Alright, so basically the Sli Broadcast bits is basically all done and tuned, and no, I still can not get rid of that scaling Drag in those specific spots, but like before, I have managed to reduce the fps drops during these spots significantly, but it changes here and there, not same fps reduction overall, it alters, one time could be 5 fps, one could be 7 fps, and so on.

So all 4:

Sli Broadcast bits
Sli Compatibility bits
Sli Specific Hack Bits
& unknown PREDEFINED nvidia settings

Are all tuned and complete, Going to be checking long term stability and will give performance run down in my final conclusion, stick around for final results, going to be absolutely remarkable.

Performance run down will include 1 Gpu mode to 4-Way Sli mode...

Check back later for results.

 

YAKUZA KIWAMI 2 - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 10/9/19:

Something came up earlier today and its under investigation as we speak.

Earlier on, I found out that the some of the in-game cut-scenes, specifically the intro ones, there seems to be a massively high MS(Frametime), despite excellent scaling potential on all 4 gpu's, the fps is perfect but very very abnormally high MS, thus in the end, alot of skippings and such, Routing the problem as we speak, after that, I will provide rough down on the performance on my final conclusion.

I understand the in-game cut-scenes were perfect before, alot of the tuning recently was the actual game play itself, never really went back to the cut-scenes, figured it will still run fine, dead wrong, so currently working on the issue as we speak, shouldn't take long at all.

UPDATE:

Apparently something within the in-game graphic settings is causing it, needs further tuning to pin point it.

Just for kicks, I lowered my resolution to 1200p and it smooth as hell, next I tried 1600p, again smooth as butta, BUT, In this resolution, you MUST use at least SSA X 1.25 or else your overall scaling usage is average or above average. Even with SSA X 1.25 @ 1600p, certain graphic settings must be toned down, other wise you get very high MS(Frametime), despite the high fps performance.

Also for kicks, I tried lowering all my graphic settings @ 2400p, it is alot better then it was before but its not as smooth(MS) as 1200p.

I tried some stuff with the bits, and still doing same thing @ 2400p.

Still working around the issue, check back later.

 

YAKUZA KIWAMI 2 - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 10/10/19:

Excellent news, I fixed the problem that was mention in the very last post...

My original presumption was 100% correct.

You see, at times, when fine tuning your game with nvidia inspector, anything can go wrong, if it does, it may or may not corrupt the drivers themselves, very possible, I remember in some games, I was losing some performance or something else was happening in the game that wasn't there before, even if I tried bringing the bits to the last good working order, nope, there was another method, the old fashion method:

So what I did was Uninstall the drivers, and then re-install the drivers and guess what happens next??? You all guess it, All works perfectly.

So at this point, I didn't re-load my inspector profile, to play it safe, I jotted down on piece of paper my bits, then on a fresh profile, I configured to where I had it before, so this will ensure fresh/clean profile while loading up the game, I did my settings little by little then to where I had it once before, everything maxed out except for motion blur and DOF(causes MAJOR stuttering in few particular cut-scenes).

And thus in the end, Everything is working Perfect, Absolute solid Scaling like Scales from a Dragon...

The drivers I am using now is the the drivers That I originally tuned on:

Modified Quadro Drivers: 431.94

Although I do see a few performance increase with:

Modified Quadro DriverS: 431.86

But that's the one that gave me the High MS, I am not to sure, I might want uninstall the current drivers(431.94) and give this a fresh re-try to re-verify and reconfirm...

Also, from close observation, certain spots, I gained about 1-2 fps with 431.86 drivers, not only that, those specific spots where the scaling drags down, the fps drops and its consistency, seems better on the 431.86 drivers...

Seems overall, drivers 431.86 performs better just a notch, Might want to do a clean install and see if I get that High ms again, if I do, I am reverting back...

But so far, Just watched all of the main intro cut-scenes, it is ALOT better then before, Light and Day, Holy man your not kiddin'.

So folks, if your into this situation or came across this, you might want to re-install the drivers properly and re-install the drivers, it may or may not fix your situation, I had a feeling close to 100% it will fix my problem and it did, so my original presumption was correct.

Going to be doing Performance test runs soon as I re-verify the other drivers are working properly with my current profile configuration, so be sure to check back for future updates.

Also to top it all off, whats good thing about this game, is that unlike past several games I have worked on, upon loading up saved game, my fps stays the same, unlike games like Lords of Fallen, Sekiro to name a few, those fluctuates like Crazy at times, so this is great news for Yakuza fans...

Thanks for reading, means alot to me.

 

Its interesting for sure even though I probably wont go multi card again.
Its a shame DX12 cant be tweaked in the same way to get multi card working, being mGPU only for the few games that support it.
Otherwise I might get another 1080ti !

 

Staying away from DX12 for the time being, I know in the past, I tried tuning the DX 12 bits, Just one slight digit change on any hex, will cause the game to not load at all.

That's what pushed me back on GOW 4, but another thing pushing me back is I don't like really the Microsoft store thingy, sometimes it don't work, sometimes it does, There is work around it using the powershell thingy, but even then, the game is very big to download. over 100gb easy...

I might look into some dx12 titles again in the future and give it a go, but more then likely, tuning dx12 game = X but never know, every game will be different..

Thanks for your reply.

 

Just so that there is little confusion. There has only been 1 mgpu DX12 game ever: Ashes of the Singularity.
and
Just so that there is little confusion. There has only been 1 mgpu Vulkan game ever: Ashes of the Singularity


All the other games are based on the SLI flag or the crossfire flag.
Example:
if one was to take two 2060 rtx or two 1060 GTX cards in the same rig (which nvidia prevents from being SLi) you would not get MGPU to work in SOTTR as an example.

It would not work in ANY mvidia configuration.

Starnge Brigade in Vulkan is an exception as it allows radeon cards that are not crossfired to work in VULKAN in mgpu, and can be homogeneous and heterogeneous cards - nvidia cards do not work in that configuration because nvidia deliberatly dissabled it in the driver because they want you to only use SLI - othrwide folks would by the lessor priced cards.

So, there you have it, only 1 mgpu dx12 game, ever.

I'm extremely disappointed in the marketing hype and lies by Microsoft. Because after AoTS, they ratcheted back many development aspects and did not continue the follow through.

mgpu DX12 hype includes homogeneous and heterogeneous card configuration, but other than AoTS - no takers.

Yes, its the deveoper that can also be blamed, but Vulkan might be more atractive to them anyhow. Not to mention that Dx11 performance runs circles around dx12.

One is left with - what is the carrot to even bother with dx12? ...and why does nvidia deliberatly prevent mgpu in drivers?

 

I read that while DX12 games can use the flags for SLI, they still use DX12 mGPU under the hood.
Simply to make it easier for users to configure. ie continue to use what they are used to.
Is this not right?

 

yes and no. If that was the case then all along we have mgpu support through crossfire and SLI - it would have nothing to do with DX12.

Hence - marketing.

Marketing so that folks would bu win 10 because dx12 is only available in win 10 (except now warhammer auto installs dx12 it on win 7 machines for a specific game)
it was to make win 10 exclusive. But dx12 does NOT really offer the huge lift the hype was around it.

so if you ever want to see the only example of mgpu, install, configure and play AoTS. Its the only one with mgpu.

 

Personally I still like using DX9 + SGSSAA.

A very good example is crysis 2 + DX9 + Maldo Texture + SGSSAA+MSAA = Absolutely Delicious...

Even to this day, Crysis 2 + maldo texture mod + X2 Sgssaa + X2 Msaa = Can Brutalize even the most demanding system today and still looks absolutely incredible, even by today's standard, hey I am good with this game how it looks, don't really need DX12 lol, if you know what I mean, Game looks absolutely fantastic as it is, despite showing its age, still kicks booty.

Just hope in the future, we can select what API to use for specific game, DX12 or DX11.

Hopefully we can still use DX11, Alot easier to tune then DX12 for Mgpu setups, DX12 can't tune really that well.

 

MASS EFFECT 3 - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 10/10/19:

Several things I haven't tried out yet, I want to give this game a try one more last chance.

Certain things Caught my attn. While fine tuning other games, perhaps it may work with this game.

One more last try, Did tons of work on this game in the past but several things caught my attn. and prompt me to do some changes, perhaps it may work, I'll keep you all posted, main focus is on Yakuza 2 ATM, I just brought this game up cause I was interested in going back to it.

 

YAKUZA KIWAMI 2 - 4-WAY SLI - UPDATE - 10/11/19:

Something just came up and had to re-install the graphic drivers.

For some odd reason, both drivers I have used for this game: 431.86 & 431.94, with my custom profile was working ALOT better when it comes to those scaling drag spots, now its worse then it ever was, even with the same parameters, I set them individually and start the game, although the scaling is excellent, intro in-game CutScenes frametime(MS) seems decent, no skips or anything, just those scaling drag spots, now right upon loading up saved game, I am hitting 60 fps to low as WTF like under 10 fps, it was never this bad before.

before, was like 60 to like 39'ish, then after tuning or so, 63 fps to like 50/57 give or take, I am re-looking everything within my profile, have to triple check some stuff, sorry about this, final conclusion is gonna take some time, I need to weed through all of this nonsense, 1 or 2 gpu mode does NOT have this issue, in regards about the scaling drag issues, when your into 3-way and 4-way, this is what you have to go through, as before, TONS and TONS of work, stuff is no joke.

Check back later for future updates.

UPDATE:

I also did an windows update that implies to cpu microcode:

https://www.tenforums.com/windows-1...ode-updates-windows-10-v1703-august-29-a.html

https://www.tenforums.com/windows-1...ode-updates-windows-10-v1703-august-29-a.html

Also, I did a fresh re-install the other day and I installed the Service Stack Update and then I installed the .2108 update, before when yakuza was running better, it was without any of these cpu microcode updates and I was also running on update .2045, both updates and these cpu microcode updates only implies to win 10 x64, RS2(15063/version 1703).

So this could have played a factor here, in any case, I'll do my best to bring it up to where it was before, thanks for viewing.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Going to be uninstalling the microcode updates and put the one I had before, also on top of that, I am going to uninstall the .2108 update and put back the .2045 update, I'll keep everyone posted on this so be sure to check back for future updates.

 

How did the quadro card work out?

microcode updates only slow down PCs