Nvidia dropping the ball with SLI lately?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by Sethos, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Really, well I've never had any problems even with dual cards, even the 295's which I never had any problems with, or 280s in sli, or 8800s, or 7800s etc etc etc. I could go on and on and yes I had a voodoo 2 and I still have it along with loads of other abandonware. I tend to go on my own experiences which I have alot of......instead of other peoples thinkable experience.

    In a nutshell nothing wrong with sli, custom flags are released, hell even fc4 is smooth on my gpu with 1.4 patch and a tweak here and there.

    Sli is fine, nothing wrong with it if you do it right tbh.

    Cfx and sli are very different are more users report success with sli than cfx users. Do not class them as the same cause they are not the same.

    Go ask Darren Hodgson about his experience using cfx. It almost put him off for good regarding the problems he had. He thought sli was the same until he sought advice and encouragement. Sli was totally different experience for him.
    Go ask him in pm if you don't believe, personally I would never go cfx ever but then I know some users who have gone cfx and have no problems whatsoever.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2014
  2. Ragingun

    Ragingun Guest

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    Nor do I. It goes back and forth. Like I said, at first CA/Sega boldly stated they had no intention of supporting SLI at all. The funny thing is that this title was a PC title exclusively which is crazy to think about. Put that into today's perspective and that game would be flamed with threads like this. I can give some grace to the companies today because the mainstream gamers are consoles, not PC. So they are going to, whether we like it or not, release games that are optimized for the consoles, not the PC platforms.
     
  3. KingDazza

    KingDazza Guest

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    If you want to be stunned further with that, you should take a look at Rome II release. Truly stunning state of affairs, especially when you consider the flak of Empire you'd have thought they'd have learn't.
     
  4. Netherwind

    Netherwind Ancient Guru

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    Another unhappy SLI user signing in.

    I had to buy the ROG Swift and try 1440p and I'm glad I did. But this joy was overshadowed buy the fact that my two 970s I bought to power this monitor can't do their jobs properly due to either lack of SLI profiles at game launch or buggy SLI profiles or even totally broken ones (FC4 for example). I need a LOT of GPU power to run new games at 1440p/100+fps and even two 970s don't always cut it. But it's unfair if its a scaling problem and not the lack of horsepower.

    I don't understand nVidias or AMDs tactics behind this. After all, we're buying TWO cards, yes that's right, two cards meaning they sell one more than was "intended". Now, what do we get for this? Problems...a lot of problems.

    It's unfair and something drastic should be done about it. Either remove CFX and SLI from existence or fully and wholeheartedly support it! There is no in between as far as I'm concerned.
     

  5. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Fc4 works great with fc3 flag and 1.4 patch.
     
  6. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    You forgot the game engine has to properly support SLI/Crossfire as well. That isn't up to Nvida or AMD. I'm not sure what 'tactics' you're blaming Nvidia and AMD for.
     
  7. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    The FC3 flag doesn't work for me. I get like a 2hz strobe effect flashing.
     
  8. VultureX

    VultureX Banned

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    QFT.

    Not 100+ fps avg, though, far from it, but gSync saves the day.
     
  9. Netherwind

    Netherwind Ancient Guru

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    It works but many textures are flashing which is somewhat annoying.

    I'd like you to view this in a business perspective. Your clients buy two, three or even four of the products you normally sell a piece. You even started to make double core products yourself. Wouldn't you in that case talk to all game developers who need your consultation, hardware and software during the development of the game and tell them:

    "Guys, I am promoting my customers to use two or more of my product in their computers. Be a sport and include this support in your game engine, then we'll work out SLI/CFX profiles for my customers that they can use. Let's aim for 90+ scaling OK? Wonderful, kkthxbye."

    Remember that we're talking AA or AAA titles here, I'm not asking EVERYONE to support SLI/CFX. Most indie games don't require powerful machines anyway. But you'd really expect heavy hitters like Ubisoft, EA and Activision to aid us hard working customers by just making sure SLI/CFX works on launch. It's a part of the game!
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2014
  10. Ital

    Ital Master Guru

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    You don't seem to know how this business works. Nvidia has poured millions of dollars in supporting game developers. Go look up TWIMTBP and GameWorks. Nvidia has gone out of their way to reach out to game developers and offer support to get their games optimized on Nvidia hardware and drivers. The problem is that most game devs and game publishers aren't taking Nvidia up on their full offers.

    Nowadays game publishers are concentrating on game consoles cause that's where the money is. Getting their games to run well on PC is a distant second, and getting their games to run well on PCs with more than 1 graphics card (a minority) is an even more distant third.

    Nvidia's TWIMTBP and GameWorks programs are useless if game developers say "No thanks" since fully optimizing their games for Nvidia hardware (including SLI) will still add more resources and development time which those developers would rather not spend since game publishers are giving them tight budgets and deadlines to get the games ready on game consoles.

    Perhaps if Nvidia actually offer money to game publishers to fully support Nvidia technologies, those publishers would be willing to ease up on the budgets and deadlines and allow game devs to make full use of Nvidia's TWIMTBP and GameWorks support (especially in the SLI front).

    So, you can either complain to the game publishers (which is useless since SLI is very low priority for them), or ask Nvidia to give money to them but Nvidia would have to raise the prices of their GPUs to cover the cost of those "bribes". And I have a feeling that most PC owners (myself included) wouldn't like the second choice. :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2014

  11. KingDazza

    KingDazza Guest

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    How come then with CoD Advanced Warfare, which was released without SLI support now has Nvidia and the developers working closely together for a fix. Shadow Of Mordor, saw a similar same thing.

    If the developers aren't picking up Nvidia's offers as you say due to development costs, then why are they keen to work with Nvidia after launch?
     
  12. Ragingun

    Ragingun Guest

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    I just built my new system platform as in my specs, X99. I noticed more texture issues with SLI than my previous X79 build. I truly wonder if there are other issues unseen between platforms as many of us have these issues and many others do not. I'm also curious in light of this that if the manufacturers were able to write specific VGA drivers for specific platforms if the card were able to perform much better.
     
  13. fernake

    fernake Master Guru

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    I have to say that Shadow of Mordor todabia has fallen to drastic performance when lots of enemies to cough when it's dark, too long to fix a game, not if really worth spending so much money on a gaming platform or go appears directly to playing consoles and forget this headache.
     
  14. Ital

    Ital Master Guru

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    I suppose I shouldn't say that complaining is useless. If people complain loudly enough about a high profile game especially with the added weight of the media, some game publishers will eventually let Nvidia engineers in to take a look at the source code and fix the problems mostly at the expense of Nvidia. That's where all those millions of dollars for TWIMTBP and GameWorks go to.

    Also once the game devs have stabilized their game's rendering code, Nvidia driver developers can finally create a proper SLI profile for it and even replace parts of the game's code through the Nvidia drivers if need be in order to optimize the game further. This takes time.

    Come to think of it, that's a good business model for game publishers. Just quickly work on a game and release it even if it's very buggy, let customers blame Nvidia for what they perceive as driver issues, then let Nvidia fix the game mostly at Nvidia's expense. :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2014
  15. Ragingun

    Ragingun Guest

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    This thread needs a "copy and paste" to both Nvidia and the game creators. Complaining here won't do much. Write what you have to say to them. The more voices we have carrying this message the more leverage Nvidia has to go to the game manufacturers with hundreds or thousands of complaints saying this is what YOUR customers are demanding.
     

  16. GoldenTiger

    GoldenTiger Master Guru

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    I've been around too, and sli didn't fail. 3dfx used it until they closed. Nice try at revisionist history. My voodoo 5 5500 was an amazing card (sli on one board). I'm glad nvidia picked up the torch, it's a great tech to enable graphics we simply couldn't run otherwise.
     
  17. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    I still have my voodoo 5 5500 pci card. 3dfx sli did not die the company did, nvidia did what the do best they bought out the company for their sli tech.
    Totally forgot about this card as guess you can add me to the list with sli from the beginning, not 7800gt sli that I originally stated.
     
  18. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    No back then SLI was done the correct way.There was performance increases for pretty much every Glide based games. I never heard of these bugs you speak of with the Voodoo 2 cards in SLI. But I heard of faulty SLI cables causing problems. I never owned any of the Voodoo cards but I did do alot of reading on the topic and read forum posts by users who like to build retro computers for retro style games and use voodoo cards.
     
  19. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    I had a voodoo 3 2000 but I gave it to a friend at least 12 years ago. No sli with that card though.
     
  20. Ragingun

    Ragingun Guest

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    I just found the PC Modder magazine from February 2005. It has the tests and 2 page write up about the 6600gt sli setup. The best scaling in a synthetic benchmark of 3mark03 was 62%. It's amazing that we get up to 90% in actual game scenarios now! The only 2 games it worked on was Doom3 and Halo. At that time the mainstream res was from 1024x768 and some were at 1280x1024. It didn't scale well at all when res was low. 800x600 with one 6600gt was 90.8fps; with sli it was 92.3fps. When the res increased at 1280x1024 a single card benched 53.4fps and sli was at 81.9fps. That was Doom3 tests.

    What I found most interesting was the fact that the system back then-MB, VGA, HDD-everything we'd buy now other than case and PSU that wasn't listed was just as costly as it is now. The total cost of SLI with the 6600gt without the PSU, screen, case, mouse, speakers, etc. was $2,400USD.

    Edit: Oh, and the most interesting piece of info IMO was the fact that they mentioned at the highest tested resolution, 1600x1200, SLI was ALMOST playable with the 6600GT at 27.2fps.....think our standards have changed??? We like to complain now when we aren't getting 120fps on a 120hz monitor....well duh. The frosting on the cake is some complain that that's unacceptable and unplayable. Crazy....
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2014

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