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eshati

Strange SLI usage

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Hi to all. I am new to this forum. I play arma 2 oa 1.59, and I am experiancing strange sli usage with two 580gtx and 266.58 drivers. When I am in game cards usage drops from 20% to 50% tops and 35-50fps. When I enter the menu, usage takes off to 99% for both cards and fps goes to 110. Any one else having this problem? Any solution?

Thanks!

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Hi Eshati, welcome to the forum and Arma.

That's to do with being CPU limited. Usually beacuse of alot of AI or being in an area with lots of buildings. Both of those things are highly CPU intensive. If you go out to a forested area with not much around you will see your SLI usage increase dramatically also. Another thing that can cause you to be CPU limited is a very high view distance, like 4000+.

Pressing escape pauses all CPU calculations so the gpu can get to flex its muscles fully.

what kind of cpu do you have btw?

P.S. this may seem counter intuitive...but if you switch your shadow settings to their highest in the options it will take more strain off the cpu as the lower shadow quality setting is calculated on the CPU while the higher shadow setting is calculated on the GPU.

Edited by -=seany=-

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I have exactly this probem with my 260gtx'es in sli. It only happens with 266.58 or higher on my system.

If I turn off every program running in the background I dont have the problem, especially speedfan seems problematic.

It's not an arma-specific problem, dragonage 2 is much worse. Had the problem in rome total war as well. It's not a sli thing either, with sli disabled I have the same symptoms.

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You may try the new beta drivers 270.51: LINK

Anyway, what are your specs?

Win7 64bit SP1

Asus rampage 3 extreme x58

Intel i7 960, 4ghz

evga 580gtx x2

psu corsair HX1000W

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Hmm so you're running the same OS as I do which concludes that you may try the new beta drivers (because I'm also using SLI @ Arma 2 OA 1.59 without having this issue) - it's worth a try!

Furthermore it might be interesting whether you had this problem before the new 1.59 OA patch was released or not.

@Leon86: So you don't experience this problem with version 260.99 WHQL?

Edited by Velocity

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Hmm so you're running the same OS as I do which concludes that you may try the new beta drivers (because I'm also using SLI @ Arma 2 OA 1.59 without having this issue) - it's worth a try!

Furthermore it might be interesting whether you had this problem before the new 1.59 OA patch was released or not.

@Leon86: So you don't experience this problem with version 260.99 WHQL?

Thanks buddy! I'll give them a try.

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@Leon86: So you don't experience this problem with version 260.99 WHQL?

nope, only 266.58 or newer.

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nope, only 266.58 or newer.

So you've also tried the 270.51 drivers? Because than it would be rather weird as I don't have these issues with my SLI-system.

Thanks buddy! I'll give them a try.

No problem! :) I would appreciate your feedback in order to solve/isolate the problem.

@ Both of you: Have you experienced these problems with earlier arma 2 OA releases like 1.57? Furthermore: Do you use the new ATOC feature?

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I've heard the newest drivers dont work for people who use the sli patch (slipatch.com explains), so I run 267.24, still have it although not always. It's very hard to pinpoint this problem. Strangest thing is it stops when you enter a menu and resume.

If I close down all unneeded programs and processes the problem doesnt seem to occur. Maybe it's some kind of proces priority war that'll solve itself in time with windows update.

and yes, I had it in the pre-patch arma, as well as dragonage 2, rome total war, crysis (1) demo.

Edited by Leon86

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So we can conclude that this problem shouldn't be related to ARMA 2 but to the Nvidia-drivers. Therefore I would suggest to open a new issue @ Nvidia-Support or use their Live-Chat.

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Well, I installed 270.51 and tryed the game and had the same symptoms. The problem might be a windows thing.

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Well, I installed 270.51 and tryed the game and had the same symptoms. The problem might be a windows thing.

In order to further investigate this problem I'd like to ask you further questions:

Can you reproduce the problem within all maps?

It seems like you've experienced this issue when SLI is enabled. With SLI turned off, does the problem still occur?

Can you upload a screenshot of the graphics/game settings you were using in the game at the time the problem occurred? Also could you provide a screenshot of your nvidia-control-panel-settings?

Have you tried to use the driver version "260.99 WHQL" which Leon86 had suggested a few posts above?

Please feel free to update me at your earliest convenience.

Strangest thing is it stops when you enter a menu and resume.

May I ask whether you use the "rendered frames ahead" feature?

Edited by Velocity

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still had it in arma with the 0 frames ahead, other games are at the default 3. Dragonage is the worst, but even dragonage doesnt have it when I close down every program. But I do like to keep speedfan and antivirus running.

Wednesday or thursday I'm going to try installing every semi-recommended windows update and see if I can still reproduce the problem. Last couple of days I've been playing bulletstorm demo a bit, didn't have the prob there, but it's hard to believe the problem just went away.

eshati, do you have the problem if you close everything, even unneeded processes like the jusched, flash thingy, ituneshelper, steam etc.

Edited by Leon86

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Hi Eshati, welcome to the forum and Arma.

That's to do with being CPU limited. Usually beacuse of alot of AI or being in an area with lots of buildings. Both of those things are highly CPU intensive. If you go out to a forested area with not much around you will see your SLI usage increase dramatically also. Another thing that can cause you to be CPU limited is a very high view distance, like 4000+.

Pressing escape pauses all CPU calculations so the gpu can get to flex its muscles fully.

what kind of cpu do you have btw?

P.S. this may seem counter intuitive...but if you switch your shadow settings to their highest in the options it will take more strain off the cpu as the lower shadow quality setting is calculated on the CPU while the higher shadow setting is calculated on the GPU.

I have found wahat seany said to be true. Arma 2 and TKOH are CPU limited for certain options. I currently run a gtx 590 classified, and when I am around cities my SLI useage drops to ~50% when I am in the open country my SLI useage is back up to ~98%.

So bottom line set video memeory to high to take as much strain off the cpu and RAM as possibe and shift the useage to the GPU and RAM on the video cards. This will improve your SLI useage.

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