Arma 3 and SLI/Xfire?

[pathetic_berserker 4]

you cant really put a dual gpu card in the same boat as 2 cards in sli as it is 1 card which is garanteed to work with 2 gpus. 2 cards on the other hand can have alot of problem for some people weather its the motherboard, drivers or the game..

True there maybe fewer opportunities for failure, but there are still no guarantees, and the card still needs to run in SLI mode.

I have found at least 1 game so far that doesn't seem to support using the second GPU, but that game is still in closed beta and doesn't as yet have a profile in the nvidia drivers.

Somewhat supports Dwardens comments above.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Pathetic_Berserker

[BasileyOne 10]

generally moving from proprietary stuff, such as Sli/CF would help alot. contrary to them, OpenCL/DirectCompute scale PERFECTLY, till hungreds of GPU[tested in Berkley]

sadly NVidia tend to drop OpenCL support and even stripped examples from SDK.

but good news is: OpenCL features will merge into OpenGL itself past 4.4 resvisions. almost in way that DirectCompute become part of DirectX11.1 nowadays.

so Nvidia support them[or leave Khronos group].

[Leon86 13]

generally moving from proprietary stuff, such as Sli/CF would help alot. contrary to them, OpenCL/DirectCompute scale PERFECTLY, till hungreds of GPU[tested in Berkley]

That's because it's not running games.

[sethos 2]

as i have repeated myself many times on this subject i cut it short

NVIDIA and AMD must provide support for SLI/Crossfire , it's driver driven profile feature

not standard or something with API/SDK ...

Actually, it's not unusual for the actual game developers to make the profiles and send them in for certification.

Example: Latest Cliffs of Dover Beta Patch - http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=34902

"Note about NVidia SLI:

The patch must go through official NVidia accreditation for SLI support to be officially enabled in drivers. The patch will only go through the process once it’s officially released on steam."

Followed by an explanation of how to manually add the SLI bits before they are added to the official drivers.

With that said however, main problem with ArmA 2 isn't GPU limitations but the game riding the CPU, hard. I'm struggling to get 50FPS in some areas with a moderate view distance, even with my high-end CPU. I need to turn the view distance all the way down to 1600 ish to get a steady 60 everywhere. However, seeing as ArmA 3 already employs more GPU intensive stuff, SLI and CF needs to be spot-on for release. They should definitely work with Nvidia to get that ready before the game is out, like most game developers do.

[bangtail 0]

What i really want to know is that will Arma 3 have proper support for SLI and crossfire? Right now Arma 2 is heinous at running SLI with my two 580's resulting in a need to disable SLI and run arma2 with just one card. Is this not gonna be a problem with arma 3? I would really rather not upgrade because 2x580's is still pretty beast.

A2 runs SLI fine (has done since 2 weeks after it's original launch) and there is absolutely no reason to believe it won't run just as well in A3.

Edited October 16, 2012 by BangTail

[Shagulon 1]

A2 runs SLI fine (has done since 2 weeks after it's original launch) and there is absolutely no reason to believe it won't run just as well in A3.

that's a very matter of fact sweeping statement that if you read the forums you'll find isn't true for everyone.

however, it does run fine for most it seems.

[nimrod_z 8]

SLI may run just fine (as in does not hinder performance) but it doesnt help either. i have 2 evga - gtx680SC's and the game runs the same with sli disabled. there is a huge increase in performance when using the "WINXP" command but from what i understand it uses a different 3d engine (directx stuff) there for it shouldnt look as good but i see no difference what so ever in image quality.

as far as nvidia/amd drivers go, it is both the game maker and the vid card company (nvidia/amd) that work together to increase or optimize performance. i have seen this with quite a few games. therefor i find it really hard to believe that there is not a significant increase in performance for multi gpu setups unless the engine is limited in some way (and nvidia or amd cant do anything more to improve it from there end). and arma is not the only company that sli/crossfire is useless for, there are some that even perform worse if muli gpu's are used.

intel i7 2600k @ 4.9,

16gig patriot viper extreme,

asus P8Z77 WS mobo,

2 - evga gtx680SC's,

Western digital black HDD - 1TB,

silverstone strider 1200w power supply,

[Leon86 13]

sli worked fine in arma 2 when I was running it.

but arma is so heavy on the cpu the gains are mostly in being able to run more antialiasing and other "pure gpu" settings.

[ddeo 10]

Hi. I did not want to start another thread. I have question regarding people experience with SLI/crossfire on Arma 3 Alpha. I've bought alpha, but my fps drop drastically in multiplayer. I know it is not thread about specs but still I will mention what I have: motherboard Asus P5K, Intel E2180 2ghz dual core and Radeon 3850 with asus cooler. Point is, I'm going to upgrade my PC slightly, not to run Arma 3 on full details, or even med, but to run it smooth on low/low-mid details. I've already bought new processor (intel core 2 duo Q9300), because my current is bottlenecking my graphic card from what I've experienced in other games and Arma 3. Point is I don't want to spend to much money on old PC (5/6 years old), so instead of getting new graphic card I've decided to buy second Radeon 3850 and use crossfire, this GFX is very cheap nowadays and from tests I've seen it's performance can rise even 100% when using crossfire with high resolutions in games (I use 1920x1080 for my 23 inch screen). Question is not what to buy, because I've already bought it and I'm waiting for my package. Question is, how is Your experience with Arma 3 Alpha using dual graphic cards, SLI or crossfire? Did you tested it guys already, do you see difference while running game with 1, or 2 graphic cards, or I will be the first one who will test it out? :) I'm hoping at lest for 20% performance boost, but I'm little scared that since it is alpha and amd/ati did not release any new drivers for arma 3 yet, so it might give me nothing. Cheers!

[charliemilk 10]

Hi. I did not want to start another thread. I have question regarding people experience with SLI/crossfire on Arma 3 Alpha. I've bought alpha, but my fps drop drastically in multiplayer. I know it is not thread about specs but still I will mention what I have: motherboard Asus P5K, Intel E2180 2ghz dual core and Radeon 3850 with asus cooler. Point is, I'm going to upgrade my PC slightly, not to run Arma 3 on full details, or even med, but to run it smooth on low/low-mid details. I've already bought new processor (intel core 2 duo Q9300), because my current is bottlenecking my graphic card from what I've experienced in other games and Arma 3. Point is I don't want to spend to much money on old PC (5/6 years old), so instead of getting new graphic card I've decided to buy second Radeon 3850 and use crossfire, this GFX is very cheap nowadays and from tests I've seen it's performance can rise even 100% when using crossfire with high resolutions in games (I use 1920x1080 for my 23 inch screen). Question is not what to buy, because I've already bought it and I'm waiting for my package. Question is, how is Your experience with Arma 3 Alpha using dual graphic cards, SLI or crossfire? Did you tested it guys already, do you see difference while running game with 1, or 2 graphic cards, or I will be the first one who will test it out? :) I'm hoping at lest for 20% performance boost, but I'm little scared that since it is alpha and amd/ati did not release any new drivers for arma 3 yet, so it might give me nothing. Cheers!

Don't know about SLI, but crossfire does not work at all. Only one card will be used the other will be idle.