SLI Utilization Issues

[Mellonpopr 10]

I'll be interested to see what happens. What memory do you have and what speed is it rated at?

it's a asus rampage III formula motherboard with 4gb of G.Skill DDR3 which is 1600 if I remember correctly.

---------- Post added at 21:27 ---------- Previous post was at 21:23 ----------

my 2700k @ 4.8ghz infantry showcase 5mins high settings vis 1100/5300/100

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v371/AnarkiLP/arma3SLIandCPUusage001_zpsc0157a30.jpg?t=1370726312 (338 kB)

idk if thats good or bad

i can hit 5ghz. so there is such a thing.

yes, with extreme overclocking which I'm not interested in doing just to run one game properly. I've only overclocked mine 1ghz more temporarily.

---------- Post added at 21:29 ---------- Previous post was at 21:27 ----------

Disable 1 card in the system and see if the 4 cores show some usage then. Are you using HT? Any command lines in Arma3?

I wanna see a CPU-Z screen of your setup. CPU and memory side.

I just disabled the 2nd SLI card, GPU usage for core 1 went from 35% to 66%, core 2 went from 35% to 0%. FPS in game was not affected either way.

I normally use HT at 3ghz and was earlier at 3.7ghz, it had no affect on FPS since the virtual cores aren't being used at all in arma 3. To run 4ghz and keep the heat in check, I turned off HT for stability.

No arma command lines being used, I tried countless combinations and came to the conclusion that they don't have any real fps effect for ARMA 3, I suspect it was an ARMA 2 thing.

[sultanofswing 10]

it's a asus rampage III formula motherboard with 4gb of G.Skill DDR3 which is 1600 if I remember correctly.

---------- Post added at 21:27 ---------- Previous post was at 21:23 ----------

yes, with extreme overclocking which I'm not interested in doing just to run one game properly. I've only overclocked mine 1ghz more temporarily.

---------- Post added at 21:29 ---------- Previous post was at 21:27 ----------

I just disabled the 2nd SLI card, GPU usage for core 1 went from 35% to 66%, core 2 went from 35% to 0%. FPS in game was not affected either way.

I normally use HT at 3ghz and was earlier at 3.7ghz, it had no affect on FPS since the virtual cores aren't being used at all in arma 3. To run 4ghz and keep the heat in check, I turned off HT for stability.

No arma command lines being used, I tried countless combinations and came to the conclusion that they don't have any real fps effect for ARMA 3, I suspect it was an ARMA 2 thing.

It's kind of weird that you are not seeing any utilization on the other cores. On my current 4ghz overclock I am not using HT, No command lines in the game. There may be a BIOS setting somewhere or something I am not sure.

[RuecanOnRails 10]

Don't forget to override the auto detect with a start up parameter to ensure you are getting the proper number of cores when running the game. -cpuCount=X

I also believe the game assigns certain tasks to different cores. So unless you are meeting the demand of each task your cpu usage will appear lower. Such as AI having it's own core to work with.

Try making a benchmark mission.

And Just a heads up, this thread is heading towards being closed. Original discussion of SLI has been "solved" as the issue is with card manufacturer driver support and not scaling across multi gpu's.

If you want, go into your graphics card settings and turn on some bells and whistles to give the gpu's more to do, That should bump the usage up higher while keeping the same FPS and look nicer.

[DunHiLa 10]

I'll be interested to see what happens. What memory do you have and what speed is it rated at?

---------- Post added at 21:11 ---------- Previous post was at 21:10 ----------

DunHiLa, What are your system specs?

AMD 8 Core CPU

AMD 7970 3GB GDDR5

32 Gigabytes of Ram

[Mellonpopr 10]

It's kind of weird that you are not seeing any utilization on the other cores. On my current 4ghz overclock I am not using HT, No command lines in the game. There may be a BIOS setting somewhere or something I am not sure.

here's a pic of my cpu/gpu usage while playing. The only time I see higher cpu usage is when the game is loading, at that point all 4 cores go to 100% until the first game screen is loaded, then it drops to what you see in the picture below which is 80-90% on core one and the rest in the 30's and 20's. The average CPU usage between the 4 cores is only 39%

http://i.imgur.com/3oI25yQ.png

Edited June 9, 2013 by Mellonpopr

[headswe 17]

I've taken part in a lot of Beta's and, the vast majority of the time, they are near as dammit the final product as far as performance is concerned.

These are examples of how crap my perfomance is at the moment...

http://imageshack.us/a/img32/2475/arma32013060610390106.jpg (500 kB)

http://imageshack.us/a/img849/7012/arma32013060610385123.jpg (419 kB)

http://imageshack.us/a/img199/4204/arma32013060610440544.jpg (383 kB)

http://imageshack.us/a/img812/3406/arma32013060610441384.jpg (392 kB)

Most betas by other companies are glorified demos.

[sultanofswing 10]

here's a pic of my cpu/gpu usage while playing. The only time I see higher cpu usage is when the game is loading, at that point all 4 cores go to 100% until the first game screen is loaded, then it drops to what you see in the picture below which is 80-90% on core one and the rest in the 30's and 20's. The average CPU usage between the 4 cores is only 39%

http://i.imgur.com/3oI25yQ.png

Your are getting some usage just not much. I just did a test and went into the editor with no AI or anything and walked around a bit and this is what mine looks like. Albeit I am not seeing total load across all cores I do see more than what you are seeing.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/cpu2_zpsf931f789.jpg (119 kB) [/url]

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:53 ----------

Don't forget to override the auto detect with a start up parameter to ensure you are getting the proper number of cores when running the game. -cpuCount=X

I also believe the game assigns certain tasks to different cores. So unless you are meeting the demand of each task your cpu usage will appear lower. Such as AI having it's own core to work with.

Try making a benchmark mission.

And Just a heads up, this thread is heading towards being closed. Original discussion of SLI has been "solved" as the issue is with card manufacturer driver support and not scaling across multi gpu's.

If you want, go into your graphics card settings and turn on some bells and whistles to give the gpu's more to do, That should bump the usage up higher while keeping the same FPS and look nicer.

That's the issue it is not a problem with the card manufacturer or drivers. I have pretty much proved that, On my setup when I was running SLI I would see GPU usage that was 80-100% on both cards, now keep in mind I was running every setting at max and using quite a bit of AA and AF as well.

[Mellonpopr 10]

Don't forget to override the auto detect with a start up parameter to ensure you are getting the proper number of cores when running the game. -cpuCount=X

I also believe the game assigns certain tasks to different cores. So unless you are meeting the demand of each task your cpu usage will appear lower. Such as AI having it's own core to work with.

Try making a benchmark mission.

And Just a heads up, this thread is heading towards being closed. Original discussion of SLI has been "solved" as the issue is with card manufacturer driver support and not scaling across multi gpu's.

If you want, go into your graphics card settings and turn on some bells and whistles to give the gpu's more to do, That should bump the usage up higher while keeping the same FPS and look nicer.

I just tried that command again, it makes no difference.

I've not seen any documentation that suggests certain tasks are assigned to difference cores, only people wishing it would do that so that their other cores were utilized more.

---------- Post added at 22:04 ---------- Previous post was at 21:57 ----------

I was playing at 720p to get better fps at the expense of looks when I was at 3ghz, and now that I'm at 4ghz (overclocked) I raised it to 1080p resolution to see if anything changed. The CPU usage remains the same 80/30/20/30 area, the GPU usage went from 35% on each to around 65%, the FPS dropped 20. Why did the fps drop 20 if neither GPU or CPU is being being overwhelmed. Would that be a GPU memory limitation? each card has 1gb of ram if I remember correctly but I'm not sure if SLI would add that together.

[max power 21]

yes but these game are really demanding for the wrong reason, not because they are incredible advancements in technology, but because they aren't utilizing the hardware properly and because the developers are trying to milk another game out of the same old tired engine instead of fixing the real problem.

I wish you were right and the final version will have full SLI and Multi-core support but I don't think that's going to be the case. No developer has said it will be so why do you think it will?

I think there is some disconnect here.

1. I think only the people who work on these systems are in any place to judge what 'properly' is when talking about how their software is utilizing your hardware. The important thing is it's not performing the way you think it should, and that's what you should focus on.

2. SLI support is on the hardware vendor's side. This has been mentioned by the developers many times. If you are going to participate in a discussion, yours are not the only important posts in that discussion.

3. I did not imply anything you attributed to me, not even slightly.

[sultanofswing 10]

Mellon wanted to show you this without SLI. And the settings that I am using. You can see in the MSI Afterburner log that GPU usage was pretty much mostly at 100% except for where I was Alt tabbing out of the games sometimes. FPS during the whole time was from 55-75FPS. I included some screenshots of my settings in the game and maybe you could give them a shot.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/Settings_zps3e1072ea.jpg (107 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-16-11_zps7c3b5705.png (879 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-11-40_zps2daedaad.png (865 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-05-31_zps529910e3.png (853 kB)

---------- Post added at 22:28 ---------- Previous post was at 22:24 ----------

I just tried that command again, it makes no difference.

I've not seen any documentation that suggests certain tasks are assigned to difference cores, only people wishing it would do that so that their other cores were utilized more.

---------- Post added at 22:04 ---------- Previous post was at 21:57 ----------

I was playing at 720p to get better fps at the expense of looks when I was at 3ghz, and now that I'm at 4ghz (overclocked) I raised it to 1080p resolution to see if anything changed. The CPU usage remains the same 80/30/20/30 area, the GPU usage went from 35% on each to around 65%, the FPS dropped 20. Why did the fps drop 20 if neither GPU or CPU is being being overwhelmed. Would that be a GPU memory limitation? each card has 1gb of ram if I remember correctly but I'm not sure if SLI would add that together.

When running SLI you only get the amount of Vram equivalent of 1 card. So 2 1gb cards would still have 1gb and so on and so forth.

[liquidpinky 11]

I just tried that command again, it makes no difference.

I've not seen any documentation that suggests certain tasks are assigned to difference cores, only people wishing it would do that so that their other cores were utilized more.

---------- Post added at 22:04 ---------- Previous post was at 21:57 ----------

I was playing at 720p to get better fps at the expense of looks when I was at 3ghz, and now that I'm at 4ghz (overclocked) I raised it to 1080p resolution to see if anything changed. The CPU usage remains the same 80/30/20/30 area, the GPU usage went from 35% on each to around 65%, the FPS dropped 20. Why did the fps drop 20 if neither GPU or CPU is being being overwhelmed. Would that be a GPU memory limitation? each card has 1gb of ram if I remember correctly but I'm not sure if SLI would add that together.

1GB memory is pretty low for A3, you will probably now be in the position of having 100% memory usage on you GPUs. I know I was when using my GTX285s.

Try EVGA precision and use it's on screen monitoring during gameplay, you can watch what your card is up to without having to Alt Tab out. (seems you can do it with afterburner also, so the choice is yours)

I never play A3 without it, it is handy for watching what settings affect your cards in different ways and in fact how even different map areas can.

[Mellonpopr 10]

Mellon wanted to show you this without SLI. And the settings that I am using. You can see in the MSI Afterburner log that GPU usage was pretty much mostly at 100% except for where I was Alt tabbing out of the games sometimes. FPS during the whole time was from 55-75FPS. I included some screenshots of my settings in the game and maybe you could give them a shot.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/Settings_zps3e1072ea.jpg (107 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-16-11_zps7c3b5705.png (879 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-11-40_zps2daedaad.png (865 kB)

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg54/onesick94hb/arma32013-06-0918-16-05-31_zps529910e3.png (853 kB)

When running SLI you only get the amount of Vram equivalent of 1 card. So 2 1gb cards would still have 1gb and so on and so forth.

1GB memory is pretty low for A3, you will probably now be in the position of having 100% memory usage on you GPUs. I know I was when using my GTX285s.

Try EVGA precision and use it's on screen monitoring during gameplay, you can watch what your card is up to without having to Alt Tab out. (seems you can do it with afterburner also, so the choice is yours)

I never play A3 without it, it is handy for watching what settings affect your cards in different ways and in fact how even different map areas can.

ok, that confirms what I suspected about the memory limitation and likely explains why I can't turn on the higher quality and resolution without killing fps. At the lower resolutions the demand on the GPU/Memory is lessened and the CPU is doing most of the work.

I think my next upgrade in light of the new information should be a video card but I'm still puzzled as to why the 4 cores on the CPU aren't working very hard. Maybe if I loaded it up with bots it would make a difference.

---------- Post added at 23:12 ---------- Previous post was at 23:00 ----------

Instead of staying at the splash screen I loaded up a scenario and the GPU usage skyrocketed to 90+% on both cores. The CPU usage remains the same. Now that the GPU usage was very high I began experimenting with GPU clock speed and memory speed. Memory speed had no effect on FPS but clock speed on the GPU going from 700 to 800 added another 10fps. I'm not sure it's stable there for gaming but it does show that a faster video card would benefit me.

[ric 1]

Yes the "recommended"... What are the recommended settings? Recommended Display resolution? Your 460 isnt even a recommended. Just to go bit more on "recommended"; A3/A2/A1 are not "recommended" game types relative to COD ,Batfld-X...

To achieve Vsync in game with recommended HW, the Display resolution needs to be UNDER 1080p. And the in game settings set to "normal". Any higher resolution/setting will use up all of the VRAM. The CPU recommended setting isnt for MP, its for SP. As are all "recommended" settings.

Multiplayer is a mixed bag, the mission/server/#players. I can only imagine we will get more performance through the Alpha and into the Beta stage. We have already. The missions/server I have been playing in MP, my fps are upto my vsync(85) and only hit the dreaded 20s in a certain area with a certain direction during some trigger... A mission issue/still alpha island.And even then i just look the other way its back up.

Even tho 24/27in Display panels are cheap $, that doesnt mean a four generations ago Midrange card (460) that wasnt faster than 285, isnt DX11.1, and is short on the ability to run shaders efficiently; should render A3 @1080p with vsync. Its not recommended. Now COD or BatFld-X its fine. But A3 is on par with CrysisX, MetroX for HW @1080p+

Last, a CPU @4z+ is what I recommend. Its easy to achive, its in the spec of all modern CPUs[2.6 and above (AMD/Intel)] on air, and in voltage spec for your warranty. Been this way for five years.

yes his 460 is ....old but im sure he would have much better results with it than the 8800GT(minimum), I imagine playing with the 8800 you would have to turn EVERYTHING down till A3 looked like the original DUKE NUKEM .... then again the CPU utilization has nothing todo with the video cards...

and since you claim A3 is on "par" with CrysisX, MetroX perhaps you have some...proof? similar to the graphs below?

http://cdn.overclock.net/b/ba/900x900px-LL-ba153285_proz20intel.jpeg

http://cdn.overclock.net/d/d3/900x900px-LL-d3796154_proz20amd.jpeg

Edited June 10, 2013 by PurePassion
please watch the max. allowed filesize for hotlinked images (100KB)

[Mellonpopr 10]

I loaded up a multiplayer match and saw on average of about 50% GPU usage from both cards and about 650mb memory usage. Not sure why it's only half of what I was seeing for GPU usage in the single player campaign. Now I'm confused. I have a i7 950 running at 4ghz and a GTX 460 in SLI with 50% GPU usage with standard video settings at 1080p getting 60-80fps in the better parts of the map. I'm happy with that but with the GPU at only 50% each, does that mean i'm still hitting a CPU limiting factor?

Edited June 10, 2013 by Mellonpopr

[DunHiLa 10]

Can anyone help me with my problem?I have 8 core amd cpu,3GB of gddr5 memory video card amd radeon 7970,32 gigabytes of ram and am running windows 7 x64 but am getting ultra low fps about 6-10.The game is unplayable for me but I really want to play it,it's like the best army simulator that has ever been made,please help out.I have tried everything in settings and also a lot of user suggested stuff.

[sultanofswing 10]

Can anyone help me with my problem?I have 8 core amd cpu,3GB of gddr5 memory video card amd radeon 7970,32 gigabytes of ram and am running windows 7 x64 but am getting ultra low fps about 6-10.The game is unplayable for me but I really want to play it,it's like the best army simulator that has ever been made,please help out.I have tried everything in settings and also a lot of user suggested stuff.

Without getting into too much detail I would venture to say that you have a way underpowered CPU and way overpowered GPU and they are working against each other. AMD chips just cant hang with the Intels. Also what resolution are you playing at?

[DunHiLa 10]

Without getting into too much detail I would venture to say that you have a way underpowered CPU and way overpowered GPU and they are working against each other. AMD chips just cant hang with the Intels. Also what resolution are you playing at?

Mate that is just not true.What most people fail to understand is that AMD chips are way better than Inter for the sole reason that while Intel's technology known as hyperthreading just puts two information sources trough one core-it's a 4 core processor that handles 8 core information but that doesn't make it faster or better while AMD's processor is 8 core to begin with.My CPU got 37 to 45% when running Metro Last Light which is one of the most heavy graphical games out there right now and you tell me while it's getting the same amount of usage on Arma 3-it can't run it properly and is too slow?That's crazy talk mate.I don't think the game is running on all cores to begin with and I had the same problem with Arma 2 which appears to still be in it's alpha stage of development.The game is just using some old engine and is not optimized to handle anything it would appear and don't begin to tell me it's all AMD/Intel's fault for not making new video drivers to support Arma.I can handle any game with drivers from last year but Arma is different?(I have updated the drivers,don't worry)That is not on Arma's good side I have to say.

[Leon86 13]

Arma only scales well to 3 cores, more cores will still get you some benefit, but not much.

Most games perform better on new-ish intel quads compared to amd's lots oh cores. Only some magically multithreaded games like battlefield 3 and crisis 3 utilize quads and above well, but even they don't scale perfectly.

Arma is very demanding on the cpu side, reducing viewdistance is the easiest way to increase performance. PiP off is a must too.

[bangtail 0]

Mate that is just not true.What most people fail to understand is that AMD chips are way better than Intel for the sole reason that while Intel's technology known as hyperthreading just puts two information sources trough one core-it's a 4 core processor that handles 8 core information but that doesn't make it faster or better while AMD's processor is 8 core to begin with.

Really :rolleyes:, you keep telling yourself that.

Literally thousands of benchmarks, tests and reviews directly contradict your assertions.

Edited June 10, 2013 by BangTail

[sephis 10]

Thank you all for your feedback. Regardless of the terrible optimization, maybe it is time to upgrade my old i7 860. I will be seriously f*cked off though if I upgrade and all of your bottleneck theories turn out to be a load of crap ;-)

So then, what would people reccomend as a CPU/MOBO combo for this? Ideally I don't want to spend more than £350

Was thinking about these...

i5 4670k

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-472-IN

MSI Z87-G45

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-MS

[bangtail 0]

Thank you all for your feedback. Regardless of the terrible optimization, maybe it is time to upgrade my old i7 860. I will be seriously f*cked off though if I upgrade and all of your bottleneck theories turn out to be a load of crap ;-)

So then, what would people reccomend as a CPU/MOBO combo for this? Ideally I don't want to spend more than £350

Was thinking about these...

i5 4670k

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-472-IN

MSI Z87-G45

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-MS

While I am not one of the people who singled out your CPU, I will say that MSI make great gear and it's pretty much all I use as far as motherboards go these days - nothing wrong with that CPU either.

JFYI, I wouldn't expect a 'night and day' difference but you will get a lot more overclocking headroom on that CPU which should help feed your cards.

Unfortunately, in built up areas, tons of AI etc you will still succumb to the CPU bottleneck, doesn't matter what type of PC you are running, there is no way around it.

[chortles 263]

I personally have been playing with an i5-3570K, an ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe (yes a mini-ITX board) and an ASUS 660 Ti 2 GB; if you're not going for mini-ITX or overclock capability like I did, then you can almost certainly get a cheaper motherboard.

[Leon86 13]

you will get a lot more overclocking headroom on that CPU

Well, maybe a bit, it's 3.4 stock, will clock to about 4.2 or 4.4 with good cooling, might get higher if you're lucky. Doesn't matter though, slightly faster clock/clock so it'll get to roughly the same performance as a max overclocked sandy or ivy bridge cpu. Should easily outperform the current 860 cpu that's for sure.

and yes, the cpu bottleneck will always be there in arma games it seems, town+ai is killing, but recent intel quads (or 6cores) hold up best.

[ric 1]

Thank you all for your feedback. Regardless of the terrible optimization, maybe it is time to upgrade my old i7 860. I will be seriously f*cked off though if I upgrade and all of your bottleneck theories turn out to be a load of crap ;-)

So then, what would people reccomend as a CPU/MOBO combo for this? Ideally I don't want to spend more than £350

Was thinking about these...

i5 4670k

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-472-IN

MSI Z87-G45

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-MS

if your going to upgrade don't do it just for A3 , wait till the final release and see what the guys with the 4670K are reporting.

---------- Post added at 13:50 ---------- Previous post was at 13:47 ----------

Well, maybe a bit, it's 3.4 stock, will clock to about 4.2 or 4.4 with good cooling, might get higher if you're lucky. Doesn't matter though, slightly faster clock/clock so it'll get to roughly the same performance as a max overclocked sandy or ivy bridge cpu. Should easily outperform the current 860 cpu that's for sure.

and yes, the cpu bottleneck will always be there in arma games it seems, town+ai is killing, but recent intel quads (or 6cores) hold up best.

I would not be so sure of that...look at where the 860 is and thats at stock speed, its an old chip but still has some power http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/Intel/Core_i7-860.html

[sultanofswing 10]

Mate that is just not true.What most people fail to understand is that AMD chips are way better than Inter for the sole reason that while Intel's technology known as hyperthreading just puts two information sources trough one core-it's a 4 core processor that handles 8 core information but that doesn't make it faster or better while AMD's processor is 8 core to begin with.My CPU got 37 to 45% when running Metro Last Light which is one of the most heavy graphical games out there right now and you tell me while it's getting the same amount of usage on Arma 3-it can't run it properly and is too slow?That's crazy talk mate.I don't think the game is running on all cores to begin with and I had the same problem with Arma 2 which appears to still be in it's alpha stage of development.The game is just using some old engine and is not optimized to handle anything it would appear and don't begin to tell me it's all AMD/Intel's fault for not making new video drivers to support Arma.I can handle any game with drivers from last year but Arma is different?(I have updated the drivers,don't worry)That is not on Arma's good side I have to say.

Hate to rain on your parade but your post makes absolutely no sense. Hyperthreading has nothing to do with anything and in fact most hardcore users disable hyperthreading anyway like myself. Architechture and how the CPU gets work done are the most important factors. Intel chips get more done per cycle than AMD,It's a proven fact. Once again you are comparing 2 totally different games and that is not going to work.

More cores do not always equate to a faster chip either. Back in the days the old AMD 64's were a chip that was better than anything Intel had in it's staple. It's just not the same these days, AMD has nothing in there lineup that compares to what Intel has to offer.

So on that note, you can either think about your post and maybe do some research and see what information is out there, or keep living in a fantasy world where you think the AMD chip is superior. I will stand by my original diagnosis though, Your CPU is just not powerful enough. Maybe try the Cpu count command and park 4 of your cores and see what happens.