SLI not working - please post here

[Bhairava 10]

SLi 9800gtx here. Haven't quite figured out MP performance yet. But, I'm under the impression that clients can not achieve a higher FPS than the Server itself, so even if you have an uber rig and you play on a server running Domination or Evo, with lots of AI, and the server is not quite up to the job all clients suffer also.

Oh that's a bad news :(

How is your fps in campaign?

[1longtime 10]

This thread started with a brutal tone. The searches here are like walking through a zoo... the threads are often 50+ pages long with the real information scattered throughout, and the "stickies" are discussing drivers from June and aren't helping my issues either.

Anyway... can we confirm that this is a problem with being CPU bound? It seems someone running a speedy i7 shouldn't be having that issue...

What scores are you guys getting with ArmAII-Mark? Did enabling SLI improve your benchmarks? My benchmarks there did not change at all when I added a second 8800 GTX, which makes me think the SLI isn't doing anything. It's difficult to tell if both GPUs are carrying a load, although I do see temps slightly increase on both using GPUz utility. I'm on a Quad (Q6600) that's OCed to about 3.1ghz and using Vista. I've followed all the instructions in DWarden's NVidia sticky:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76908%20and%20http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=907283

(last updated 7/21 cough cough)

I even attempted to rollback to 186.18 and use the NVidia patch with no luck. EVGA's SLI Enhancement didn't help.

Can't find nhancer 2.5.3 beta 2 download, but if I do I will try it (mentioned ealier in this thread).

As far as I can tell, SLI is properly configured but is doing nothing to help ArmA2 frames at all. And I'm glad there is a more recent thread, although ideally someone would update the NVidia guide sticky thread, it's ancient now.

Edited September 4, 2009 by 1longtime

[Bhairava 10]

This thread started with a brutal tone. The searches here are like walking through a zoo... the threads are often 50+ pages long with the real information scattered throughout, and the "stickies" are discussing drivers from June and aren't helping my issues either.

I completely agree with you, i opened this thread beacouse i could not find something really useful for SLI owners, only contradictory and scattered informations. But i was brutally attacked by a user who does not know how to waste his time.

So better all SLI users post here. I asked moderator to sticky this thread.

---------- Post added at 07:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:33 PM ----------

T

Anyway... can we confirm that this is a problem with being CPU bound? It seems someone running a speedy i7 shouldn't be having that issue...

What scores are you guys getting with ArmAII-Mark? Did enabling SLI improve your benchmarks? My benchmarks there did not change at all when I added a second 8800 GTX, which makes me think the SLI isn't doing anything. It's difficult to tell if both GPUs are carrying a load, although I do see temps slightly increase on both using GPUz utility. I'm on a Quad (Q6600) that's OCed to about 3.1ghz and using Vista. I've followed all the instructions in DWarden's NVidia sticky:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76908%20and%20http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=907283

(last updated 7/21 cough cough)

I even attempted to rollback to 186.18 and use the NVidia patch with no luck. EVGA's SLI Enhancement didn't help.

Can't find nhancer 2.5.3 beta 2 download, but if I do I will try it (mentioned ealier in this thread).

As far as I can tell, SLI is properly configured but is doing nothing to help ArmA2 frames at all. And I'm glad there is a more recent thread, although ideally someone would update the NVidia guide sticky thread, it's ancient now.

I did not notice any improvement ocing my i7 920 from 3,6ghz to 4ghz.

I did not try Arma Mark but i will and i'll let you know. :)

[bangtail 0]

Can't find nhancer 2.5.3 beta 2 download, but if I do I will try it (mentioned ealier in this thread).

http://forum.nhancer.com/showpost.php?p=4492&postcount=18

And yes, the game is CPU limited.

Eth

Edited September 4, 2009 by BangTail

[1longtime 10]

Thanks for the link to nhancer 2.5.3 beta 2, ethne. It didn't make a difference for me, however.

I found SLI works when I use Windows XP.

A little background here: I had an ATi 4890 in my machine for a few days, and it was nice... I even experimented with it using my WinXP partition, but I found the claims that "XP is faster" weren't very convincing. I noticed maybe 10% more frames, but not enough to bother with booting into another partition. Anyway, back to the Nvidia issue:

The 4890 went back to its home, and I got lucky on Ebay and found another 8800GTX for super cheap (the new one was actually an OC model, which I researched should not make any difference with a non-OC setup if the slower card is in the primary PCI-express slot, closest to the CPU). So old 8800GTX is in primary PCIe, new 8800GTX OC in secondary PCIe. Vista handles the SLI just fine (newest Nvidia drivers were already installed, 190.62) and I'm off to play ArmA2.

I saw zero difference. I went to benchmark using ArmAII-Mark and proved the new SLI setup made no impact.

SIDE NOTE: Benchmark tool:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=5809

BIS Forum thread re: benchmarks here:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610

I tried nhancer, EVGA's enhancer, even a rollback to earlier Nvidia drivers with a patch, startup flags, and pretty much everything mentioned here in Dwarden's sticky:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76908&highlight=nvidia+sli

...and after all that effort, the only thing that worked was to fall back to the Window XP partition. When I did that, SLI worked immediately. No tweaks, no crazy workarounds, nothing. It just worked.

I ran Arma2mark with all "normal" settings, AA and PostProcess disabled, and res at 100% (for my widescreen that is 1360x768) and the score was approximately 3,700. Prior to SLI, it was approx 2,000.

With SLI working, I notice the game handles AA very well. It still doesn't like view distance more than 3.5km or so, but I guess I'm happy with a supercheap Ebay SLI deal that probably gave my video setup another year of life.

This isn't a gripe for BIS. I squarely point this one at NVidia. Something is completely borked on their end.

Edited September 4, 2009 by 1longtime

[Bhairava 10]

...and after all that effort, the only thing that worked was to fall back to the Window XP partition. When I did that, SLI worked immediately.

I ran Arma2mark with all "normal" settings, AA and PostProcess disabled, and res at 100% (for my widescreen that is 1360x768) and the score was approximately 3,700. Prior to SLI, it was approx 2,000.

With SLI working, I notice the game handles AA very well. It still doesn't like view distance more than 3.5km or so, but I guess I'm happy with a supercheap Ebay SLI deal that probably gave my video setup another year of life.

This isn't a gripe for BIS. I squarely point this one at NVidia. Something is completely borked on their end.

That's really intresting. Did you try W7?

[bangtail 0]

Thanks for the link to nhancer 2.5.3 beta 2, ethne. It didn't make a difference for me, however.

I found SLI works when I use Windows XP.

A little background here: I had an ATi 4890 in my machine for a few days, and it was nice... I even experimented with it using my WinXP partition, but I found the claims that "XP is faster" weren't very convincing. I noticed maybe 10% more frames, but not enough to bother with booting into another partition. Anyway, back to the Nvidia issue:

The 4890 went back to its home, and I got lucky on Ebay and found another 8800GTX for super cheap (the new one was actually an OC model, which I researched should not make any difference with a non-OC setup if the slower card is in the primary PCI-express slot, closest to the CPU). So old 8800GTX is in primary PCIe, new 8800GTX OC in secondary PCIe. Vista handles the SLI just fine (newest Nvidia drivers were already installed, 190.62) and I'm off to play ArmA2.

I saw zero difference. I went to benchmark using ArmAII-Mark and proved the new SLI setup made no impact.

SIDE NOTE: Benchmark tool:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=5809

BIS Forum thread re: benchmarks here:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610

I tried nhancer, EVGA's enhancer, even a rollback to earlier Nvidia drivers with a patch, startup flags, and pretty much everything mentioned here in Dwarden's sticky:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76908&highlight=nvidia+sli

...and after all that effort, the only thing that worked was to fall back to the Window XP partition. When I did that, SLI worked immediately. No tweaks, no crazy workarounds, nothing. It just worked.

I ran Arma2mark with all "normal" settings, AA and PostProcess disabled, and res at 100% (for my widescreen that is 1360x768) and the score was approximately 3,700. Prior to SLI, it was approx 2,000.

With SLI working, I notice the game handles AA very well. It still doesn't like view distance more than 3.5km or so, but I guess I'm happy with a supercheap Ebay SLI deal that probably gave my video setup another year of life.

This isn't a gripe for BIS. I squarely point this one at NVidia. Something is completely borked on their end.

The 190.xx drivers have been nothing but problematic for me (some people like them, I can't stand them).

I never said nHancer would fix SLI, just that the beta 2 works with 190.62 (No more errors in the XML).

182.50 are still the most stable for me (and not just for A2). The problems will no doubt sort themselves out as the official release of Win 7 draws closer.

I never had problems in Vista 64 when I ran it but it has since been removed from all my PCs in favor of Win 7.

The 190 series are essentially beta drivers for the upcoming series of Nvidia cards (300 series) and even if they are WHQL, they are adding a lot of new bells and whistles which will obviously take some time to "come of age" as it were.

Cheers,

Eth

[1longtime 10]

182.50 are still the most stable for me (and not just for A2). The problems will no doubt sort themselves out as the official release of Win 7 draws closer.

I tried rolling back to 182 at one point and it still failed.

Actually, it was quite a headache bringing the drivers back up to 19x. Turns out that Add/Remove Programs->Uninstall Nvidia Drivers is not sufficient. You actually need to open Device Manager and right click->uninstall to fully uninstall (otherwise Vista keeps coming back and reinstalling automatically immediately after Uninstall Manager does its job).

Perhaps I never used that Device Manager uninstall method to FULLY roll back to 182...

Anyway, I'll stick to XP for now for ArmA2. I don't have Win 7 yet, although I've heard good things about that performance.

[bangtail 0]

I tried rolling back to 182 at one point and it still failed.

Actually, it was quite a headache bringing the drivers back up to 19x. Turns out that Add/Remove Programs->Uninstall Nvidia Drivers is not sufficient. You actually need to open Device Manager and right click->uninstall to fully uninstall (otherwise Vista keeps coming back and reinstalling automatically immediately after Uninstall Manager does its job).

Perhaps I never used that Device Manager uninstall method to FULLY roll back to 182...

Anyway, I'll stick to XP for now for ArmA2. I don't have Win 7 yet, although I've heard good things about that performance.

You really have to use driver sweeper or an equivalent with the newer Nvidia drivers - I know it's annoying but a necessary evil I'm afraid.

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Sorry to hear you still have no joy :(

Here are my settings which work very well on my Tri-SLI setup under Win 7 64 and previously on Vista 64 :)

Get the latest beta patch here : http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

Using nHancer http://forum.nhancer.com/showpost.php?p=4492&postcount=18, select the Armed Assault 2 profile or create one and add the relevant EXE's (C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe for example.

Under "SLI" Make sure that the "Hybrid SLI mode" is set to 9 and that none of the other boxes are checked.

Under "SLI Mode" (make sure 4-WAY AFR is selected) and check boxes - 10,13,14,20,22,25

Under "Optimizations", set your Pre-render Limit to 8

Under "Enhancements", set your Vertical Sync to "OFF"

Experiment with the -winxp switch in the command line.

Here's an example

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe" -nosplash -winxp -world=empty

i7 users use the "-cpucount=4" switch if H/T is enabled.

Hope this helps

Eth

Edited September 5, 2009 by BangTail

[Yapab 10]

Was testing ARMA2 at friends place today and I can say SLI works very well in ARMA2... overall increase would be 60 to 70% running around using Very High settings on a 4ghz Dual Core and two 8800GT's in SLI.

In some parts, such as looking and zooming onto tree's the FPS was 100% more.. 15.4 vs 31 !

Quite impressive scaling!

Yapa

[datter 0]

I had the exact same experience mentioned upthread, SLI worked wonderfully and provided a great framerate boost in XP 32bit but it doesn't work at all in Win7 64 bit. As said, this may very well be a driver problem more than an ArmA2 problem, but who knows.

That said, with 8gb of ram ArmA2 still incorrectly detects my video ram and only gives me 255mb of the 512mb is should be detecting (dual 8800GT's in SLI). Yes, I've tried everything. No, nothing works.

I've put ArmA2 completely aside until I come across a fix for this, which I suspect is going to have to come in a future patch.

[Bhairava 10]

Was testing ARMA2 at friends place today and I can say SLI works very well in ARMA2... overall increase would be 60 to 70% running around using Very High settings on a 4ghz Dual Core and two 8800GT's in SLI.

In some parts, such as looking and zooming onto tree's the FPS was 100% more.. 15.4 vs 31 !

Quite impressive scaling!

Yapa

What OS? Which drivers? In which situations do you notice SLI working? Campaign or muliplayer?

I had the exact same experience mentioned upthread, SLI worked wonderfully and provided a great framerate boost in XP 32bit but it doesn't work at all in Win7 64 bit. As said, this may very well be a driver problem more than an ArmA2 problem, but who knows.

That said, with 8gb of ram ArmA2 still incorrectly detects my video ram and only gives me 255mb of the 512mb is should be detecting (dual 8800GT's in SLI). Yes, I've tried everything. No, nothing works.

I've put ArmA2 completely aside until I come across a fix for this, which I suspect is going to have to come in a future patch.

Same questions for you: Which drivers? In which situations do you notice SLI working? Campaign or muliplayer?

[Yapab 10]

What OS? Which drivers? In which situations do you notice SLI working? Campaign or muliplayer?

WinXP 32bit

190.62 WHQL

SLI working in EDITOR.... place yourself in editor and run around... then compare to SLI disabled. Walk into a forest area with lots of green leafy trees (outside main city) and scope... in our case the SLI FPS was 100% faster, 15vs31.

In multiplayer its harder to compare, but the game does on average run 60% faster with SLI enabled.

A fast CPU would be required to feel the difference, my friend has a C2Duo @ 4Ghz.

Yapa

[Bhairava 10]

WinXP 32bit

190.62 WHQL

SLI working in EDITOR.... place yourself in editor and run around... then compare to SLI disabled. Walk into a forest area with lots of green leafy trees (outside main city) and scope... in our case the SLI FPS was 100% faster, 15vs31.

In multiplayer its harder to compare, but the game does on average run 60% faster with SLI enabled.

A fast CPU would be required to feel the difference, my friend has a C2Duo @ 4Ghz.

Yapa

Do you notice any improvement in campaing?

[Yapab 10]

Do you notice any improvement in campaing?

Yes but not as much, because the campaign is CPU limited as its pretty poorly implemented and optimised.

If your CPU is below 3.4ghz you wont notice much improvement in campaign with a second card in SLI.... maybe only if you run very high settings with AA.

Yapa

[LRRP_Dog 10]

Doesa anyone have any ideas as to why my PC shuts off completely while inhj the middle of trhe game?

Doesn't matter if I am in SLI or not in SLI. It also happens in the campaign as well as the single missions yet I can go into the editor throw 50 groups on there and play normally?

I will start playing a mission, all is going well, and than it freezes for about 30 seconds before it shuts off completely. I have to physically turn the power back on. I do not get any error messages at all, even after reboot.

My rig is old in use but all parts are brand new.

E6850 Core 2 Dup 3.Ghz

8GB DDR2 Ram

Asus P5N-t Deluxe motherboard

3 GeForce 9800 GTX + cards with the latest drivers (190.62)

They are also Evga cards and I have their Enhancer and SLI patch as well

I have 130 gigs free on my hard drive And I run XP 32 bit

Edited September 6, 2009 by LRRP_Dog

[datter 0]

Same questions for you: Which drivers? In which situations do you notice SLI working? Campaign or muliplayer?

When I had Win XP 32bit and 2gb I had SLI working with 186.18 (and the SLI fix) and in 190.38. Now with Win7 64bit + 8gb, no go in a lot of ways.

[Richie72 10]

LRRP_Dog

Doesa anyone have any ideas as to why my PC shuts off completely while inhj the middle of trhe game?

Doesn't matter if I am in SLI or not in SLI. It also happens in the campaign as well as the single missions yet I can go into the editor throw 50 groups on there and play normally?

I will start playing a mission, all is going well, and than it freezes for about 30 seconds before it shuts off completely. I have to physically turn the power back on. I do not get any error messages at all, even after reboot.

My rig is old in use but all parts are brand new.

E6850 Core 2 Dup 3.Ghz

8GB DDR2 Ram

Asus P5N-t Deluxe motherboard

3 GeForce 9800 GTX + cards with the latest drivers (190.62)

They are also Evga cards and I have their Enhancer and SLI patch as well

I have 130 gigs free on my hard drive And I run XP 32 bit

Last edited by LRRP_Dog; Today at 05:02 PM.

This used to happen to me after I added my second GPU I couldn't work out why. I know that my primary GPU was

reaching temps up to 100 degrees which I thought must be the cause of the pc shut downs. I then downloaded rivatuner so I could use it's built in onscreen FPS utility and GPU temp utility so I didn't have to keep ALT TABing out if the game. I also set it to show the GPU fan usage and noticed that the GPU0 fan (the primary one) was only running at 20.39% instead of the minimum 40% which was set in nvidia CP. I took my pc apart and checked the cables were properly connected and then tried again. This seemed to work but very occasionaly it reverts to the 20.39% on pc boot so I shut down pc completely and turn It back on which more often than not fixes it.

[LRRP_Dog 10]

This used to happen to me after I added my second GPU I couldn't work out why. I know that my primary GPU was

reaching temps up to 100 degrees which I thought must be the cause of the pc shut downs. I then downloaded rivatuner so I could use it's built in onscreen FPS utility and GPU temp utility so I didn't have to keep ALT TABing out if the game. I also set it to show the GPU fan usage and noticed that the GPU0 fan (the primary one) was only running at 20.39% instead of the minimum 40% which was set in nvidia CP. I took my pc apart and checked the cables were properly connected and then tried again. This seemed to work but very occasionaly it reverts to the 20.39% on pc boot so I shut down pc completely and turn It back on which more often than not fixes it.

OK, I downloaded Riva, but I do not see where it gives you a percentage for the fan speed. Under "Power" there are two subfolders that mention fan, but neither of them open up if I click on them.

As for the temp, the Evga Precision tool tells me the temp and I have been able to track that at times in game by alt tabbing as you mentioned. It never goes up higher than 65 and is usually 59-61 which shouldn't be a big deal, right?

[datter 0]

Nevermind :)

[Richie72 10]

LRRP Dog, if you search YouTube and look for Rivatuner guide by Gophn. That's how I set it up and it gives a step by step guide how to set the overly complicated way of getting the ingame monitoring tools. Judging by your temps though it doesn't look like it's your GPU temps that are causing your pc to shutdown.

[Yapab 10]

LLRP Dog, find the guide Richie72 mentions to configure Riva Tuner, you can ALSO activate the "monitoring" function and have that running while you play. WHen you alt-tab you will ssee the history going back at least 5 or 10 minutes to see how the system behaved.

EVGA Precision can also be used to monitor temps and possibly fan speeds, check setting as it has a graph.

Finally what PSU (Power Supply Unit) do you have? 3 of those cards are power hungry, make sure you have at least a good brand 650w or 750w PSU.

Yapa

[shadowze 1]

My original post was moved (3 guesses who by) and buried in the 324 page thread so no chance of an answer there

can someone using SLI answer my question please?

HI Folks,

Currently Iam running one gtx280 OC2 (650Mhz) on my i7 system. I have

another GTX280 OC (615Mhz) in my media PC (overkill I know) , Iam thinking

of getting an el cheapo card for the media PC , then new SLI mobo + 1.2KW PSU and sticking both GTX280 in my PC.

Has anyone went from a single GTX280/285 to SLI configuration , and if so

what was the speed increase like and was it worth it ?

Costwise it will cost me at least £350 , so Iam a bit hesitant , any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

[bangtail 0]

My original post was moved (3 guesses who by) and buried in the 324 page thread so no chance of an answer there

can someone using SLI answer my question please?

HI Folks,

Currently Iam running one gtx280 OC2 (650Mhz) on my i7 system. I have

another GTX280 OC (615Mhz) in my media PC (overkill I know) , Iam thinking

of getting an el cheapo card for the media PC , then new SLI mobo + 1.2KW PSU and sticking both GTX280 in my PC.

Has anyone went from a single GTX280/285 to SLI configuration , and if so

what was the speed increase like and was it worth it ?

Costwise it will cost me at least £350 , so Iam a bit hesitant , any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

With new cards on the way from both camps I'm not sure I would throw 350.00 quid (at a minimum) at that solution.

That said, you will see better performance in most scenarios (not so much in the campaign) but just about everywhere else.

Eth

[Sniperdoc 0]

I went from single card to SLI (GTX280's) and it did not make a huge amount of difference. Matter of fact, I don't think it made ANY difference really.

LOD still sucks (textures don't load properly) and FPS seems really slow. I do have settings on highest options (1680x1050) and AF set to medium, and AA off.

I also turned off PhysX with no discernible difference.