EVGA GTX 560 TI 2GB in Surround

[lunarfault]

I am currently using 2x EVGA GTX 560 TI 2GB cards in surround. My experience so far is very disappointing. I only play Star Wars The Old Republic and frame rates are around 30-40FPS. When I ran only one cardframe rates were 60-70FPS. In straight SLI the frame rate are 80-90FPS.

While on the surface this would appear to be a good setup for 2d Surround the results were not. I have also played Assassins Creed Revelations and got around 30 FPS. Both games are max settings no AA.

I noticed no performance increase lowering textures. Using a resolution of 5040x1050. Maybe I have something configured wrong etc.

Also don't even try to fraps with this setup. My FPS would drop to 18-20 in both games set to half and as low as 7FPS if not. I recorded to a 7200RPM Segate Baracuda, media HD.

If anybody has any advise it would greatly be appreciated. This is my first surround system, so I know nada.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Try running MSI Afterburner (or EVGA Precision if it offers the feature) with VRAM monitoring enabled to check what sort of VRAM usage you're seeing.

Different engines handle large resolution increases differently - some barely blink (Source) others take framerate hits far in excess of what you'd expect.

Often with Surround it's a case of tweaking settings to find the optimum balance of framerate and graphics - even on 2GB cards. I know this from painful experience. ;)

[lunarfault]

I installed and ran MSI Afterburner. I played Assassin's Creed Revelations and had a steady 28-33FPS. The max VRAM useage was 1083 on both cards, individually. I am not sure what settings I can tweek, this is really new to me from the plug and go.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'm not sure what else to suggest - it's known (and accepted) that Surround places loads on the system that 'normal' gaming does not - even 2560x1600 doesn't place the strain of a triple-wide setup on the CPU/GPU. I tried recording a Surround video with FRAPS once, got single-digit FPS, and never tried again, so you're not alone in that.

If Surround wasn't set up correctly, it wouldn't work period, so that's not really a concern. ;)

[Haldi]

You have 99% GPU load? On each GPU? Try putting all settings on Minimum. How much FPS do you get and how much GPU load ?

P.S Video recording only uses CPU power, (depending on programm) so if i try to record videos with my C2D E8400 @4ghz Frames also drop below 10fps. Gonna try it out with my new i7-3930K, then it shouldn't anymore :)

[Paradigm Shifter]

You have 99% GPU load? On each GPU? Try putting all settings on Minimum. How much FPS do you get and how much GPU load ?

P.S Video recording only uses CPU power, (depending on programm) so if i try to record videos with my C2D E8400 @4ghz Frames also drop below 10fps. Gonna try it out with my new i7-3930K, then it shouldn't anymore :)

The main reason I've found for framerate drops when recording video 'live' of games is the I/O. Lots of CPU time encoding is bad, yes, but combine that with tons of disk activity and games struggle and start to choke when they need to load more textures or other info (sound is a bad one too) from the HDD. :(

Recording to a HDD that is different from the HDD which the game is trying to load data from alleviates this slightly, but not enough IMO.

[Haldi]

Well i can say for sure that recording to a SSD while playing from a HDD won't help at all! (at least with my CPU!)

Trine2 droped from 32FPS to 7fps!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRNaFJqPREg

[lunarfault]

Core 1 and 2 are at 99% and 3 and 4 are at 90. Using a Core 2 Quad 9650. I guess it is now getting aged. :(

[Paradigm Shifter]

Core 1 and 2 are at 99% and 3 and 4 are at 90. Using a Core 2 Quad 9650. I guess it is now getting aged. :(

In Surround, it should be GPU limited, just from the extra pixels you're asking it to push. The fact that you're seeing CPU load like that would indicate that your issue is a CPU bottleneck. (Which I hate blaming, as at super-high-res, it's really hard to create a CPU bottleneck situation...)

If you've got a Source engine game (Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, since it has a built in benchmark?) it might be worth running that and seeing what sort of FPS you get. Source doesn't put much strain on the GPUs, even in Surround, so if you get "low" FPS in a Source game, you've found the culprit. Here's some idea of the sort of FPS you can expect from HL2:LC in Surround (but even higher res), on a slightly more powerful CPU.

[scavvenjahh]

Recent games + Surround = pretty low framerates. I'm afraid this is quite normal...
Since SWTOR's framerate is so good in "straight SLI", and so low in Surround, you can assume the CPU is not to blame. What you can do is lowering your Surround resolution; i.e use 3840x800 or 4320x900 instead of 5040x1050. The aspect of the game will remain the same, but the pixel count will be greatly reduced. This should give your GPUs a breather.

[lunarfault]

Thanks for the advise.

I tried all 3 resolutions out. FPS stayed between 22-27, on all 3 resoltuions. CPU useage was around 80% on core 1 and 3, 50-60% on core 2 and 4, on both the, 3840x800 and 4320x900.

Those results just don't make any kind of sense to me.

[super12]

same here... I have the exact same set up with an i7... frame rate is painfully low on BF3 and Skyrim... It's okay for 'slower' games like RUSE but for FPS, that's not playable...

I guess the questions should be... what SLI setup is required to run those "high end" games in 50-60 fps?

[scavvenjahh]

Thanks for the advise.

I tried all 3 resolutions out. FPS stayed between 22-27, on all 3 resoltuions. CPU useage was around 80% on core 1 and 3, 50-60% on core 2 and 4, on both the, 3840x800 and 4320x900.

Those results just don't make any kind of sense to me.

Something's not right. Did you try swapping the cards ? Also please post your detailed config and game settings.