Widescreen Gaming Forum

So i just built this PC about a week and a half ago and i am having some issues playing games with surround.

System Specs
i5 3570k OCed to 4.5 GHz(70 C temps under load max) - Prime95 36 hours tested
Asrock Extreme4 z77 Motherboard
2 EVGA GTX 670's( 301.42)
16GB g.skill ripjaws 2133(current clock)
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB
Win7 64bit

Essentially i've been playing World of Tanks, Alien vs Predator, Crysis(MWLL Mod), and BF3. All the games listed have these dramatic drops in FPS at what seems random times. I play all on high graphics at 6040x1200 resolution so i know im pushing the limit, but literally the frames go from 40-60+ to 10 in a matter of moments. After about a minute or 2 of this it will "recover" and my FPS will be at the higher more consistent rate. I just, last night, re-installed windows and all drivers fresh.


Can anyone give me advice as to what this could be?

So i just built this PC about a week and a half ago and i am having some issues playing games with surround.

System Specs
i5 3570k OCed to 4.5 GHz(70 C temps under load max) - Prime95 36 hours tested
Asrock Extreme4 z77 Motherboard
2 EVGA GTX 670's( 301.42)
16GB g.skill ripjaws 2133(current clock)
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB
Win7 64bit

Essentially i've been playing World of Tanks, Alien vs Predator, Crysis(MWLL Mod), and BF3. All the games listed have these dramatic drops in FPS at what seems random times. I play all on high graphics at 6040x1200 resolution so i know im pushing the limit, but literally the frames go from 40-60+ to 10 in a matter of moments. After about a minute or 2 of this it will "recover" and my FPS will be at the higher more consistent rate. I just, last night, re-installed windows and all drivers fresh.

Can anyone give me advice as to what this could be?

One very important thing you don't list is your power supply. A lot of problems can be caused by a bad quality/ faulty PSU.

The other possibility is that you're nudging up against the VRAM limit of the cards. When you push over, it swaps to system RAM, then if the scene gets less complex again, it'll drop below needing to do that and the framerate recovers.

If it is VRAM limiting the FPS you could try disabling desktop Aero to give yourself a couple of hundred more MB of VRAM.

I am interested to hear if that work as I am currently sitting on the fence on whether to get Sli 670 2GB or wait for the 4GB versions.

Unfortunately it was another bad card. after some more software troubleshooting and general shooting in the dark i went back to review the cards themselves. i pulled my newly arrived RMA card and enable surround on just 1 670(my original from Amazon). Load a few games and it exhibits the same exact behavior. I lowered resolution to a single monitor(1920x1200), lowered graphics almost as low as they can go and got the same results. Stuttering and wildly varied FPS making most games unplayable. I switched back to the RMA card and had no issue what so ever. Alien vs Predator played like a dream. Graphics maxed (4x AA 16x AF) at 6040x1200 was getting roughly 50-60 fps. While not the newest game in the world it was definitely no slouch. Stability had returned to my other games as well. End result 0 for 2 on new EVGA cards from amazon. The bright side of this was the stellar support from EVGA. No problems RMAing both cards. Lucky for me 1 670 drives most games, even with surround, well.

Gilly,

Power supply is a cooler master 1200. Overkill for this sytem.

Paradigm Shifter,

Someone else suggested this and i did see utilization in most games hit the cap of vram usage(AvP and BF3), but i did not experience any issues after using the RMA card exclusively.

pox67,

As far as i can tell right now this 670 kicks ass(just 1). I dont have any of the more know graphically heavy games you see in benchmarks so i may not have the best perspective,


thanks everyone for taking the time to make suggestions. Here is to hoping the new card is a seamless install.

Yeah as you said the 1200W will be fine, but you would be surprised the number of similar systems using like 620W Corsair HX or something.

I picked up 2 Gigabyte 670's last weekend and may have the same issue.

In some games I get a small freeze every second or so. In Skyrim it happens only on the menus but in Deus Ex HR it happens in menus and gameplay. Very annoying and makes DX:HR unplayable.
Even at lowest graphics settings I see DX:HR go from 180FPS down to 10 and back up again.
Other games though are completely fine: Saints Row the Third and Hard Reset.

It isn't a VRAM issue as I am monitoring that and it is always under the 2GB limit.

Jalec, did your freezes happen all the time or just now and then?

DX:HR is all fixed after the beta 301.48 drivers.

Menus in Skyrim are still slow and jerky though...

may i ask if this is resolved, and what mouse is being used here, I was getting a stutter and frame drop from my g500 report rate changed it to 150 and dont have this issue,

just a suggestion

hmm, i use a 670 single card with some ultra settings, some high, some medium and it's at a steady 50-60 fps at 5760x1080 (in battlefield 3)
avp is pretty much maxed out and i'm getting similar frames. i noticed by the way that at my settings with my resolution battlefield 3 uses a maximum of 1785 or so gpu memory out of 2gb.

i am using the 3.04 beta driver. the only thing i can think of is that you have some issue with sli while running surround, or just sli in general. i would try the 3.04 driver?

also are you using the same pci rate for both slots, for instance dual x16 lanes or 8x8 for example? your board might only support 1x16 and 1x4 pcei speeds when 2 cards are installed, that might cause these problems.. you'll have to check.

.

also are you using the same pci rate for both slots, for instance dual x16 lanes or 8x8 for example? your board might only support 1x16 and 1x4 pcei speeds when 2 cards are installed, that might cause these problems.. you'll have to check.
.

Oddly enough I have a PCIE v3 motherboard and should be running x16 x 16 but it isn't...

Once card is showing running at x16 and the other x8. Sometimes they say using PCIE V2 and sometimes V1.1
I would have thought it should be V3?

Also the bioses are different on each card. Odd.

[quote]
also are you using the same pci rate for both slots, for instance dual x16 lanes or 8x8 for example? your board might only support 1x16 and 1x4 pcei speeds when 2 cards are installed, that might cause these problems.. you'll have to check.
.

Oddly enough I have a PCIE v3 motherboard and should be running x16 x 16 but it isn't...

Once card is showing running at x16 and the other x8. Sometimes they say using PCIE V2 and sometimes V1.1
I would have thought it should be V3?

Also the bioses are different on each card. Odd.

hmm, not sure what board you have... i can't really help if i can't see what you are having problems with :)

My motherboard is an Asus P9x79 Pro. It should be able to do 3 way sli at x16 and v3 PCIE

My advice is to try the new beta driver from nvidia maybe that one will work. Just uninstall your currunt one and install this one.

If that does not work either then u maybe have a bad SLI bridge or something or maybe a bad card??

My advice is to try the new beta driver from nvidia maybe that one will work. Just uninstall your currunt one and install this one.

If that does not work either then u maybe have a bad SLI bridge or something or maybe a bad card??

Already on the 304.48, they fixed quite a few issues.

I am pretty much done with DX:HR and Skyrim for the time being so this isn't a big deal. New drivers will probably fix it up.

The PCIE lanes is worrying so I'll do some benchmarking to track down the issue.

This has happened before with SLi setups and it is generally attributable to inmature drivers on new cards.

Can also be faulty SLi bridge as I've encountered that issue myself. Easy to swap out if you have an extra laying around.

Also can be a card with faulty VRAM or a Power issue however I would say that since it IS running at 40-60fps and then drops, its not a power issue. If it was
a power issue it would most likely always have issues from game launch when both cards are drawing power which while playing is "always". Since the issue
you describe is intermittent I would say it is not power related and more likely one of the other issues described.

It sucks but the only way to be sure is extended testing.

Start with the easy stuff first:

(don't reinstall your OS, not sure why people do this but it usually never solves anything and is a PITA)
Verify both cards function ON THEIR OWN. E.g. remove your secondary card, remove drivers, install drivers latest WHQL!!!! DRIVERS not betas
Verify games run fine on ONE card on a single monitor.
Remove drivers, Uninstall Video card #1, Install video card #2, reinstall latest WHQL drivers.
Does everything run fine on the second video card on a single monitor with no issues?
If both cards function fine on their own you can cross off one of your cards being bad.
Move on to the SLi bridge, reinstall both your cards in SLi and clean driver install, replace the SLi bridge with a friends or a backup if you have it. Order another one if you don't, they're inexpensive.
Does everything function fine on one bridge and not the other? Then the bridge is the issue. If the problem persists its not the bridge.
And you're left with drivers.
When were the 670's released? Find drivers that were released first for these cards (I believe these started with the 3xx.xx nomenclature but correct me if I'm wrong)
In succession, install all WHQL approved drivers ONLY from the first to the present. Does each driver have the same issue? Is the behavior different accross different drivers? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?
If you've exhausted the WHQL drivers, start trying different 3xx.xx Beta drivers. Is the behavior the same across these? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?

As I say, this is typical when new hardware like the GTX6xx series is released. The driver team focuses on single monitor stability first in the opening driver releases as this is their core audience,
with SLix2 and SLix3-4 compatability issues getting rectified in later releases. It may take a couple months for a driver that does not produce the issue you describe and that is just the price we pay
for running semi-unsupported triple monitor setups on bleeding edge hardware. You're a beta tester!

I sometimes don't understand why people buy a video card that was just released, run it in an uncommon setup (read triple monitor (too expensive for 95% of people)) and then complain when it doesn't work "out of the box"

This is what we've all become accustomed to. If you're buying a single newly released video card and running it on a single 1920x1080 monitor you can expect the least amount of issues.

This has happened before with SLi setups and it is generally attributable to inmature drivers on new cards.

Can also be faulty SLi bridge as I've encountered that issue myself. Easy to swap out if you have an extra laying around.

Also can be a card with faulty VRAM or a Power issue however I would say that since it IS running at 40-60fps and then drops, its not a power issue. If it was
a power issue it would most likely always have issues from game launch when both cards are drawing power which while playing is "always". Since the issue
you describe is intermittent I would say it is not power related and more likely one of the other issues described.

It sucks but the only way to be sure is extended testing.

Start with the easy stuff first:

(don't reinstall your OS, not sure why people do this but it usually never solves anything and is a PITA)
Verify both cards function ON THEIR OWN. E.g. remove your secondary card, remove drivers, install drivers latest WHQL!!!! DRIVERS not betas
Verify games run fine on ONE card on a single monitor.
Remove drivers, Uninstall Video card #1, Install video card #2, reinstall latest WHQL drivers.
Does everything run fine on the second video card on a single monitor with no issues?
If both cards function fine on their own you can cross off one of your cards being bad.
Move on to the SLi bridge, reinstall both your cards in SLi and clean driver install, replace the SLi bridge with a friends or a backup if you have it. Order another one if you don't, they're inexpensive.
Does everything function fine on one bridge and not the other? Then the bridge is the issue. If the problem persists its not the bridge.
And you're left with drivers.
When were the 670's released? Find drivers that were released first for these cards (I believe these started with the 3xx.xx nomenclature but correct me if I'm wrong)
In succession, install all WHQL approved drivers ONLY from the first to the present. Does each driver have the same issue? Is the behavior different accross different drivers? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?
If you've exhausted the WHQL drivers, start trying different 3xx.xx Beta drivers. Is the behavior the same across these? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?

As I say, this is typical when new hardware like the GTX6xx series is released. The driver team focuses on single monitor stability first in the opening driver releases as this is their core audience,
with SLix2 and SLix3-4 compatability issues getting rectified in later releases. It may take a couple months for a driver that does not produce the issue you describe and that is just the price we pay
for running semi-unsupported triple monitor setups on bleeding edge hardware. You're a beta tester!

I sometimes don't understand why people buy a video card that was just released, run it in an uncommon setup (read triple monitor (too expensive for 95% of people)) and then complain when it doesn't work "out of the box"

This is what we've all become accustomed to. If you're buying a single newly released video card and running it on a single 1920x1080 monitor you can expect the least amount of issues.

my 670 works perfectly out of the box, but i'm sure we all know that running sli and surround at the same time causes even more compatibiity issues -.-

thats why i used to have a dual 6970 system using crossfire and eyefinity and it was causing more problems than it was worth unfortunately so i sold the parts and now i use a single 670 with 3 monitors in surround and it's working astoundingly well :)

do you have an other cards intalled? sound card etc as that will cause it to drop to 8x depending on which slot is used. check your manual to see what slots are shared