Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Crysis SLI worse than single card

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
Share

Hey everyone, this is gonna be an odd thread, but here goes:

I've recently bought a new machine (got it assembled in the shop) consisting of:
Intel C2Q Q6600 (2.4ghz)
Dual SLI 8800 GT 512mb
Abit nforce Fatality SLI mobo
2 GB Kingston DDR2-800 Ram
850W Gigabyte power supply
Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
ViewSonic 28" amazing LCD

Updated every single windows and Nvidia drivers (169.25) I could find, and downloaded the patch for Crysis

Now when I started Crysis, I put on a mix of medium-high settings thinking wow, even with SLI this game is a monster. I benchmarked the GPUs and got around 26-33fps (this was still in 1280 x 1024)
Then I wanted to see how much SLI really did for Crysis, so I disabled SLI
And Voiala, 40-60 fps, thinking this couldn't be, i tried enabling and disableing SLI, restarting my pc, but no change.
Then I upped the settings to a mix of medium - high - very high (texture quality, water, physics, particle quality)
Benchmarking 1 card got an average of 36fps
Benchmarking SLI got an average of 10fps

My Gigabyte PSU has 4 thermometers so i connected 1 to each of the cards, but they had very similar temps running at full power so both were obviously working.

I was desperate so I swapped the cards, then took 1 out to see if it was a faulty card, but on their own, each performed perfectly. Pc could see SLI, and whatever config of the cards I tried, no improvement.....Then with both cards in, I took out the SLI bridge to see if that was the prob, and funny enough, the benchmark returned the same results with it out as when it was in. I went back to the shop and got the bridge replaced for another one from a same Fatality mobo but even with that I didn't get an improvement.

Oh, and I'm getting worse fps in other games aswell so this prob isn't a Crysis bug :) 

I have searched the net for any other cases like this, but couldn't find any, and everywhere I went, SLI always rendered better results.... I just bougth the ViewSonic 28" LCD (btw it is frikkkkin amazing) and I really want SLI to work and run it at higher res (even now with 1 card setting things to a mix of med & high and texture quality to very high, at 1920 x 1200 I am still getting between 17-33fps). I'm lost for ideas so if anyone has a suggestion, pls post and help

Thx, Gellert

More about : crysis sli worse single card

Register or log in to remove

My question is, did you enable SLI in the BIOS? You have to enable it in the Nvidia control panel as well as the BIOS. I get 19.7FPS w/o SLI and 27.7 with at 1920x1200 all high. Also try increasing the resolution because SLI scales better at higher resolutions.
Related ressources
Ask the community

First off... I see your power supply. Still, it sounds like it could be a power supply issue since both cards under full load is slowing the system down. You could also try the latest Nvidia Beta drivers which are supposed to have improved SLI performance in Crysis (YES I saw that you're having the same issues with other games). http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_169.28.html
Also, I know they came out some time ago and you probably already have them, but did you get the Microsoft patches they released to improve 3D gaming in Vista?

Also: not to be nitpicky, but it'd be a 28" monitor not a 28' monitor :ange: 

-mcg

Are all of the power connectors..connected? You said you had it built at the shop, so maybe they overlooked it. One of my friends had a similar problem with Crysis. He connected the extra power and the results were amazing.

just wondering, why not take it back to the place that built it and have them deal with it?? I could understand if you built it, to have thease questions. But for having it built for you. I myself would just take it back to them with any game and show them whats going on.

did you connect an sli bridge. i know a lot builders around me keep the bridge. make sure your power supply has the rails to support sli im sure you got enough wattage

go here to calculate your wattage http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

i think sli will take up more of your system memory so i would upgrade the to 3-4 gigs. that speed ram is cheap now. 2 gigs for $45. a game like cysis needs a lot of ram. i would check the the amount of memory being used while playing crysis.

windows vista is a memory hog it takes up about 800-900 mb of ram on my system while idle. leaving only 1100mb for games and apps

I wanted to solve the problem at home cause the thing ways a ton, but looks like I definitely have to go bck...
Yes the power supply is SLI ready an is connected
Btw, system idle only takes up bout 600mb for me, and while in Crysis, it only uses bout 1700mb (at first I also thought it was RAM bottleneck)

It really sounds like a power issue, at least thats the way it apears. If your playing at 1280x1024 using SLI then that most likely would give you bad performance, SLI only starts to show its true power at or after 1680x1050. Theres probibly something you missed, maybe a setting in BIOS.

I've gone through the BIOS (latest version) and there is nothing regarding SLI or for that matter the GPU...
I'm playing in 1920 x 1200 now with my new 28" monitor, and with SLI disabled I get 33fps, whilst in SLI I get 12fps...
I used that power calculator cal posted, and I'm supposed to have lots of reserve, but thx for the input tho...
:( 

baracubra said:
I've gone through the BIOS (latest version) and there is nothing regarding SLI or for that matter the GPU...
I'm playing in 1920 x 1200 now with my new 28" monitor, and with SLI disabled I get 33fps, whilst in SLI I get 12fps...
I used that power calculator cal posted, and I'm supposed to have lots of reserve, but thx for the input tho...
:( 



With my motherboard there are two settings SLI Broadcast Aperture and Nvidia GPU Ex, the first is set to Auto and the second to Enable. There should be some setting in the BIOS to enable SLI, I think you might be missing it.

Although I don't have an SLI / Crossfire board (but will soon) I also suspect that a bios setting has been overlooked regarding sli or speeds.
Is there a setting in bios to adjust the speed of each slot? Are they both set to run at 16x or whatever?
Just a thought.

a_dude said:
Although I don't have an SLI / Crossfire board (but will soon) I also suspect that a bios setting has been overlooked regarding sli or speeds.
Is there a setting in bios to adjust the speed of each slot? Are they both set to run at 16x or whatever?
Just a thought.




The 16x and whatever x slots usually are color coded, in my case the 16x slots are blue and the 8x slot is white. I think it's a BIOS issue he is overlooking.

computertech82 said:
you answered your own question. Vista and Geforce.

As i know of, geforce and vista still having issues. Ati and vista seems to be much better. I think i saw a listing in this forum talking about it..


Look at my sig, there isn't a problem with Vista and Geforce.

where in BIOS exacty do you have these SLI settings?
all I have under "advanced chipset features" is:
Memory Timing Setting <press Enter>
SLI Broadcast Aperture <Auto>
LDT Frequency <5x>

Btw, wut is "PCI/VGA palette Snoop"? lol

Well, one thing for whichever bios it is , there's most probably an sli option in there, keep looking.

And i know crysis is amazing and everything , but have you tried the same thing with any other game, maybe something's up with your crysis installation. Please check the single and sli results for any other game.

Might be your ram getting sucked up, i have a single card and crysis finishes up like 87-89% of my 1066 Kingston HyperX, sometimes you're only using 1700 of 2048 but are not able to take more ram for some reason .. But don't try a ram upgrade unless you've tried another game.

baracubra said:


Oh, and I'm getting worse fps in other games aswell so this prob isn't a Crysis bug :) 



I have gone through every single bit of my BIOS, every clickable key, and the only thing about SLI is the "SLI broadcast aperture" (you are right about having to enable SLI in the BIOS, it just isn't there!)

many people have said that I'm missing something in the BIOS, but there are no more toggle screens or anything regarding SLI options. I've even taken pictures and a short clip going through the options to prove that SLI switch isn't there, except I duno how to post them in a thread :( 
thx for the input, it is really apreciated, u guys r prob right about the BIOs thing, but take me for my word, in my case, there are no such settings.

I'm taking the sucker to the shop today, and hopefully they can put it out if its misery. :p 

One last thing, in my BIOS if I don't select "manual" (which means its on auto) for DRAM voltage it won't show any new selection until I click on it, then it will show new settings not listed before.

Hi,

I think I have exactly the same problem in a very similar situation. It's been driving me insane!

If you have the time and patience, remove your Vista disks (including any Data drives as you don't want an original XP install touching your drives over 137Gb), and then set up XP on a spare harddrive, (zillions of) Windows updates, then some games. A lengthy operation.

I have found that when running XP my Crysis frame rates are practically doubled with SLI turned on. Though of course, I can't get above "High" settings with XP.

At least with this approach you are verifiying that your BIOS settings and hardware are okay. That was my biggest concern as my 2nd card (XFX8800GT Alpha Dog XXX), whilst having the same part number as my current, are so physically different in appearence I thought I'd purchased the wrong one! (another topic in itself)

Overall for me, it seems to be a Vista-specific issue, and I've tried everything Nvidia and MS have to offer publically, so the next step will be contacting XFX tech support to see what they say. Or, just not using Vista, which is the preferable route at the moment - can't let that fresh XP install go to waste! Good luck, I'll post anything relevant if I do have success with Vista, but really am leaning towards returning to old faithful.

LC

LudwigCools said:
Though of course, I can't get above "High" settings with XP.


Yes you can select "Very High" in XP. Simply Google it and theres plent of info about how to change config files to run in "Very High".

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It's done....I am getting 25-50fps, 1920x1200, high and very high settings in Crysis!!!!! (no AA tho) I went bck to get the pc today, and its working. the guy in shop was a noob, and all he did was instal Nvidia driver 126.28 beta, and it worked. This was REALLY wierd cause I'd installed the exact same one earlier, and it didn't work lol. One thing is different tho, which is what happens after enableing SLI. the way it is enabled brings up a different screen, and it switches to SLI different.

Thx u guys for all the input, it was really helpful and reasuring, it wasn't a BIOS setting, just some wierd sumthing lol....
Thx, Gellert :p 

Shadow703793 said:
^Good old config file hacks ;) 


Crytek tried to hide "Very High Quality" settings in Windows XP from us simply because Microsoft wanted it exclusively for Vista, that doesn't win my loyalty to go out and buy Windows Vista. Microsoft thought that this would give us a reason to buy Vista, it back fired big time. Now you can have DX10 quality graphics in XP and run higher frame rates for a better gaming experience. :D 

Looks like I'm a little late on this one. But I'm curious, did you clean out the old drivers when you installed your updated (latest) ones? I recently installed the 169.25 on a brand new Vista install and I noticed the GPU driver install was a little strange. Then it took several attempts in the control panel to get SLI enabled as the click on popup for screen change kept getting hiden behind the other windows.
Anyway enjoy SLI.

I am having the same problem - when I disable SLI, I get an fps boost in Crysis by about 25+ frames.

With SLI enabled, running at 1680x1050 4x AA and all setting on high, I would get an average of 18-23fps - but with SLI disabled, I was getting (with the same resolution and settings) at least 34+fps.

This makes no sense.

EVGA nForce 780i SLI Motherboard
Dual SLI 8800GT 512mb
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @3.0GHz
2GB Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Memory
CoolerMaster Unit 600 Watts eXtreme Power - SLI Supports
Windows XP Home
20'' Viewsonic




I am late on this one as well -

Has anyone resolved this issue? If so, what is the fix?
Graphics card Expert

^ Weird. With XP pro 32-bit, patch 1.1, 169.28 betas, and at 1680x1050 4xaa/16xaf all high, I see a 56% increase with SLI in the GPU bench. 34 fps sounds way too high for a single card unless you are just picking a point in the game. I suspect it would be under 20 fps ave running the crysis bench with one card.

^ Tell me about it - As we speak I'm on the wait line for tech support for CyberpowerPC - obviously asking them why I get better performance with SLI disabled

And I forgot to mention - I am running the 1.1 patch and newest nVidia beta drivers (169.28).
Graphics card Expert

systemlord said:
Crytek tried to hide "Very High Quality" settings in Windows XP from us simply because Microsoft wanted it exclusively for Vista, that doesn't win my loyalty to go out and buy Windows Vista. Microsoft thought that this would give us a reason to buy Vista, it back fired big time. Now you can have DX10 quality graphics in XP and run higher frame rates for a better gaming experience. :D 

Agreed. See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248515-31-save

Shadow703793 said:
@OP: (im no sure on this) but XP x86 and x64 might have issues depending on what you use. (read this on xtremesystems a while back)


If SP1 settles alot of the problems in Vista I'll be happly to buy it, I just want Vista to run games better than XP does. I mean shouldn't Vista make our games run better and not worse than XP? I thought that was the whole idea behind buying Vista, to game better.

I may be a little late on this, but i have the same problem.
It actualy works better with SLi disabled in crysis, and some other games. There is no setting in the bios for enabling SLi. I have enabled it in ntune, the computer do see that i have a SLi setup. The SLi indicator shows that its working. but i think it shows when its fully green that it is working as good as one card alone, and not as it should, you know, dobble as good as one card. Anyways, i have tryed installing vista 32 and 64bit versions, the latest drivers of the motherboard and the graphics card. Tryed switching the card slots and taking out one card and trying both alone. Nothing helps. I have 2x8800GTX on a nForce680i with a powersupply on 1000w. Soon im gonna try instaling XP again, and try out linux. Dont know if linux support games, but im gonna try it out anyways.
Graphics card Expert

^ what resolution and settings are you playing at? At lower resolution without fsaa, you won't see any gains with SLI, especially seeing how you have the GTX.

I called Cyberpower PC tech support (I bought the computer from them) and they suggested that I switch out the cards to see if one is dead, or just not functioning properly. And I think they might be onto something.

I took my PCI 1 slot card out, (the top card, closest to the cpu) and put the PCI 3 card into the first slot (i have a 780i with 3-way SLI, but I only have dual 8800 GT) and seem to get much better frames with only 1 card connected. I still have yet to only try the other card, but am optimistic that it will in fact work - that the card originally in the PCI slot 1 was defective.

Ill let you guys know how it works, but definitely give it a shot if you are getting poor performance in SLI.

pauldh said:
^ what resolution and settings are you playing at? At lower resolution without fsaa, you won't see any gains with SLI, especially seeing how you have the GTX.


Veryhigh settings on 1200x1024 without AA, but i have tryed 1600x1200 16AAQ and it still sucks ass. Still performance drop with SLI. But i know SLI works, couse in lost planets i get a huge performance boost with SLI running it at 70+fps in DX10, everything on high, 1200x1024 16xAAQ. But in crysis and some other games it just sucks ass.
Graphics card Master

grieve said:
Well that’s it… Im going to have to get this Crysis game, everyone seems to be playing it.

Oh you must, it is shader heavy but your GTX should be able give a fair account of its self, under XP at least, can't say for Vista *shudders*, as I've not had the misfortune to try it yet.
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Graphics & Displays categories
!