8800 gt sli oddnesses

where to begin. so many issues. ill start with my specs.

Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP1
Intell core 2 duo E8500 @3.16 GHz
2 nvidia 8800 512 gt in sli (kind of)
4 GB RAM

I could go into more detail if it would help.


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::Short Story::
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my 8800 GTs wont get along. in crysis i benchmark at 40 fps. but with the same settings i get 13 in game. why does it do this and how can i fix it.

why do i see, in some games, a performance decrease when i enable sli.


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::Long Story::
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Alright. so here is my story. 9 months ago i got my first gaming comp. went through all of the setup things yada yada. enabled sli mode and everything in the nvidia controll panel. a few months later i go back to the controll panel to find that it forgot that i was in sli. naturally i checked that box and went on. a few days ago i checked it agian. it forgot. i got new drivers and it finally remembered. So i hopped back into tf2 which i had been running smoothly at max everything at around 80 fps before i had sli working. i was suprised to find that i had a performance decrease. i hovered at about 60 -130 (very big range i know) but every few seconds, it would drop to 10 or so. larry and theodore (names of my cards) are not getting along to well. i came to the conclusion that i should just turn off sli mode before a session of tf2. very bothersome but simple.

1 if there is a way to fix the tf2 sli problem i would like to know.

Later that day i fired up crysis. most of the time i get fed up with unstable framerates in the heat of combat and end up putting it to low settings. but i figured "hey, with sli mode set up, it might just work!" it only seemed to help slightly. so it may have made no difference other then placibo. also the mountains in the backround flickered from very bright to very dark. somehow that problem resolved itself after a few hours of tinkering with the control panel. not exactly sure how though. here is where it gets weird. i did a few benchmark tests with and without sli on setting i dubbed reachable on my rig. take a look at the results.


1024 768 x2AA high gpu 31.5
1024 768 x2AA high cpu 29.5
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1024 768 x2AA high gpu 40.4 SLI
1024 768 x2AA high cpu 39.3 SLI

and just for fun

1280 1024 x8 very high gpu 6.9 SLI

i was a little dissapointed by the last result but was happy to see an improvement. unfortunatly it turns out that i dont see any changes in the framerate when i actually play the game. when i tried playing on 1024 768 x2AA high like in testing, i got 15-40 fps. 15 being outdoors (most of time spent in crysis) and 40 being looking at the ground inside a building (never).

2 why does the benchmark test lie to me. and is there a way i can virtually bitch slap it.

3 can i eliminate the difference in framerates between the benchmark and actually gameplay. 40 fps sounds awesome.

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::Short Story::
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my 8800 GTs wont get along. in crysis i benchmark at 40 fps. but with the same settings i get 13 in game. why does it do this and how can i fix it.

why do i see, in some games, a performance decrease when i enable sli.

well i dont really know how to change that. i think vista's default is dx10. and i know that dx9 wont run very high specs on crysis, so most likely dx10. you saw what i got on very high though. that might just be dx9 puttering along.

-Are you sure SLI is running properly? Have you turned on and observed your "SLI Indicator bars" and checked?

-which drivers are you using?

-Did you turn off "Multiple Display Performance Mode..."?

-Did you change the "SLI Performance Mode"?

***I have 8800gtx SLI and to make crysis playable online (40fps+ averages) I need to use medium settings even if I get 70fps in benchmark on High.

ok why the HELL are you using ancient beta drivers!? Download the new drivers for christ sake! No wonder you are getting bad performance!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvi [...] _whql.html

+1!! With 8800GT's in SLi and a 3.4Ghz Q9550 I can play Crysis in 1280x1024 in DX9 (XP) with the custom VHQ mod and 2xAA between 35-60fps. Get the new drivers!!! I'm currently using 185.20 betas but the 181.20 official has recently been released and that should make a world of difference.

hmm. well i just updated to the newer drivers. ran the benchmark again at the same settings as before. i got 42.28 that was the average of the 2nd and 3rd runs. i was told to ignore the first. what the **** is going on!

how would i go about doing that? i mean, it didnt exactly come with a uninstaller. plus, i tried like 20 different drivers. so i would have to remove all of them. is there an easy way to wipe then do a fresh install?