SLI problem

hi all

im new here and i want to know if you guys could help =/

i have an nvidia 7600gs and i just got another one to go SLI

everything is set up and i have SLI enable but im not seeing any improvements

i've also set the sli performace mode to either SFR AFR 1 or AFR 2 and tried downloading hotfixes for the problem on vista but its still made no difference

does anybody know what the problem is?

 

You may not see a difference unless you put a greater demand on the GPUs. For instance, at 1600x1200 resolution you're more likely to notice the dual GPU SLI configuration keeping up with the load, whereas a single GPU bogging down. Another thing to note - look in the nVidia profile settings and make sure the game you are playing has a profile and that the profile is using SLI + AFR. If the profile isn't there, then create one, or else the game might use a default setting.

 

i've already tried putting it at a high resolution and it just gets slower

nothing i do seems to make a difference =/

 

If one video card is doing the same work as 2 video cards, then the data throughput, is being limited in some manner. A 16x SLI motherboard can have an impact if it divides the SLI into two streams of 8x each. This will hobble any of the higher end video card offerings. The remedy to this obtruction is to purchase a MOBO with a 32X chipset which provides a full 16x SLI to each of your SLI video cards. A more likely restriction, usually lies in a combination of your CPU and memory access times. Unless these are also upgraded, the literature indicates that you will be "CPU bound" meaning that the speed of the CPU and memory is the weakest link. As a side note. I have my SLI set to AFR on a pair of XFX GF6800GS. At a video resolution of 1024x768 a single GF6800GS, factory overclocked with a GPU of 485Mhz and triple pumped DDR3 1.1 Ghz ram with 256-bit internal data path, will keep up with the demands of FarCry at more than playable framerates. This was a shock to me, even when I cranked up the anisotropic to 4x ( the maximum in FarCry unpatched). However, after patching FarCry to version 1.3 in order to take advantage of the 3.0 shaders and nVidia's implementaion of HDR lighting, that's when I noticed a slowdown to my framerate. They also included anisotropic filtering to 8x ( which I rarely find necessary ) but after using the console command \r_hdrrendering 7 to enable the HDR lighting in FarCry, I was astonished on two fronts. The first, of course, was the stunningly realistic visual experience, with the lighting effects. That needs to experienced to be believed, but the second effect was an immense slowdown of my frame rate. At certain times, the combination of multiple enemies and the superb lighting effects, caused noticeable hesitation, that I had not experienced with this game before. Enter, SLI and the second GF6800GS card. Now, the same game, and the same game location became smooth as silk. No hesitation, no noticeable slowdown, and if I hadn't been running FRAPS, I would not have known that occasionally the frame rate would drop to 45. So, for my rig and that game, SLI worked as advertised. I was sold. However, I did purchase a game called Oblivion, and even though the game is optimized to use my AMD's dual CPUs and nVidia's SLI cards, it is still a beast of a game to run with cranked up settings. To conquer this game at smooth frame rates fully cranked settings requires an upgraded system - all of it. I'll need to upgrade to an AMD 2 system to get the necessary memory bus speeds. If I'm running SLI, it will be necessary to upgrade to a MOBO with a 32x SLI chipset, so that an upgraded pair of PCI-E video cards can run at their maximum throughput.