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Graphics Dual x8 560Ti 1gb SLI won't run Ultra on BF3

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by feathers, 3 Apr 2012.

  1. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    But a single 560Ti 1gb runs Ultra no problem!

    Explain that....

    Since I had my SLI 560Ti 1gb, I have been unable to run BF3 on ultra. I had this awful stuttering which would come every few seconds and drop the fps, also when turning quickly, massive stuttering and fps drop. It came even if I only had textures set to Ultra and AA disabled. It made Ultra on BF3 unplayable. When set to HIGH I was able to run BF3 even on full 64 player server and get 100+ fps and no stutter.

    Now I am running a single 560Ti 1gb and suddenly I can run Ultra on BF3 for the first time. I have all settings ultra at 1080 but motion blur off (that did not help when I had the SLI). I am now able to play Ultra with 2 x AA, something impossible when running the dual x8 SLI.

    If I set AA to zero and no motion blur the game is silky smooth on a full 64 player map such as firestorm. Again this was not possible ever in the time I had SLI.

    I had read again and again that dual x8 was not limiting in any way, seems that information was wrong.

    Perhaps it's the new BF3 patch? Well I am pretty certain I tried the game in Ultra when I had the SLI and I still got the stuttering.

    So what's the deal... why can I now run almost full ultra on a single 560Ti 1gb?
     
  2. mikeyman198

    mikeyman198 Lets pretend this is hilarious.

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    I guess the reduced bandwidth of x8 was limiting the efficiency of the memory on the card? I saw true_gamer post a thread about this before, but this is weird. And even then, on a Gen 3 board, x8 is the equivalent of PCIe 2 x16...
     
  3. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Are you talking about Microstutter? I think so. Common complaint with lower end/midrange SLI setups.
     
  4. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    I was also going to say that Parge. But doesn't microstutter not affect actual frame rate?
     
    Last edited: 3 Apr 2012
  5. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    Yes but I'm not getting gen 3 bandwidth without Ivy Bridge yes?

    I am shocked by this but I have tested since last night and made sure each map was a near full 64 player map.

    The gameplay is smooth and consistent with single 1gb 560Ti with all on Ultra except motion blur and AA off. But as I said, I can even run 2 x AA and still dont get the stuttering I had in SLI.

    The reason I tried AA ultra is because someone gave me a link to 550ti 1gb running Ultra at 1600 x 900. The video showed none of the stuttering I had on my SLI.
     
  6. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    You're correct feathers, you'd have 8x PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth not 3.0. It's a rather odd problem. Did you actually see a frame rate drop (as in on fraps or something) or was it just jerky? If just jerky I'd go for microstutter.
     
  7. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    I have not had much in the way of microstutter. The only game affected is BF3 on Ultra. The FPS drop is massive and it happens in particular when I look around quickly. It made Ultra unplayable. Setting high on BF3 in SLI and I never had a problem even with 3d glasses.

    Enabling the in-game data on bf3 showed massive cpu and gddr spikes in Ultra SLI x8 x8.

    I don't get that now. Smooth and consistent.
     
  8. bdigital

    bdigital Is re-building his PC again

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    The microstutter issue has been reported with quite a few sli setups.

    At your res that 560ti will keep you going for a quite a while
     
  9. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    It was a massive fps drop as well. The fps would go from 60+ down to 22 and flash red on the performance overly.

    It would happen within every 10 seconds of play and was noticeable particularly if I moved the mouse quickly to pan around.

    Even if all settings were high with only textures on ultra and AA disabled.

    So I'm wondering if the x8 x8 was too limiting in terms of texture data when BF3 was on ultra?

    It made no difference which version Nvidia drivers.

    My i5 is at 4.9ghz, 16gb 1866mhz ram and BF3 runs on 120gb ssd but none of that stopped the stuttering on BF3 ultra and as I said, that was pretty much the only game it happened and only on Ultra.
     
  10. jizwizard

    jizwizard Modder

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    Did you ever benchmark the cards individually? When I had crossfire with 4890 one card performed alot less than the other even though they were identical. This caused micro stuttering as one card had to drag the the other one around.
     
  11. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    So would that result in massive FPS drop?

    I experienced virtually zero microstutter on games and benchmarks. BF3 was consistently fast and smooth on High settings even with the added burden of 3d glasses sometimes.
     
  12. jizwizard

    jizwizard Modder

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    It did with me on that old setup. Was unplayable. Until I swapped one of them for another card. Then it all went away. Now with my current cards I always bench them on there own before hand to make sure there running the same sort of results before I stick with them. Out of the 4 I have had one was crap and produced stuttering. Just waiting on my new board to tri sli the bad boys. Who needs kepler
     
  13. Marvin-HHGTTG

    Marvin-HHGTTG CTRL + SHIFT + ESC

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    I'd very much doubt that x8 bandwidth will cause your GTX560 Ti a bottleneck. A GTX580, yes, but not a 560, not significantly. Have you tried other games out? Also, have you installed drivers again since adding the second card?
     
  14. jizwizard

    jizwizard Modder

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    Like I said in an old post from a while ago my mate had two msi 560 ti on an old qx6850 that never stuttered on bf3 when ran at max with no motion blur. We tested both cards on there own and they were pretty much identical. I do this with all cards now as none of them are the same just like cpu's
     
  15. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    Several windows 7 x64, a number of Nvidia driver revisions, nothing made any difference but then I didn't know it was an SLI issue. I don't have the second 560 now cos I sold on bit tech marketplace and shipped it via TNT this morning. The other one will be packed and sent off too cos I sold that and am just waiting payment to reach bank. Thus I am on single 560Ti and soon no 560ti.

    I tell you, if SLI is this temperamental where it may not work with 2 indentical models/same brand then I will never touch SLI again.

    If I ran the single 560ti in x8 slot, I would experience no performance drop or stuttering in BF3?

    And to answer your other question... BF3 ultra is the only game I experienced this. Everything else ran fine with the SLI and the SLI scaling was 99% on each GPU.

    On BF3 it was also 99% utilisation of each GPU but the stuttering and FPS drop would only happen if I set some ultra settings. Ultra textures. Made no difference even if I tried running BF3 at 1280 x 768, so long as I had textures on ultra, I would experience the FPS drop and stuttering.

    No such issues when I ran BF3 on High.
     
  16. feathers

    feathers Minimodder

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    P.S.

    Are we sure it's not x8 x8 holding back 560Ti SLI?

    How is it that only BF3 is affected and only in ultra? It's not an install error either since BF3 was moved to new windows as well. Whenever textures set to ultra in BF3 on the SLI, the slowdowns occur and coincide with heavy moments of activity online. Explosions etc, fast mouse panning...

    I had Afterburner on screen server running and it showed GPU utilisation which was always perfectly balanced for both Bad company 2 and Battlefield 3. Both GPU's were always at about 99% in SLI.

    I wish someone could explain what was going on...
     
  17. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    Maybe if you'd played rocky 1-4 on repeat they'd have seen what is all about ;)
    in all seriousness though, that totally blows and has put me off sli-ing.
     
  18. TobletDanillio

    TobletDanillio Minimodder

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    try swapping the card round and see if it helps
     
  19. Deders

    Deders Modder

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    Ok, lets clear something up: Microstutter is when a game running on a multi GPU setup feels like it's only say 20fps, when it is in fact running at 40fps, it doesn't make it jerky, just not as smooth as it should be. It usually occurs when the load on one GPU is more than the other, hence why it is more prevalent in crossfire setups with different graphics cards.

    I have noticed that newer drivers have eased the memory requirements for BF3.

    PCIe bandwidth is another issue and performance can vary. I had to return an Asrock board as their implementation of PCIe was causing games to be jerky with my old 9800GTX+ setup. The same games were smooth with my current MSI board and the same processor.

    Also if a game does need more memory than the card can offer, some of the data will be swapped into the main memory via the PCIe bus, so having it run at 16x will make it less jerky than 8x in this situation. I found the same thing with GTA 4.
     
    Last edited: 3 Apr 2012
  20. MSHunter

    MSHunter Minimodder

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    BF3 does not natively support SLI or Crossfire. This means that its up to Nvidia or AMD to trick BF3 into thinking you have 1 big low memory GPU. Ultra is very GPU and GPU mem intensive, (remember Crysis?). My advice from experience is to stay far away from SLI, Especialy if your board doesnt support 16x (x2) and to remember that 2 cards do not x2 you GPU mem.

    Sent from Bittech Android app
     

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