Explain SLI to me.

[Skuzzy]

AFAIK AH is not a supported Xfire/SLI game so you're not going to see big improvements if any. Without a proper profile only 1 card is utilized and the end result can even be slower than with a single card.

There are Aces High profiles for SLI and Crossfire support.  They just are not done very well at all.  We have no control over that.  It seems you have to be a triple A game title before you get good multi-card support.

[Debrody]

There are Aces High profiles for SLI and Crossfire support.  They just are not done very well at all.  We have no control over that.  It seems you have to be a triple A game title before you get good multi-card support.

Thats sad.

Not that if i look like i could afford money for a SLI setup, but does this technology work in the same way in most of the games? I mean, isnt there a standard rendering method what can be used in almost every case? Theese programs are written in directx anyways - sounds kinde odd to me, that the programmers have to create "SLI profiles" for each game, insted of this being built in into the developing enviroment.

[Skuzzy]

SLI profiles are created by NVidia, for each game.  There are many, many ways to present 3D graphics along with a plethora of options one can choose to support.  Pretty much requires a profile for each game.

The problem NVidia and AMD will have with Aces High is we continuously update the game.  The profiles they created, are not applicable to what we ship today.

[Fulcrum]

SLI profiles are created by NVidia, for each game.  There are many, many ways to present 3D graphics along with a plethora of options one can choose to support.  Pretty much requires a profile for each game.

The problem NVidia and AMD will have with Aces High is we continuously update the game.  The profiles they created, are not applicable to what we ship today.

This would explain the small boost I get for AH...which is OK for me because AH was not the primary motivator for me to get an SLI setup.

[Debrody]

SLI profiles are created by NVidia, for each game.  There are many, many ways to present 3D graphics along with a plethora of options one can choose to support.  Pretty much requires a profile for each game.

The problem NVidia and AMD will have with Aces High is we continuously update the game.  The profiles they created, are not applicable to what we ship today.

Thanks for the explanation.

[Gman]

And that was the original point I made Fulcrum, if AH is the primary reason somebody wants to spend 2x the amount on another GPU for SLI, they should probably think twice about that.  I like yourself use SLI for a ton of other games, but a lot of players here only really play this game, and the increase they would see from SLI here is minimal.  

I just upgraded to 3 1440P Asus monitors, and at 60hz max in these, SLI has made again a small difference with 780GTX's overclocked to Titan-ish performance levels.

It's a shame the developers of the games aren't able to have a hand in the creation of their own SLI profiles, as from what I take from Skuzzy's posts here and in the past, it's mostly out of their hands.  I'm sure an optimized profile that had the same time put into it as Nvidia puts into games like BF3 would make for massive gains in FPS in Aces High.

[MADe]

I have never seen a ready made ah sli profile with my vid cards. I made my own I guess.
Read the net, read here, read FA, learned what each choice does, played with choices, went with what I felt best with.

Things like Phys X and SLI, X Fire will prolly go unsupported very soon. Not enough devs got onboard with method. They say that Direct X is on its way out. Very hard to decide how to build something thats easially upgradable for immediate future. I have the itch to build again but 1 year from now some new tech suppose to be out.......................... ...

[BaldEagl]

The beauty of the HW business model is built in obsolescence.

[MADe]

So many things are ploys to sell hardware. Then things fall one direction, next innovation pops out.

If you do not feel like spending $700 on the latest and greatest single gpu. You will benefit from a pair of older, cheaper nVidia cards.
ie: GTX 550 TI 's More vid ram cannot be bad. The pair will still not bench as well as the bestest single, but who cares. Its how it handles the games. The software is way behind the hardware.

Just read a diddy that states, that 6GHz, maybe the upper most cap on current cpu architecture, heat issues.
But theres something called a quantum cpu.......................... ........

[Bino]

..
If you do not feel like spending $700 on the latest and greatest single gpu. You will benefit from a pair of older, cheaper nVidia cards.
ie: GTX 550 TI 's More vid ram cannot be bad
...

There will be a small FPS benefit, depending on which game you run, as little as 10-20%.  And you do not double the video RAM by having two cards.  Functionally, windows merely sees two identical copies of the same buffer.

[MADe]

Must admit that I am not up on the intricasies of cards.
I know that I use alternate frame rendering in order to play AH in SLI mode. I select 1 pre-rendered frame, the cards each render the entire frame, 1 then the other.
I have disabled 1 card and gone single. The 2nd card does help overall a smidge. GPU releases in last 5 years have been phenominal. More ram and faster gpu's despite PHYs X, CUDA,.................

[Chalenge]

As of this very moment the bare minimum for 4k resolutions is a GTX 680 I believe (not that being wrong in this case matters much). Try SLI at 4k and see what happens.

[Rich46yo]

Well since i started playing BF4 Beta I am back enamored with the BF series. Now im really considering a power upgrade along with a 2nd 580 GTX in an SLI slot. From what Im hearing BF4 will be optimized for SLI, that and an upgrade to Win-8.1 which will be shortly coming out shortly with DX 11.2.  BF4 is a graphics hog. My system aint bad but I was forced to "medium" settings. With AH I was getting steady 60 fps even at high settings. In BF4 Im only at a steady 30 fps with 30 to 40 normal at medium settings.

Its an i7 with 12 gigs of ram and a 1.5 gig 580. Its not a bad system but for BF4 I'd consider it 'minimum".

[Chalenge]

By 4k I meant 3840x2160 resolution (single monitor).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236338

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Well since i started playing BF4 Beta I am back enamored with the BF series. Now im really considering a power upgrade along with a 2nd 580 GTX in an SLI slot. From what Im hearing BF4 will be optimized for SLI, that and an upgrade to Win-8.1 which will be shortly coming out shortly with DX 11.2.  BF4 is a graphics hog. My system aint bad but I was forced to "medium" settings. With AH I was getting steady 60 fps even at high settings. In BF4 Im only at a steady 30 fps with 30 to 40 normal at medium settings.

Its an i7 with 12 gigs of ram and a 1.5 gig 580. Its not a bad system but for BF4 I'd consider it 'minimum".

BF4 is tricky, at the default settings it looks completely horrible. After tuning down post processing etc. the image actually looks much better. Many people complain it looks like playing under water and I'm not surprised if they didn't alter the default settings.