Possible SLI problem

[d3m0nger]

Hi there

Right now I have a SLI system ( 2x 6600 GT ), but im not absolutley sure it's working correctly, I've installed the latest ForceWare drivers but all in all I don't see any improvements performance wise.

in other words..: I can't tell the difference between A single card setup or a dual card setup in games (I've only tested Joint operations, generals, warc3 so far)

Is there any way I can test my hardware (and software) so I can be sure my SLI setup is working properly?

[veK]

thats most likely because these games don't support SLI technology... try doom3 with 1 card and then with 2 and you'll see the improvements... though even 2 6600GT aren't that much power... 2 combined 600GT are a little less power than 1 6800GT so for a 2x200

[d3m0nger]

That's not completely true, in most cases a SLI setup consisting of 2 6600 GT's outperforme a single 6800, sometimes even a 6800U, With full anti anitialising and High Anisotrophic filtering turned on the setup sometimes runs into trouble.

anyway yes there is a list, I have it, but it's not a big list.

The big titles are on it, but the majority of games aren't.

Though I don't know if that's the ''SLI'' list, it's just a list in my Geforce config, and it was already there even before there was a 2nd card installed.

[veK]

yes the big titles are on it because these are the titles that support SLI - and older games don't.

so this is the first reason why 1 more powerful card is a better solution and besides you might ask nvidia tech support about the fact that 2x6600 are not that strong like 1x6800GT - the 6800 series has a different chip and some other advantages and by marketing reasons itself nvidia wouldn't want to be 2 of their "smaller" cards be as powerful as their "big" ones, because very few people would buy the bigger cards then when buying a new system which features SLI technology...

I'll ask someone from nvidia about this again at the cebit. I'm going there on friday.

but anyway, that wasn't the topic... so like I said: there aren't very much games yet which support SLI and you sure won't take notice of differences between 1 card only and 2 cards combined in older games like generals.

that's like 64cpus... the amds are good for gaming but if you only use a 32bit system like windows you won't have any advantages compared to a 32bit intel cpu with the same clock - actually intel might even be better because intel is stronger on a lot of applications and office stuff... (btw: I prefer amd)

so why don't you just pick a new game which supports SLI for sure and then try your system with 1 card and then with 2... many of the new games which are coming soon will support SLI... but as for the old - either the developers release a patch to integrate SLI technology or... you can't do anything about it...

[d3m0nger]

Well I know what the problem is, Forceware isn't supported for WinXP x64 edition.

[DukeLeto]

You can't tell the performance difference...ok, but in those games you've tested, a single 6600GT should get framerates so high SLIing in a second wouldn't make any visually noticable differences anyways!

My, how I pine for the days when people measured performance by visual smoothness rather than a framerate number.  "OMFG, I'm only getting 83 FPS!  I can get so much more!"  But why?  Anything above about ~25 FPS is visually smooth!

*old fogey-style muttering*

[d3m0nger]

The problem still isn't fixed though, I found Forceware drivers for WinXP 64 but SLI still isn't active

- I turned on SLI mode in BIOS

- I installed latest Forceware drivers

- rebooted

Now there should pop up a balloon saying ''Do you want to activate Multi-GPU?''

but it doesn't, and I just can't find out what im doing wrong...

[d3m0nger]

You can't tell the performance difference...ok, but in those games you've tested, a single 6600GT should get framerates so high SLIing in a second wouldn't make any visually noticable differences anyways!

My, how I pine for the days when people measured performance by visual smoothness rather than a framerate number.