Guess what?

[quattro1]

If you want to turn on SLI for an app that does not have a profile, you can do so in the driver control panel. In the advanced settings there is a box that you can check for rendering mode, either single or multi. This is for games that do not have profiles yet. This box however only does AFR or SFR, dont recall which.

The best way is to edit the nvapps.xml file with the game executable and which rendering mode you want.

The drivers are just not smart enough to figure out which rendering mode is best so people still have a say in it.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: BentValve
EQ2 is the only game that needs help on my system what a shame it cannot benefit from SLI.

It can. Read. Please.

 

[Ackmed]

I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

 

[housecat]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

yes and we'll see when/if ATI gets SLI out if the same people are out attacking them.

thats if ATI can get the drivers working worth a damn, because we all know how great they are at that.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

Also as usual, you're here to flame them. Who's to say who is right?

 

[McArra]

I think it is a big issue, I would hate to have a bad working SLI setup.

 

[SpeedTester]

Hey being an ATI and 3DFX fan for the last 6-8 years I bought my first set of 6800gt's last week. So far I am very impressed with SLI and what Nvidia has finially used from the great former 3dfx company and nvidias gt boards . I still own 5 ATI cards in my computer lineup and find it offensive from people like you who rag on people who now are buying nvidia. If the X800/X850 supported SLI and was in my price range I would have bought a pair of them, but ATI doesnt have that technology ready for us yet. People like you should keep their mouth shut unless they have something constructive to say.

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: housecat

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

yes and we'll see when/if ATI gets SLI out if the same people are out attacking them.

thats if ATI can get the drivers working worth a damn, because we all know how great they are at that.

Welcome to 2 years ago.
I thought we got past the ATI drivers suck stage.
Of all the ATi drivers I've used, none have had any problems, so yeah, lets actually wait until ATi come out with their SLI and drivers, and see how it compares then, rather than speculating based in 2 yeard old info, OK?

What if "average Joe" buys an Alienware machine with SLI, and buys it for convenience, WITHOUT knowing how to change files and whatnot to make SLI work?
What happens then?
SLI is not just for tweakers, it's also for people who are rich and want more power, without having ANY real knowledge of computers.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: zakee00
why the fvuck should we have to do that in order to get a game to work?!?!! Espically if I had a rig that I paid $1,200 JUST for graphics cards on!

Holy Primadonna!!!
But seriously, it's a snap to do. And that H article seems to have agenda written all over it.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I see the usual NV fans are out in full force trying to defend their great card maker.

And here you are, back again, downing them for it. Is your hypocritical meter broken or something?

 

[TStep]

This place has to chill as of late. It just new tech in it's infancy, give it a little time. Because of this SLI issues, I don't consider two 6600GT = to a 6800GT, but from this will come new innovative technology that will ensure better products in the future.

Remember, the P4 sucked, then Northwood was the cat's meow if you could afford the admission price. For all the youngsters, AMD was not the r0xOrs (or however you say it) until K7. Like it or not, right or wrong; the early adapters to the newest products are essentially hamsters in a lab.

 

[Mem]

Also as usual, you're here to flame them. Who's to say who is right?

That probably would be me since I own video cards from both sides ,SLI is still new so there`ll be problems,personally I`m not a big fan of SLI and there`s no guarantees that all future games will support it.


It`s sad but not unexpected that you can spend a lot of money on a SLI setup and have to wait and maybe even hope that your games will support it with a driver/patch update etc.... but this is what happens when you join the early SLI bandwagon,also we all know how fast Nvidia are at releasing driver updates.

I can`t comment on ATI`s SLI solution since it`s too early,but I for one won`t be surprised 6-12 months down the road if a lot of games still don`t support it from both sides,now add on a few years?..Well that could be a whole new ball game.

thats if ATI can get the drivers working worth a damn, because we all know how great they are at that.

Working great for me,well over a year now,and I have been a DIE HARD Nvidia user since TNT days.



Bottom line,SLI is still very new so expect some problems.

 

[McArra]

thats if ATI can get the drivers working worth a damn, because we all know how great they are at that.

ATi drivers are great, don't speak about topics you don't know.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: Rollo
No...te..pad????

Is that some kind of crazy programming language only propeller heads know?!?!?!?


Owwww my head hurts at prospect of editing the config file.......



<Remembers "bad old days" of computer gaming in DOS and DOS4GW>

Playing around with different boot menu's in dos to get more free conventionel memory, assigning Expanded and Extended memory, toying with Stacker to get more harddrive space, using QEMM386 etc. Ahhhhhhhhh those were the days
It's actually quite nice to have used DOS, as it doesn't make me freeze up cold whenever a command prompt is needed.



On a side note it will be interesting to see what ATI bring up, luckuily I'm not on the verge to buying a new system so I can wait and see.

 

[Insomniak]

I really don't see what the huge issue is here. Manually enabling SLI for a game via notepad is no worse than having to enter the advanced settings screen to tweak your AA/AF settings. I think everyone is blowing up over nothing here.

Now that said, I do think it's kind of a shame this isn't automatically done through hardware, but remember that SLI is a brand new tech. I'm sure it will mature over the next couple of generations and become significantly more elegant. I invested in an SLI motherboard but not the GPUS because I wanted to wait and see the technology shaken down and de-bugged before doing my own setup. When I finally do go for an SLI setup (and it is a "when", not an "if"), I imagine things will be much improved from today's implementation.

 

[Hasbean]

That article is wrong. I've tested the Chronicles of Riddick myself and there was definitely an improvement in the framerate. All I had to do was go into the Advanced Settings in the global profile and set SLI rendering mode to "Multi-GPU Rendering." Blam, 20 fps added.

This was with the 67.03 drivers with coolbits2

 

[ohnnyj]

I've noticed the same in HL2. In some scenes witha a lot of water and reflections it would slow down and then I checked the "Mulit-GPU Rendering" mode and it changed to smooth as silk. Even though my cards were running in SLI anyway, checking this mode in the global profile for some reason gave a significant boost in performance.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Originally posted by: biostud

Originally posted by: Rollo
No...te..pad????

Is that some kind of crazy programming language only propeller heads know?!?!?!?


Owwww my head hurts at prospect of editing the config file.......



<Remembers "bad old days" of computer gaming in DOS and DOS4GW>

Playing around with different boot menu's in dos to get more free conventionel memory, assigning Expanded and Extended memory, toying with Stacker to get more harddrive space, using QEMM386 etc. Ahhhhhhhhh those were the days
It's actually quite nice to have used DOS, as it doesn't make me freeze up cold whenever a command prompt is needed.



On a side note it will be interesting to see what ATI bring up, luckuily I'm not on the verge to buying a new system so I can wait and see.

i hated stacker! qemm was great. load all those tsr's in himem and see how much free convention memory you can free. might start using edlin again just for fun holy ****, eldin is still there!

 

[nRollo]

Bottom line is anyone who wouldn't want SLI and is a gamer is lieing to themselves. You'd have to be nuts not to want this, editing configs or not. There's no "downside" to it. (other than the cost some of us are still wrestling with)

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Bottom line is anyone who wouldn't want SLI and is a gamer is lieing to themselves. You'd have to be nuts not to want this, editing configs or not. There's no "downside" to it. (other than the cost some of us are still wrestling with)

Wrong. I don't want it, even if was free, I'd sell one card.

I don't want more heat, noise and instability. My native res is 1280x1024, can you name a game in existance that I cannot play at 70Hz (I always turn vsync on) at 1280x1024 with 4x/8x AA/AF with a 6800U or X800 XT PE? Me either...

By the time I could use the extra horse power of the 6800 SLI, there will be a 512MB X950 XT out that will trounce it for half the power, noise and heat and will support DX10 and new features. SLI is for bragging rights for people who run around quoting 3dMark scores.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

or its for people who have better monitors than you do. and who cares how about heat and power. do you sit inside your pc case? lights dimming yet?

JB

 

[VIAN]

Another reason why SLI is retarded.

The reason WHY not all games have a profile is because some games may not work.
When SLI first came about, I noticed this in the Anand review, and commented on it in various threads.
SLI will NOT always be active in all games, and there *may* be issues with *some* games.
That's why nVidia don't enable it for everything.
This also means that, while 2x6600GT may perform like 1x6800GT when the 6600GT's are in SLI, they may not always be in SLI, so the 6800GT is ALWAYS the better solution, because it's equal speed when 6600's are SLI, and much faster than the SLI won't work.

NOT WORTH IT FOR A MAYBE.

or its for people who have better monitors than you do. and who cares how about heat and power. do you sit inside your pc case? lights dimming yet?

Hey, people spend twice the amount of money for a monitor called LCD just for those reasons alone at times.

SLI just isn't worth the extra cost. Why would I need to buy two 400 dollar cards when one 400 dollar card a year would be better. I would be up to date on features and have more total power because next gen cards are usually twice the performance, which SLI lacks, just 80% more or so.

The heat can hinder total system overclock and the power drain may also hinder your overclock due to instability.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. SLI mobo is more expensive and good powerful PSU will also being more expensive as well as buying another card.

So, you are wasting so much money so that you could get an 80% performance increase on some games. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If you got the money to buy one every year, go ahead and brag, but if you're someone like me where money doesn't grow on a tree in their backyard, SLI is horsesh|t.

 

[Todd33]

Originally posted by: JonnyBlaze
or its for people who have better monitors than you do. and who cares how about heat and power. do you sit inside your pc case? lights dimming yet?

JB

I never said there were not other people with different requisites, I was replying to the statement:

Bottom line is anyone who wouldn't want SLI and is a gamer is lieng to themselves.

I can afford SLI and don't want it and I'm not lying. So people should not speak for everyone else or call them liars. So if you want to run 1600x1200 8X/16X AA/AF with vsync off and don't care about noise, heat, instability, etc. Go for it, I wasn't speaking for everyone.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: VIAN
SLI just isn't worth the extra cost. Why would I need to buy two 400 dollar cards when one 400 dollar card a year would be better. I would be up to date on features and have more total power because next gen cards are usually twice the performance, which SLI lacks, just 80% more or so.

I've got a much different opinion on this. Probably due to the fact that I got in on the chumbo deal where the 6800GTs were essentially $375 a piece. 1) I can now run HL2, Doom3, and many other games I play at 2048x1536 with full details without my system puking on itself. 2) If I decided to say "screw it", I could easily sell a GT for a nice little profit.

As for buying "up to date features" and "next gen cards" with "twice the performance" every year, let's face it, that cannot be done. Anandtech first reviewed the 6800 in April. April! That'll be a year pretty soon and you still have to break your neck (and your wallet) to find 6800s today! I realize it is mostly a problem with PCI-E moreso than AGP, but you get my point. The days of refresh after 6 months and new gen 6 months after that are over.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. SLI mobo is more expensive and good powerful PSU will also being more expensive as well as buying another card.

$40-50 more for SLI mobo... plus the ability to do a mod on the Ultra and get SLI functionality. This really is moot. As for a PSU, I would say an OCZ Powerstream 520 is sufficient for running SLI. If you look at most people that purchase that PSU, they are NOT doing SLI. Therefore, I will call that point moot as well.

Really, the only thing that costs all that much extra is the 2nd video card. And, yeah, that is a chunk of change. Especially when the benefits seem slim at the moment (i.e. most games now can be maxed out with a single 6800GT), but who knows what the next round of games will require. F.E.A.R., S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Age of Empires 3, etc. They could all bring nice rigs to their knees for all we know. But probably not an SLI setup.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Todd33

Originally posted by: Rollo
Bottom line is anyone who wouldn't want SLI and is a gamer is lieing to themselves. You'd have to be nuts not to want this, editing configs or not. There's no "downside" to it. (other than the cost some of us are still wrestling with)

Wrong. I don't want it, even if was free, I'd sell one card.

I don't want more heat, noise and instability. My native res is 1280x1024, can you name a game in existance that I cannot play at 70Hz (I always turn vsync on) at 1280x1024 with 4x/8x AA/AF with a 6800U or X800 XT PE? Me either...

By the time I could use the extra horse power of the 6800 SLI, there will be a 512MB X950 XT out that will trounce it for half the power, noise and heat and will support DX10 and new features. SLI is for bragging rights for people who run around quoting 3dMark scores.

Man 'oh man.