• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

570 in SLI for Oblivion

liscoe

liscoe

liscoe

Associate
Joined
7 Feb 2011
Posts
64
I am thinking of buying another 570 to use in SLI...

The reason is that I'm running a heavily modded Oblivion at high settings which with the single 570 only hits about 20fps.

Am wondering how well Oblivion will scale with SLI, this being the only route open to me a really as I already have the one 570. Also will my 850W BeQuiet psu handle two of these cards plus an oc 2600K (I believe it will).

My spec:
Asus P67 Pro
8GB Patriot RAM 1600MHz
2600K oc to 4.5GHz
GTX 570
850W PSU
 
Your problem is more likely to be:

Incompatibility/poor implemented mod(s)
Not enough CPU horse power (not the first thing that springs to mind with a 4.5gig SB but see point 1)
Not enough VRAM
Incompatibility with HDR and AA

None of which SLI will help, you want to eliminate those first, Oblivion isn't exactly complex shader heavy and a single 570 has more than enough raw pixel/polygon shovelling performance to handle anything Oblivion can throw at it.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for prompt reply:-)

I have been trying to track down the bottleneck using GPUZ, SIV, resource monitor etc and fairly sure that it is the graphics card.

Am a fairly experienced modder (4 years) so don't think that the problem is mod related, I have a new build of oblivion on a new build pc. I also have various decent mods to prevent problems like this- streamline, stutter remover etc.

CPU rarely gets above 15% usage whilst in game although I haven't as yet implemented the various ways to spread Oblivion threads over multiple cores.

VRAM usage does seem quite high, max usage whilst in game is 1260MB usually running about 1100MB, GPU load is running about 80%. I do have various large texture mods running- Quarls Redimized and Better cities, will have to test VRAM with these uninstalled.

I'm running HDR in game and then forcing AA through Nvidia Control Panel, tried turning HDR off but this makes no difference.

What has led me to my conclusion is the fact that when I remove AA, antialiasing etc from the equation (via Nvidia control panel) my frame rates jump right up to 60fps (except for some reason in towns where they are still 20ish- must be better cities mod). This is really what has lead me to believe that it is a graphics issue...

If VRAM is the issue (see above), am I right in thinking that SLI does not increase VRAM amount? If so I may be stuck :-(

Obviously I will use my SLI power for other games (crysis 2 etc) but it's predominantly my obsession with oblivion that I am focusing on!
 
Unfortunatly in SLI you don't gain double the VRAM.

If it is related to AA then at the very least you could use SLI AA mode - even in games that don't work with SLI you can use SLI AA to spread the AA load resulting in higher performance (or better quality AA with the same performance).

I don't really have any recent experience with SLI and Oblivion - the last time I used SLI with it was back with the 7950GX2 which I seem to remember I had to modify or create an SLI profile to get it working properly - but the 4096x texture packs were hitting the VRAM causing quite a bit of slowdown.
 
The only mod that bought my 8800GTX SLI to it's knees what the Full Fat Qual's Texture Pack (3 i think). Without that it was smooth as slik with dozens of mods in place. I now have a 460GTX in SLI, twice as much grunt, so should be loads better
 
Well, I've done a bit more research and it is looking more and more likely that my problems are AA related although VRAM may be an issue too...

Basically running with forced AA etc through Nvidia control panel reduces my fps from 40-60 to 15-30 even with the texture packs removed. The exception to this is in cities with the 'better cities' mod enabled where even with no AA I'm stuck at about 17fps (removing better cities gives me 40fps no AA).

With texture packs VRAM averages about 1100MB and peaks at 1260MB, without it's more like 600MB- I am surprised at this given that they were designed to run on the 512-1024MB cards from a few years ago...

So I imagine that another 570 in SLI will improve my performance although whether it's worth £250 is another matter especially as I'm not 100% certain how much effect the VRAM is having. Maybe I'd be better selling my 570 (really don't want the hassle!) and buying a 580 or even an ATI card with larger amounts of VRAM on board.

What a massive pain in the bum. Especially considering I built this pc for oblivion thinking I'd finally be able to play it with everything maxed out...

And in answer to your question whipgeez- it looks amazing!!! Although it's really the gameplay that the mods improve, like having a game developed by thousands of people over the past 5 years :-)
 
You could sell your gtx570 and pick up a rev 1 6950 2gb. This way you could unlock the card to a 6970 and lose no performance comparing to a stock gtx570. You will gain the extra memory and at the same time lose no money. If you still don't have enough grunt you could then add another and have a faster solution than gtx570 sli as crossfire scales better.

Another option to get extra ram would be a pair of gtx480's. As you probably know these cards are famous for heat and noise which may bother you.
 
Last edited:
I know, I just don't want the hassle of selling my 570 (not got the box etc) and rebuilding my machine again... Sigh.

It's an idea though, does the rev 1 6950 always unlock? And why does crossfire scale better?

Looked at the 480's but don't want the heat/noise issue really (which is why I thought I was being clever getting the 570...).
 
Crossfire scales better atm due to the 6 series architecture. The amd 5 series scaled worse than sli gtx4/5 cards but as soon as the amd 6 series cards came along crossfire had an advantage.

I think all rev 1 cards unlock unless the card is faulty. To get a 6950 2gb card and it not run as a 6970 you would have to be very unlucky. I have not seen any posts on here with people that could not unlock the extra performance.
 
Well that's certainly food for thought, it all depends whether my lack of fps is linked to available VRAM. More testing needed I think.

Is there any reason to buy the 570 (either in SLI or not) over the 6950?

I wonder if it would be too cheeky to order another 570, test oblivion and return it (and replace with 6950's) if it turns out to be a VRAM issue and the second 570 doesn't improve matters. I have a feeling that is the only way I'll find out for certain.

My quest for oblivion perfection continues, only 3 years now and counting...
 
I'd literally stick it in to test it and that's it, although maybe ATI is the way to go anyway...

Thanks for the assistance, I shall now ponder for as long as it takes me to sum up the courage to spend all that money.
 
Run Afterburner, it should report on VRAM usage for NVIDIA cards and let you know if that's the bottleneck. The RAEVWD stuff is what kills my framerates the most. You can always try the Redimized version of Qarls.

Edit: Even with all of that installed, my framerates on a flashed 6950 dont drop anywhere near as badly as yours do.
 
Last edited:
I did the same thing with my 460. Ordered another to try SLI - it was a lack of VRAM in my case, so I returned it under DSR. They were absolutely fine with it. I literally plugged it in, tried it, and took it out.
 
sldsmkd said:
Run Afterburner, it should report on VRAM usage for NVIDIA cards and let you know if that's the bottleneck. The RAEVWD stuff is what kills my framerates the most. You can always try the Redimized version of Qarls.

Edit: Even with all of that installed, my framerates on a flashed 6950 dont drop anywhere near as badly as yours do.
Click to expand...

Using more VRAM than there is on the card doesn't automatically mean an fps drop tho - you could be 100s of MB over but if the game only needs to swap a few 10s of MB around per second then you might not even see a hit or conversely you could be only a few 10s of MB over but the game needs to swap around 100s of MB on a regular basis causing massive performance loss.
 
Be interested to hear how you get on with your testing. Will be on a similar quest for Oblivion perfection when I get my new rig next month.
 
I play a very heavily modded Oblivion and have the same problem with fps, usually around 15-20 fps outside but reallt high fps in dungeons.

I actually got better frame rates on 5870 than with my GTX 580, also, all be it briefly I tried a 6990 when I had it for one night and fps was about the same a 5870.

I play with better cities, Quarls and also the mod that increases the view distances off all dungeons and cites etc which is a fps killer but you can see the captial city from the mountain Temple and vice versa so I love it due to the immersion factor.

lol you can the spire dlc from over half the map away.

For those of you that don't know, this what modded Oblivion looks like. first few pages have a few pictures.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=405321

http://deadendthrills.com/guides/look-good-modded-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/4/

To be honest I think it is the CPU thats holds Oblivion back as it can only use one core. Plus it runs like a dog and crashes quite a lot so a mod like Streamline is essential.

But it is a lovely looking lovely game when modded with all the different mods.

Just think of the possibilites with Skyrim, drools...
 
Okay I take back what I said before about VRAM.

The game is CPU limited, with Qarls, Better Cities etc I get around 15-20fps in the Imperial City with around 20% utilisation of my GPU. Task manager reports a single core of my i7 is pegged. SLI or a switch to ATI cards will do nothing for you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom