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Impressed with SLI

Devious

Devious

Devious

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2003
Posts
4,178
Location
UK
I finally sorted out my SLI GTX 670's last week and Ive got to say i'm impressed :)

Ive only ever gone crossfire before with dual 4850's when Crysis/Stalker was released and the stuttering did my head in.


I already had a Giga Winforce 3X but bought one of the KFA2 cards with external blower (when they were on offer the other week) to go in the lower slot but it just would not boot in that configuration.

I tried it in the top slot but it was hitting 80c+in no time at all and with the fan at 80% and it sounded like a hoover.
So i returned that and got another windforce 3X and its all running sweet. Not seen any stuttering as of yet.



I had to try crysis again and runs 80 fps with everything on. Seems like a new game with it running buttery smooth.

Ive been holding off playing metro 2033 until I can in its full glory (DX11) and now I can and it is 90% of the time above 60 with the rare dip into the 40's. Awesome atmosphere in that.



The top card never goes above 75c while the bottom card is around 65c, the only problem Im seeing after a long playgin sesh is my case is gettign very warm and starting to heat my cpu water cooling. I thought my MM u2-ufo with its many fans would keep it cool but It could do with another extractor fan near the cards. I may need to see if there is any pci bracket fans.

Another small issue Ive noticed but havent spent much time with is overclocking. Ive only used PrecisionX and eveytyime I have over clocked my scores go down in Heaven even though the cards arnt getting hot enough to throttle.


Happy enough on stock though for now. :)
 
yeh SLI is quality, with my modest 470's adding that extra one was crazy in yields in crysis. I always go back to that game as remember running it at 30-40fps back in the day.

It's funny, people think its normal for PC gaming to always be >60fps but many of us used to have to play at 30-40fps when games like oblivion and crysis launched there were no cards that could beast-mode it
 
SLI 670s are awesome. Shame I had to get rid of mine, but I think I'm going for a water-cooled v1.3+ Titan next! :)
 
Suarez7 said:
Hardware based frame pacing > software based frame pacing

Every time.
Click to expand...

What makes hardware based frame pacing better though? Apart from the fact Nvidia have been doing it for much longer. The fact AMD have got it to a stage where you can't notice the difference in just a few months says that maybe software based frame pacing is not as bad as you'd think. Still room for improvement no doubt but if you can't tell a difference unless you have FCAT i couldn't give a rats ass.

Guru3d said:
Comparing apples to oranges, when you look at the charts NVIDIA still has a better overall solution as their latencies differentials for each even and odd frame are a hint better. But the difference with AMD is very close, so close that we doubt very much it can be seen visually. We are pretty sure that over time, AMDs frame pacing algorithm will get even more refined as remember, NVIDIA has been working on this rendering anomaly (or byproduct if you will) for a much longer time.
Click to expand...

Source
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_framepacing_review_with_catalyst_13_8_fcat,13.html


In other words we're basically talking a difference of 61 and 61.5 fps.
 
LtMatt said:
What makes hardware based frame pacing better though? Apart from the fact Nvidia have been doing it for much longer. The fact AMD have got it to a stage where you can't notice the difference in just a few months says that maybe software based frame pacing is not as bad as you'd think. Still room for improvement no doubt but if you can't tell a difference unless you have FCAT i couldn't give a rats ass.
Click to expand...

It's not completely fixed in all games, even PCPER said AMD wouldn't be able to totally fix the problem until they implement hardware based frame pacing like nVidia.
 
Suarez7 said:
It's not completely fixed in all games, even PCPER said AMD wouldn't be able to totally fix the problem until they implement hardware based frame pacing like nVidia.
Click to expand...

Directx 9 and opengl aren't fixed yet, granted. But in dx10/11 games you won't notice a difference.

Luckily for me i dont play any dx9 or opengl games.

EDIT

I thought a 690 was the only card with hardware based frame pacing ?
 
Last edited:
illuz said:
SLI 670s are awesome. Shame I had to get rid of mine, but I think I'm going for a water-cooled v1.3+ Titan next! :)
Click to expand...
Sounds nice mate.:)

Still running sli'd wf's here, pleasantly surprised at temps im getting, (71 and 55c). Despite my current board being tighter spaced than my previous Z77 V Pro.
 
setter said:
Still running sli'd wf's here, pleasantly surprised at temps im getting, (71 and 55c). Despite my current board being tighter spaced than my previous Z77 V Pro.
Click to expand...

That would kill me. Having my cards running at drastically different temps. I've switched my cards round as one runs slightly hotter than the other. As with all setups the top card runs a bit hotter so if i switch my gpu's round and run the cooler one on top then both my cards operate at identical temps, or within 1c of each other. When that happens i can sleep easy at night.

Ocd? I'd say so.
 
Ideally id love both to run similairly, then i could oc em. But with cards like the wf this isnt gonna be possible. Had reference 470's that ran within 2c of each other. In another x58 rig i had wf 460's in sli, one hit 98c after a minute in bf3, though they were pretty close together. For games though i dont really need them oc'd tbh, bf3 gets fantastic frame rates and very good use of the cards, (93%, stock cpu). Would like to see higher but having a nightmare clocking this cpu.
 
setter said:
Ideally id love both to run similairly, then i could oc em. But with cards like the wf this isnt gonna be possible. Had reference 470's that ran within 2c of each other. In another x58 rig i had wf 460's in sli, one hit 98c after a minute in bf3, though they were pretty close together. For games though i dont really need them oc'd tbh, bf3 gets fantastic frame rates and very good use of the cards, (93%, stock cpu). Would like to see higher but having a nightmare clocking this cpu.
Click to expand...

Yeah understandable. I could live with it if i had to. I have the worst clocking card of my two in slot one just because it runs cooler and that means i can keep my temps identical. Sad isn't it. :p
 
My best clocker, (+130/+700) is in the top slot, as a single card it stayed sub 70c in games/benchmarks. Second card only manages +80 core, +600 on memory. Those are the clocks ive settled on for benching the pair in sli. Was gonna buy another one similair to the original, but blew the money on the 4770k instead. Think i did see a screenshot of your cards Matt with ab osd running, good going as you dont often see temps so close on an sli/xfire pairing. Shows how good the ice-q coolers are.
 
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