NOOB SLI HELP

[Massive Attack]

hi guys

just got a second 7900GS to sli and i was wondering which is the best sli setting as there is quite a few and some are really bad

this is whats in the drop own list

Auto select
Alternate frrame rendering
Alternate frame rendering 2
Split Frame rendering
Single GPU rendering
SLI Antialiasing

now i am trying to get the best score from 3d mark so i dont want to use the antialiasing

cheers

 

[Duff-Man]

Your best bet is to leave it on auto-select.

Games will usually select the best SLI mode from that list. Basically, for 3dmark, it will choose Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR). This is where one card renders one frame and the other renders the next. Most games use this mode... it is the most efficient in terms of the raw number of frames that are put out, but personally I don't like it since the frames are not put out at completely regular intervals. So, 60fps in AFR is not as smooth as 60fps with a single card.

In games where each frames needs info from the previous (for some post-process effects etc), split-frame rendering is used. In this mode one card draws the top part of the screen and another draws the bottom part. The amount of the screen given to each card changes depending on the load in each part. This mode isn't able to pump quite as many frames through as AFR, but personally I prefer it. At least with this mode 50fps is 50fps full stop.

 

[Massive Attack]

thanks a lot for all the info has given me a better understanding of how it all works.

 

[V|per]

you can select modes in sli? now i feel like a n00b all over again


Cheers for that info Duff-Man, very informative

 

[Duff-Man]

you can select modes in sli? now i feel like a n00b all over again


Cheers for that info Duff-Man, very informative

You CAN select the modes, but for the most part it's better to let the game select them itself.

There are a few games which used AFR by default which I switched to SFR and didn't see a huge performance drop. But for the most part, running a mode other than the default for that game turns out to be a bad idea (performance drops or instability). This is going back to the GF6 and GF7 generations though - I'm not using SLI anymore and I don't intend to again. I might check out crossfire sometime though...