Your prefered SLI mode?

[sunlitsix]

All of you with SLI systems, what is your prefered rendering mode?

I did afew test earlier and i cant seem to find any differences between them, except for SLI AA.

Test Bed

Athlon 64 X2 4400+ @ FX60
1Gb ram
Asus A8N-SLI SE
7600GT's in SLI with both cards at stock

I know it may vary between games, and that CSS stress test isnt the best benchmark to use but still :

Results

Ran with everything set to high, 4xAA (with SSAA enabled) 16xAF 1280x1024
Just for some sort of comparison between single and SLI, with the one 7600GT i got 85fps in the stress test.
Also to test for any cpu bottlneck i ran the test with no AA/AF - 163fps

SLI Rendering Mode

Auto Select = 131fps
Alternate Frame 1 = 130fps
Alternate Frame 2 = 130fps
Split-Frame = 129fps
Single GPU = 131fps (clearly this option doesnt work)
SLI 4xAA mode = 152fps
SLI 8xAA mode = 90fps
SLI 16xAA mode = 48fps

So as you can see the only major difference is the use of the SLI AA mode, which gave me a big increase in FPS. I will test this mode on other games, but from this test it appears to be the best SLI rendering mode to use

 

[Gashman]

wait a minute, i knew there were different SLI rendering modes, where are these options located?

 

[sunlitsix]

here :

 

[Gashman]

class, what do these options do, SLIAA allows 16AA?

 

[sunlitsix]

the options supposedly set the cards to render the game different ways, but from the results above and i tryed COD2 last night i cant see any difference between the modes

 

[Reality|Bites]

That's because cod2 is probably locked at AFR(predefined)

 

[sunlitsix]

do the predefined profiles work automatically when the game starts?

 

[Reality|Bites]

only if you have the boxes checked in each profile, other wise they will use the global settings

 

[Trilogy]

emmm i'll give it a try

 

[sunlitsix]

please report back with any differences between the modes, if you find any that is

 

[The Asgard]

One that works.

You cant say there is a best one. Preferd is AFR but that doesn't work in all games. COH works best with AFR2. Titan Quest SFR. Hence all the modes.

 

[Plasmoid]

If i remember correctly SLI antialiasing is setting 1 card to just handle the AA and one card to handle the rendering... so your getting whatever fps the first card can get rendering without AA.

AFR is really the best for quality and performance when it works right, since the load is balanced in both rendering and then AA.

That being said thats the theory, i dont have SLI and i wouldnt be suprised if when a game has poor or no sli optimising unusual things performance gains can be had.

 

[sunlitsix]

taken from nvidias FAQ :

SLI Antialiasing is a new standalone rendering mode that offers up to double the antialiasing performance by splitting the antialiasing workload between the two graphics cards. When enabled, SLI Antialiasing offers two new antialiasing options: SLI8x and SLI16x. A Quad SLI system is capable of SLI32x.