Oblivion, faster without SLI on my system?

[PolestaR]

I have been playing with Oblivion for about 8 hours now, most of that with SLI enabled. Performance was adequate but a little jerky (hey I have a lot of the details on). Anyhow just for kicks I decided to turn off SLI and try it and lo and behold I was getting about +40% more FPS in the outdoor scenes....

Possibly its a bug or something, anyhow I'm using 81.98 drivers and tried both SFR and AFR2. I'm also using Windows XP64. BTW SLI did appear to work because I got the load bar coming up and all, so it "was working" just not adding to performance, rather subtracting from it.

[PolestaR]

Ok just did some FRAPS testing with one scene in the forest here are my results :-

With SLI :- 17fps steady
Without SLI :- 21fps steady

So I'm thinking either this game is severly CPU limited and enabling SLI just kills the performance that little bit more, or there is a bug with SLI.

I am using an AMD64 2.4GHz to run this game.

[bobrownik]

sli and crossfire are the broken toys for rich kids ,

it works ,,..... well ,sometimes ,

with crossfire you usually lose the fps that you had with a singe card ,
......lol , i guess its the same for sli ,

[PolestaR]

Just did a little further testing with the SLI load balance bars on. They aren't even a quarter being used in SLI mode. This is a scene with heavy forest and heavy grass. So it seems this game is bound by something other than the GPU, most likely the CPU.

It would seem to be in the moving the leaves of the trees and the moving of the grass eats up into the CPU, along with the RADIANT AI. Anyhow everyone who bought SLI to play this game to the maximum might be cursing themselves like I am.

[LordBritish]

I ordered a 7900 GTX and didn't bother getting another one.

I distrust SLI at this moment and would rather buy the fastest single card solution.

Yes I could have got 2 7800GTXs for the same price - but whichh one is better?

Obviously the single 7900 GTX is better.

[Brent_Justice]

You said you are running WinXP x64 and an older driver, that is probably the problem, a driver problem.

Hopefully NV will release a newer driver with Oblivion fixes for x64 users, right now there is just that new driver on NZone for x32 users. sorry

[zandor]

It certainly feels CPU bound. I've been running at 1280x800. I tried one notch down from that (something x 612 or something like that... the next 16:10 mode down) and it looked like crap & didn't run a lot better. I haven't tried it at 640x480, which is sort of required for a proper CPU-boundness test. It sure feels like Morrowind though. I had a P3 1.0 when I got Morrowind, and with a Parhelia 640x480 vs. 2048x1536 was only a few fps difference. The text was too small at 2048x1536 though, so I played through the game at 1600x1200. It was probably the only game I've ever had where a CPU upgrade resulted in running at lower res.
On an SLI rig I'd wager you probably need more CPU to get the same framerate on a CPU bound game. Something has to do some work to divide the rendering job up between two cards, and I'm betting that something is the CPU.

[Brent_Justice]

I'm recieving a big perf boost with two 7900 GTX's in SLI over a single 7900 GTX in this game, it is definitely GPU limited. Of course that is with x32 Windows. I am willing to bet this persons problem is with the 81.98 drivers in x64 in Oblivion.

[meatfestival]

any problems should be sorted with the new drivers which have a profile for Oblivion. I should be getting my second 7800GTX soon, so I'll be able to test it for myself

[Xenozx]

I think this game is CPU bound as well. I have 7900 GTX and did some serious testing. I tried everything from 1280x1024 with no extras on to 1600x1200 4xaa 16x af and also HDR and 16x af. To be honest FPS in certain areas only differed by maybe 10 fps. I dont think the graphics are the problem, the processor calculating all those damn physics for grass and trees etc is the problem. Thats why its hard to find someone on here who has a single core who isnt complaining about issues. I have an overclocked dual core at 2.5 ghz which is why I think I get along better then the single core people.

I could be wrong but I believe this game to be physics/cpu limited as well.

[Stereophile]

I really doubt it is that cpu bound.
The problem is the graphics engine.
Similiar issues to MW. :rolleyes:
It runs slowly and will bog down sometimes no matter what kind of system you're running.

Amazing game though. :)

[Hupo]

Does my x800xl have sli?

[Xenozx]

Does my x800xl have sli?

nope... If you had 2 of them you would have Crossfire :D

[movax]

Does my x800xl have sli?I forgive your drunkenness.

(No, it does not have SLi. SLi is an nvidia tech. Crossfire is ATI's take on multiple-card solutions.)

[Xenozx]

I forgive your drunkenness.

(No, it does not have SLi. SLi is an nvidia tech. Crossfire is ATI's take on multiple-card solutions.)

Your kind, I was thinkin crack, or weed.

[movax]

Mmm, must be some pretty damn strong stuff in his pipe. :D

[FingerSlut]

in 1280x1024 every detail maxed one card beat my sli setup.

in 1600x1200, the sli destroyed the fps. Don't starve your rig of information and you'll prolly get better results.

[Hupo]

:( :(

[meatfestival]

have a look in my documents/my games/oblivion/rendererinfo.txt

there is a line in there for SLI, not sure whether this gets enabled when you have SLI enabled? Anyone know?

[oqvist]

I get 50-60 % performance boost with my 2x7800 GT in SLI. So definiatly Oblivion does make use of SLI :).

I run 1280x960x32 max drawing distance everything but shadow slider midway. 8x anisotrophic in high quality mode. HDR enabled and thus no AA. Running the 84.25 Oblivion drivers...

[Iratus]

The thing I've found odd is that the point at which you become CPU Bound level seems so low.

I'm running an OC'd 4400+ with a 7900GTX and get 19fps in the forest/valley with everything at max and HDR enabled however I get the same fps for 10*7 right up to 1920*1200. Usually that would mean I am CPU bound.

In the cities my graphics are pegged at 60fps up to 1600*1200 with 1920*1200 runs at 45fps.

I've had a fiddle with loads of the settings whilst standing in the valley and I can't get that exterior fps to go above 19 whatever I do. Really f'ing annoying.

Surely the exterior can't be that much of a cpu hog?

Anybody else experienced this?