GTX 680 SLI - Poor performance

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M4D4SS

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Mar 23, 2010
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I wasn't too pleased with the fps that one single 680 gave me in BF4 so I bought another one. About 80% increase in fps was I hoping for but that was not the case. The fps stayed almost the same. Turns out that the GPU usage is really low. About 30-50% each. Which means having another card is totally useless unless you want the cards to run really low.
My CPU 3930k is clocked at 4.4Ghz. I highly doubt that something is bottle necking THAT much for the GPU usage to stay below 50%.

The other day I tried some CSS and the same issue could be found there. The GPU usage was around 15%. The fps could dip below 50 some times due to the heavy modding and large number of players on the servers (64-players on the screen). I would much rather have a GPU usage at 80% so that I can have a constant 120fps (120hz monitor).
 
Your theorizing about your CPU usage and it's impact isn't particularly useful. Go back and get some actual data about your CPU usage and then we can go from there. I have GTX680 SLI with a 2500k @ 5Ghz and I run into CPU bottlenecks that limit my GPUs more often than you might imagine.

Also, what resolution do you run at? Are you monitoring your VRam usage at all?
 
GotNoRice said:
Your theorizing about your CPU usage and it's impact isn't particularly useful. Go back and get some actual data about your CPU usage and then we can go from there. I have GTX680 SLI with a 2500k @ 5Ghz and I run into CPU bottlenecks that limit my GPUs more often than you might imagine.

Also, what resolution do you run at? Are you monitoring your VRam usage at all?
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Why would my CPU usage have any meaning? It's at 20% usage when playing BF4. The GPU usage goes from 30-50% in BF4. Is Vram the same as Memory Usage in Afterburner?
I usually play at 1440x1080 but sometimes 1920x1080.
 
I assume SLI is enabled in control panel. Try uninstalling the drivers and reinstall them
 
QKSILVR73 said:
I assume SLI is enabled in control panel. Try uninstalling the drivers and reinstall them
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If that was the case then one GPU would be sitting real low at like 1-3%. But yes, your drvers should be up to date.

I too have a 2500k but only at 4.5Ghz. Still, I get at least 75% performance increase with my second card. Not all my games max out my GPU's but my CPU never really gets maxed out either.

Make sure in you Nvidia control panel settings that you power management mode is set to 'Prefer maximum performance'. I would also check to see if any other settings might be awry.

Another thing, is your SLI bridge installed on the correct slots? It should be on the slots closest to the backside of your case (If you looking at the inside with the case right side up then that would be to the left)

They should be running at 16x/16x on a 2011 MB. If not 8x/8x would still be fine. Double check to make sure your lanes are at the right speeds.
 
I believe I'm using the Asus RAMPAGE IV EXTREME and all slots are x16.

Prefer maximum performance is already on.

I've reinstalled the drivers several times already and yes I am running the latest drivers.

If I remember correctly, the GPU usage in Bioshock Infinite was 90+%. Not sure why its so horrible for CSS and BF4. Even in CoD4 the usage is around 10%.
 
M4D4SS said:
I believe I'm using the Asus RAMPAGE IV EXTREME and all slots are x16.

Prefer maximum performance is already on.

I've reinstalled the drivers several times already and yes I am running the latest drivers.

If I remember correctly, the GPU usage in Bioshock Infinite was 90+%. Not sure why its so horrible for CSS and BF4. Even in CoD4 the usage is around 10%.
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Sorry-just to make sure-but you are monitoring the usage for both cards, correct?

Are all of your games installed onto the same drive?
 
B!nd. said:
Sorry-just to make sure-but you are monitoring the usage for both cards, correct?

Are all of your games installed onto the same drive?
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Yes, both cards are functioning and working.
Yes, all games are installed on my SSD drive.
 
I have dual 680's too and in BF4 I get a constant 97%-99% GPU usage on both, so it's definitely something on your end, reinstall the OS?
 
Op did you mention your power supply? Could you possibly be underpowered for those cards? I imagine they draw close to 500w each...
 
Run CCleaner. Clean out your user profile, including the advanced options (Except the wipe free space) Also clean the registry out with the 2nd part of the utility. Also keep in mind that anything above 1920x1080 becomes GPU dependent. You need a decent CPU in order for that CPU to keep feeding commands to your GPU so that your GPU is not waiting for the instructions from the CPU and becomes a bottleneck.
 
cyberjihad said:
Op did you mention your power supply? Could you possibly be underpowered for those cards? I imagine they draw close to 500w each...
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500W each? Lol... no not even remotely, they won't even pull that combined.

Not sure what the problem is here, I'm running a pair as well and get full usage. Are they from the same vendor? There could be some funny business between the Firmware revisions throwing things off. The early release versions of the 680 had some massive power usage fluctuations (seriously that power usage graph was all over the shop). Later revisions smoothed things out considerably.
 
Yeah a good quality 500w-600w power supply will run them in SLI smoothy, if they are the same cards(models) then I would also make sure they both have the same firmware
 
Corsair AX850 850W
They are both EVGA but not from the same year.

I'll do some cleaning and 3Dmak11.
 
M4D4SS said:
Couldn't find that option.
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In CCleaner, your profile are all the options checked in the "Cleaner" tab (first side tab) click on all options except the "Wipe Free Space" and hit "Run Cleaner" in the lower right hand side of the dialog box. After you do that, run registry tweaker (2nd Tab on the left) and hit all the check boxes. After you repair all these issues, do a full shutdown of the system, do not reboot. Then you can manually turn back on your system.
 
pontiac4life said:
With my setup in my Signature and clocks I get P17800 in 3dMark11, just for reference
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Was having some issues running the software. Finally got it working and this was my final score: P15229

However, the GPU usage was around 80-90%. Which is good...
 
pontiac4life said:
So going back to BF4 what is your GPU usage? Make sure you turn off Vsync
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I never use Vsync. The GPU usage seem tp be higher but I can't 100% sure. It goes up to 90% sometimes, but also drops. Might have to try some more maps.
 
pontiac4life said:
Use the single player campaign to test. Use an OSD to monitor the usage's
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It could also be that I increased the graphics.

Was trying out CSS and the usage was around 10-20% with dips of 60fps. Not cool...

I monitor the usage with MSI afterburner on my second monitor.
 
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Move the cards to different slots if you can. Sounds like a resource issue like I had with my gtx570sc.
 
Are you overclocking? I just picked up a pair of Asus DC2 770's and while I can pass all the stability testing I please at up to 8GHz memory speeds and 1306 boost, one of my cards will start dropping down to as low as 50% usage almost at once in benchmarks like 3DMark or Unengine Valley, doesn't matter if it's primary or secondary card (takes a bit longer in games, but it happens there too).

To keep GPU usage in the 90'% range on that particular card, I need to back down my VRAM to a much milder overclock (doesn't matter what I do with the GPU speed, or power/temp target settings).

The other thing I've found is that tuning with either Afterburner, Precision X, or GPU Tweak, I MUST reboot after every change to VRAM speeds once I've triggered the drop in GPU usage. After I've found a good RAM speed, it's fine reboot after reboot, but as soon as I tweak up or down I need to power cycle the cards or it's back to low GPU usage.

Unlike older GPUs that'll just start freaking out if RAM is clocked too high, letting you see it right away, Kepler units seems to have a bit more robust error checking, and simply slows things down if it detects errors. But that slowdown state, once triggered, seems to persist until power off.
 
Surprises me you're having issues in css, not bf4 so much.

My build is very similar, except i have three 680s.
I had this issue in bf3, until evga released 'k boost' for precision x.

what this basically does is lock your gpu clocks at full load. so basically 99% usage at all times.
give it a try, this fixed my issues.
 
K Boost will lock your clocks but has nothing to do with usage though, you can have K Boost on and be running at full clock but have usage between 0%-100%
 
If your running windows 8 or 8.1 then that might be the problem. I went back to windows 7 pro 64bit and all my issues with Sli went away. Then again it could have been because of the fresh OS install
 
Did the same thing bought another 680 a couple days ago and threw it in without a fresh install and the cards ran like crap. Now they run about 80 to 90 percent load
 
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