980 SLI with X99 Artifacting in BF4

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Blackstone

2[H]4U
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Mar 8, 2007
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Here is the deal. I need some comments.

Previous rig with X58 with GTX980 SLI. System was unstable and BF4 would lock up the action got thick. System would reboot itself after 20-30 minutes of gaming. Also, when resolution scale was turned up, performance would tank. So I was bottlenecked for sure.

Just rebuilt the entire system. New PSU. New CPU, x99 mobo..see my signature. Nothing is really overclocked.

NOW, I put the GTX980 SLI (two cards) in the new rig and now everything is smooth as butter, even resolution scale at like 175% is smooth as butter. This is at 1080p. If you aren't familiar with resolutions scale, 200% resolutions scale would tax the card like 4k, but at 1080p resolution. It is like anti-aliasing or downsampling. Very GPU intensive. BUT, there is artifacting in BF4 and I have seen artifacting on the desktop too. I never had artifacts on the old system with these cards, but I also never had frame rates this high. It is like this square made up of pixels that shows up on screen or this glimmering flashing thing from star trek. I can sort of get it to go away by lowering resolution scale, but again, performance with resolution scale at 175% is killer so why should I have to lower it just to get rid of some artifacts. Sometimes the artifacting is there as soon as the level loads. System does not lockup or reboot anymore, however.

I cannot reproduce the issue in Heaven Benchmark and temps on the GPUs hover at between 79-80 degrees. No higher.

The question is, given that I have seen similar artifacting in game and on the desktop as well, are the cards the most likely culprit for RMA or should I try something else first. The system seems very stable and the game runs fantastically smooth. There is just artifacting cropping up that suggests a problem. Thoughts?
 
Well, first up is to test them one card at a time, see if it's one, or both, or only together.
 
So I tested this morning. With both cards in SLI, the same artifact appears in both Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3. It is like a square made up of pixel artifacts that appears below and to the left of where your gun is on the screen.

With SLI disabled, both cards seem to work fine independently. When the artifacts do appear, they appear immediately when the level loads and the rendering begins. It is not something that pops up as the game progresses. I know from watching Heaven that it takes a while for the cards to reach 80 degrees, so this is probably not heat related. Any thoughts?
 
video card overheating is causing that, if its not the gpu then its most likely the memory or vrm on the video card.

does the same thing happen when you run bf4 at default res scale?

which 980's are you using? reference or non reference? my 980 MSI 4G's in SLI never go above 65c during gaming, mostly due to my case being packed with Noctua Industrial fans.


oh and by the way, your gpu's would go way higher than 80c if you allow them to, they are designed to throttle down around 79-80c.

you need to add some real exhaust fans to your case, and since you are using x99 board you should have extra space between PCIE slots, try to put them apart as far as possible if you can, because Card 1 is most likely sucking up all the heat from the 2nd card, causing it to overheat.
 
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TroyX said:
video card overheating is causing that, if its not the gpu then its most likely the memory or vrm on the video card.

does the same thing happen when you run bf4 at default res scale?

which 980's are you using? reference or non reference? my 980 MSI 4G's in SLI never go above 65c during gaming, mostly due to my case being packed with Noctua Industrial fans.


oh and by the way, your gpu's would go way higher than 80c if you allow them to, they are designed to throttle down around 79-80c.

you need to add some real exhaust fans to your case, and since you are using x99 board you should have extra space between PCIE slots, try to put them apart as far as possible if you can, because Card 1 is most likely sucking up all the heat from the 2nd card, causing it to overheat.
Click to expand...

I just RMA'd both cards. It can't be overheating because it happens right out of the gate as soon as the level loads and on the desktop. Not enough time for cards to overheat. Reference coolers but it is an EVGA SC model. Case has an intake fan feeding the cards directly and a huge 180mm intake on the top. Two really powerful corsair 120mm fans in push pull are exhausting out the back as part of Corsair h80i cpu cooler. Cards are no where near as cool as yours, they definitely are hitting 80c. This case has never been great about cooling video cards but I should be able to run two cards in there.
 
I've had the same problem with 980 SLI, I actually bought 4 cards and tried all sorts of dual card combinations between the four and all cards OCed just fine with no artifacts up to 1500mhz but no 2 card combination could run stock without artifacts. I just chalked it up to SLI not behaving well with the drivers.
 
dragonageinquisition said:
I've had the same problem with 980 SLI, I actually bought 4 cards and tried all sorts of dual card combinations between the four and all cards OCed just fine with no artifacts up to 1500mhz but no 2 card combination could run stock without artifacts. I just chalked it up to SLI not behaving well with the drivers.
Click to expand...

Lol, totally sucks.

Just got over my SLI confusion, 780 ti classifieds.

Was using custom skynet bios, cards benched perfect w/ firestrike performance/extreme (crashed in games though). Enabling SLI always stuck on black screen and forced hard reset. Switch to normal bios and no issues....and was able to enable/disable sli. Shut down and switched back to custom bios with sli enabled without going back into control panel.....weird to me...

Good luck though.
 
Custom fan profile seems to have helped. 20 degree difference in GPU temps. The stock profile is inadequate for SLI.
 
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