Crysis 3 and SLI

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B!nd.

Gawd
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Mar 14, 2012
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Saw a similar thread but felt this may bring up a different discussion.

I updated my drivers to 314.07 before I began playing C3. Running very high at 1080p with no AA I'm getting around 70-90 FPS full GPU utilization. But, I have barely made it past the first room because my FPS and GPU usage randomly tank to 20-30 FPS and about 40% usage. Then go back up. It makes it unplayable.

I figure this is an SLI driver issue because I experienced the same issues with FarCry 3. Then someone released an SLI bit that I changed with nvinspector and all was good afterwards.

I guess I can play with one card for now until it's resolved. Anyone else experiencing this?
 
My 580's seemed to have a hard time with it last night. Lots of random drops to the 20 range, then steady in the 50's.
 
Good to know I'm not the only one. Interesting to see that some people with SLI have not reported an issue. I wonder what drivers they are using?
 
I only played a little bit last night but the 314.07 drivers made a big difference for me. It wasn't really playable before and it got a lot better once I updated the driver. I wasn't looking at the FPS but I think there are some effects in that game that slow things down. In particular there was a window in the ship whenever I looked through it it felt like FPS was dropping. If I looked away it became smoother. Does your FPS vary wildly while not doing anything or is it because there is some effect in the environment that requires a little more oomph?
 
Fenix793 said:
I only played a little bit last night but the 314.07 drivers made a big difference for me. It wasn't really playable before and it got a lot better once I updated the driver. I wasn't looking at the FPS but I think there are some effects in that game that slow things down. In particular there was a window in the ship whenever I looked through it it felt like FPS was dropping. If I looked away it became smoother. Does your FPS vary wildly while not doing anything or is it because there is some effect in the environment that requires a little more oomph?
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That is what I initially thought it was until it happened when I was in a tiny room with no graphical effects.

intelfan said:
Did you try making a clean instalation of the driver?
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I did not. I installed them right over the old ones, which I had done in the past because apparantly that is fine. Ill definitely try that tonight though.
 
680 classy sli here and i have none of these issues you guys are describing.
 
Personally i think the SLI is bugged down in this game. I disabled SLI and get almost the same FPS but now it doesn't do a MATRIX SLOW DOWN or LOAD for no reason during an explosion. I have no stutter anymore (from the loading)

I can run the game pretty well with an OC 660TI at 1080p, very high between 35 and 50 FPS, witch is the same FPS i get with Far Cry 3, but this game , altoguht not open world, look way better..
 
Interesting. Hopefully a clean install will do the trick.

Ill post back reuslts after I test it tonight.
 
B!nd. said:
Interesting. Hopefully a clean install will do the trick.

Ill post back reuslts after I test it tonight.
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I did a clean install, of the drivers and it didn't help, so i tested it with SLI disabled. Problem fixed LOL :)
 
Ryoohki360 said:
I did a clean install, of the drivers and it didn't help, so i tested it with SLI disabled. Problem fixed LOL :)
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Sigh...:( Oh well, I'll give it a shot anyway. I was expecting to play on 1 card until this was resolved.
 
I think I can confirm this actually. Earlier I had said performance was great but after reading these and other Crysis 3 threads I went and checked my SLI settings and lo and behold the driver update had indeed disabled SLI. First let me say wow I'm surprised by the performance of one 660Ti! Just now I tried playing both with and without SLI. While FPS was higher with SLI enabled there was definitely some weird choppiness/stuttering. Although FPS is lower with one board it's definitely smoother and more playable. Weird but whatever the single card experience is actually pretty nice. Can't wait for them to get this resolved because this game is absolutely gorgeous.
 
Fenix793 said:
I think I can confirm this actually. Earlier I had said performance was great but after reading these and other Crysis 3 threads I went and checked my SLI settings and lo and behold the driver update had indeed disabled SLI. First let me say wow I'm surprised by the performance of one 660Ti! Just now I tried playing both with and without SLI. While FPS was higher with SLI enabled there was definitely some weird choppiness/stuttering. Although FPS is lower with one board it's definitely smoother and more playable. Weird but whatever the single card experience is actually pretty nice. Can't wait for them to get this resolved because this game is absolutely gorgeous.
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Yeah..so I just re-installed the drivers and it did not fix it. So I tried using a single card on very high no AA and the frames were pretty low 25-60 mostly in the low 30's. This is bit upsetting.
 
B!nd. said:
Yeah..so I just re-installed the drivers and it did not fix it. So I tried using a single card on very high no AA and the frames were pretty low 25-60 mostly in the low 30's. This is bit upsetting.
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you got something else going on. my buddy and i both have 680 sli and no issues using the newest drivers. both on x79 patched to use pci 3.0
 
Fenix793 said:
Do you notice any difference between SLI enabled/disabled?
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I pushed through the first level with SLI and 2x smaa. I really dont see a huge difference in performance with any of the AA vs non except for 8x MSAA and 4x TXAA.

Anyway on the boat level I was getting some drops to 44 outside in the rain as well as looking through a window inside and in some more open spots. Other than that it is a pretty consistant 55+ sometimes I hit 90 frames.

I just made it to NYC and wow performance dropped even more. CPU usage went up to 88% and GPU hovered around 75%. I hope that does not indicate a bottleneck. Frames during this level never dropped below 33 and that was even with 8x MSAA and 4x TXAA. The AA in the game hits performance very differently than most games. It is really strange.

I do think there can be more SLI optimization because of the lack of difference I see between AA vs no AA.
 
It should get better for SLI. I've read that the game was developed with AMD so they had a head start on driver support.
 
If you're using SLI, the best thing to do is set VSync Adaptive (Half Refresh Rate). It's going to be 30 FPS, but it's going to be a consistent 30 FPS which should be playable.

I've noticed that when there's a massive drop in framerate, the game slows down massively. I wouldn't necessarily call it stuttering, but maybe a flaw in the rendering algorithm tied to the timer. (Although, playing with one card, 60-30 FPS doesn't really seem to have this).

*EDIT*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-YwRks5pbU&feature=youtu.be

A comparison of just running through a door with one video card, SLI, and SLI limited to 30 FPS. I've slowed it down to 25% running speed, but you should be able to see how when there's a frame rate drop, the game actually slows down.
 
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Having a similar issue as well, I've noticed some areas the game drops down to less than 10 FPS which is annoying.
 
SLI in general seems to be broken for me with this driver. I tried playing some BF3 just now which used to be buttery smooth on 310.90 and now it's stuttering. It's not unplayable but it's definitely not cool and the problem goes away with SLI disabled. Debating if I should roll back or stick it out with a single board.
 
Fenix793 said:
SLI in general seems to be broken for me with this driver. I tried playing some BF3 just now which used to be buttery smooth on 310.90 and now it's stuttering. It's not unplayable but it's definitely not cool and the problem goes away with SLI disabled. Debating if I should roll back or stick it out with a single board.
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Hmm interesting. I haven't tried any other games after I updated the driver.

I did a little more testing and I notice no performance drop between no AA and FXAA.

Also my frames with one card were about 33-55 in the NYC grassy area and with SLI it was 40-80-ish. My single card was at 99% usage the whole time and in SLI they were pretty stuck @ 70%. CPU hovers around 65% and I am definitely convinced it is a driver issue. Same thing happened with FarCry 3. I just hope someone releases an SLI bit fix before Nvidia because God knows how long that will be.

I do find it strange that SLI works fine for some people. Even with the same drivers.
 
Nytegard said:
If you're using SLI, the best thing to do is set VSync Adaptive (Half Refresh Rate). It's going to be 30 FPS, but it's going to be a consistent 30 FPS which should be playable.

I've noticed that when there's a massive drop in framerate, the game slows down massively. I wouldn't necessarily call it stuttering, but maybe a flaw in the rendering algorithm tied to the timer. (Although, playing with one card, 60-30 FPS doesn't really seem to have this).
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I can't play below 60 FPS. Yeah, I am annoying but I get distracted way too easily and it takes a lot away from the game. Thanks for the suggestion though.
 
One way i got rid of the stuttering try taking it off the nvidia selected profile and just use the nvidia SLI default settings, seemed to take all the slowdowns out for me, iam still using FXAA, other AA's are just ball busting.

could also because i turned off the monitor and lights for the other PC on the UPS, it really draws a fuckton of power that game, tripped the UPS at least 5 times now causing it too beep
 
SirJamesDDJ said:
There were major dips in the rounds of testing I did...even turning was a chunk affair
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I attempted to drop everything to as low as possible (all settings low, resolution low, no AA, etc), but was still getting frame rate issues with SLI. Limiting the frame rate to 30 seems to be the best thing (at least until I upgrade to 2 Titans or above)
 
That's the thing that confused me, is turning was so choppy even though the FPS were consistently in the 30-40 range.
I'm optimistic newer drivers will greatly extinguish this.
 
Plays great for me in SLI. One thing I've noticed is the game makes excellent use of the CPU, actually seeing some bottle necking in my 920 rig which isn't present in my 3570K machine (although that one only has a single 680).
 
Kor said:
Plays great for me in SLI. One thing I've noticed is the game makes excellent use of the CPU, actually seeing some bottle necking in my 920 rig which isn't present in my 3570K machine (although that one only has a single 680).
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What is you CPU usage at? I don't think I am getting any bottlenecking. I don't with other games.

Nytegard said:
I attempted to drop everything to as low as possible (all settings low, resolution low, no AA, etc), but was still getting frame rate issues with SLI. Limiting the frame rate to 30 seems to be the best thing (at least until I upgrade to 2 Titans or above)
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I don't think upgrading to Titan SLI will solve the current SLI issues. Just sayin :p
 
It seems pretty glitchy to me. Sometimes it will work fine, sometimes I'll start the game up and it will be a slideshow.

Luckily I'm still playing Far Cry 3. It seems pretty clear that either a driver or game fix is needed.

[edit] OK so I toggled SLI off in the NV Control Panel and then back on, and now everything seems fine. Don't really know what the deal is.
 
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B!nd. said:
What is you CPU usage at? I don't think I am getting any bottlenecking. I don't with other games.
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Maybe it's just wishful thinking due to my similar specs, but your 2500k @ 4.5ghz should be able to handle any game without bottlenecking. It's a generation ahead of the 920.
 
Zinn said:
It seems pretty glitchy to me. Sometimes it will work fine, sometimes I'll start the game up and it will be a slideshow.

Luckily I'm still playing Far Cry 3. It seems pretty clear that either a driver or game fix is needed.

[edit] OK so I toggled SLI off in the NV Control Panel and then back on, and now everything seems fine. Don't really know what the deal is.
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That is really strange. I have not tried toggling SLI and tested the effects but I might give that a shot just to get more evidence.

Zinn said:
Maybe it's just wishful thinking due to my similar specs, but your 2500k @ 4.5ghz should be able to handle any game without bottlenecking. It's a generation ahead of the 920.
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It's nice to see someone else with the same specs. What voltage is your CPU at?

I don't think it is a bottleneck either. Some will argue that the GPUs are bottlenecked with this CPU even with OC and that upgrading will give you more frames. To that I say, a CPU ugrade even with 1 card will give you more frames :D
 
You're right, people throw around "bottlenecking" like it creates some hard limit on your frame rate. Really the CPU is only one of many factors, and while increasing CPU clocks can improve things, there are diminishing returns as you scale up.

BTW my 2500k is at stock volts (1.325 I think ???). If I push it any higher than 4.4ghz I need a massive voltage increase and it's just not worth it to me.
 
Zinn said:
You're right, people throw around "bottlenecking" like it creates some hard limit on your frame rate. Really the CPU is only one of many factors, and while increasing CPU clocks can improve things, there are diminishing returns as you scale up.

BTW my 2500k is at stock volts (1.325 I think ???). If I push it any higher than 4.4ghz I need a massive voltage increase and it's just not worth it to me.
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Nice. Seems we have a similar quality 2500k.

I'm gonna try a few things when I get home from work. Including adaptive vsync....we'll see.
 
B!nd. said:
What is you CPU usage at? I don't think I am getting any bottlenecking. I don't with other games.



I don't think upgrading to Titan SLI will solve the current SLI issues. Just sayin :p
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It's getting upwards to 75% in game, there are some fairly noticeable differences in some in the minimum frame rate when stacked up against my 4.5ghz 3570K which I would expect considering how much more that machine has in the way of raw clock and IPC.
 
I was able to play through the game with SLI at 1600p without any stuttering once I had adjusted graphic settings (Very High, 2xMSAA). Disabling v-sync helped a lot for some reason.
 
There's a user based fix on the MyCrysis forums:

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK:

Install the NVidia Titan driver (314.09). You'll need to modify/replace the inf file to get it to install.

I can live without that for now, but hopefully the updated driver means that those of us who are unlikely enough not to have Titans will get a driver update in the near future.
 
The is pretty interesting. I'd rather wait for a WHQL release to be honest.

I just tried using the adaptive vsync at half refresh rate. It actually wasent that terrible. Granted, I feel like I am playing on a console but at least the performance is consistent. I honestly think going from 60 to 40 to 70 to 50 then to 30 frames it much worse then playing at 30 constantly.
 
B!nd. said:
The is pretty interesting. I'd rather wait for a WHQL release to be honest.

I just tried using the adaptive vsync at half refresh rate. It actually wasent that terrible. Granted, I feel like I am playing on a console but at least the performance is consistent. I honestly think going from 60 to 40 to 70 to 50 then to 30 frames it much worse then playing at 30 constantly.
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Which is honestly strange, because it shouldn't be that way. Yes, people can perceive a difference in frame rate, but if everything was working as it should be, the sudden drop should feel just not as smooth, and not have the game actually slow down.

Have you just tried regular adaptive refresh? That's what I tend to use, as the game feels more responsive for me. (Also, make sure to disable the games vsync). I find at 30 fps, there seems to be a little input lag.
 
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