Does SLI work with all games?

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splooger

Limp Gawd
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Feb 21, 2004
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Does SLI work with all games or do they need to be specifically programmed to use it?
 
not all games work with sli. i am not 100% sure as sli doesnt interest me, but i believe nvidia have to release sli profiles with drivers to allow sli to work in games.
 
Nvidia even releases profiles for demos. Not run into a game that SLI hasn't worked on yet.
 
Sorry don't have those so can't comment.

Although their profiles are listed in the 169.28s.
 
Kowan said:
Although their profiles are listed in the 169.28s.
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Needing a whitelist should be a huge red flag that there exist games where SLI doesn't work.

This is aside from games that are "supported" but SLI still doesn't work, i.e. doesn't do crap. This category is far larger.
 
i wish sli would just work without profiles. and it does not work with every game. sometimes i wish sli would go away, along with crossfire. just because i am so used to putting a game in my 360 or ps3 and playing at 1080p without problem.

but that is just me.
 
92miata said:
i wish sli would just work without profiles. and it does not work with every game. sometimes i wish sli would go away, along with crossfire. just because i am so used to putting a game in my 360 or ps3 and playing at 1080p without problem.

but that is just me.
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Most your xbox 360 games aren't rendered at 1080p.
 
92miata said:
just because i am so used to putting a game in my 360 or ps3 and playing at 1080p without problem.
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Wow, that's what I do, I just put a game in my PC and play at 1080p without problems. Also without SLI. Probably a connection there somewhere. :confused:
 
nexex said:
SimCity 4, Heroes of Might and Magic V.
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i've got sim city 4 and my sli indicator says that it's working with sli, the frame rate increase seems to back up the green bar too. :confused:

but sli certainly doesn't work with all games
 
All games will work with SLI, They will all be faster with SLI, Some games just get a bigger FPS increase than others :)
 
Above post, wrong. SLI doesn't work with all games, but basically all major support it, and all games coming out at the moment do. It is pretty difficult to find a game that doesn't support it, but they exist. I wouldn't worry baout whether the games you play use SLI, more whether you need SLI power.
 
The existence of a profile does NOT mean that a game supports SLI. You have to check the SLI entry in the profile. If you check this field you will see that there are quite a few games that do not support SLI. And, unfortunately, even if supported the performance is not always stellar.

Some older games really fly with SLI while a lot of new games don't. It has to do with how the 3D engine generates each frame. Modern games with a lot of special effects seem to perform the worst when using SLI. If the 3D engine does one "Flip" or "Copy" per frame (backbuffer to frontbuffer), they seem to work the best.

IMO, NVIDIA has not put enough effort into keeping SLI updated and that is sad. I had my two 8800GTX cards for nearly 6 months before I started to see SLI doing anything worth the cost of admission. And I'm astounded that they are talking about three card SLI configurations. Why? When they can't get two card setups working respectably.
 
Kango said:
And I'm astounded that they are talking about three card SLI configurations. Why? When they can't get two card setups working respectably.
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Because they've won their branding goals. Everyone will always think of SLi first and all this weird voodoo-magic profile stuff second, if at all. I mean, heck, in this thread alone there's been how much misinformation or misunderstanding regarding the fundamentals of SLi support?

The visceral appeal of seeing two or three graphic cards arrayed on a mobo and the perception of immediate performance or e-penis gratification it generates immediately resonates with the uninformed consumer who doesn't mind throwing his or her money around. It's still such a niche, and since people are still buying, they have more incentive to market the product and less incentive to throw resources into refining its support structure. Though, admittedly, nvidia has developed some decent relationships in the industry.

Now, this isn't to say that SLi isn't useful. People with two-card setups can attest to this. However I believe these are some of the reasons why they arent't moving as fast on keeping it up to date as they could.
 
WoW does not see the second card, all benchmarks with WoW + SLI show the SLI system to be like1% slower, so basically it does not even use the second card in game
 
Wow, I thought there would be a simple yes or no answer to my question. Didn't think there would be this much controversy.
 
Not all games support sli and if their isnt a profile for it then chances are it wont work, but if you download Nhancer, you can make your own sli profiles for games, but it can take some time to get the proper settings and the best sli mode for that particular game, so all in all, out of box sli doesnt support all games but with nhancer it can and does support all games as you just make a profile for that game and you will either get more fps or at the very least you will get sli AA which will make the game look nicer but keep the same fps as before.

so my final answer is, with some tweaking SLI supports all games or all games that you would want to use sli with in the first place, and backgammon isnt one of them :p
 
splooger said:
Wow, I thought there would be a simple yes or no answer to my question. Didn't think there would be this much controversy.
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It's simple. No, SLI does not work with all games. Further, many of the games where SLI "works" do not have a meaningful effect from using it (other than substantially increased case heat, which is detrimental).
 
Most games work with sli, with varying performance gains. A few games actually perform worse with sli enabled. Some games do not support it or are not supported at all when it comes to sli.
The simple answer you seemed to be looking for is,

NO
 
ashmedai said:
It's simple. No, SLI does not work with all games. Further, many of the games where SLI "works" do not have a meaningful effect from using it (other than substantially increased case heat, which is detrimental).
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Exactly, why would any sane person pay 100% more for a another VideoCard, but only get back like 75% performance or sometimes none at all, or maybe just 50%

I would buy into SLI or CrossFire today if for sure it gave me exactly 100% or double the benchmarks in EVERY single game, and if it would just work right off the bat, plug in second card and bam you get twice the gain.

But reality is, it just does not work that way, and thats why it is silly to do so, why pay money for a second card, but get such little gains, it is a rip off scam. I can can afford another 8800Ultra if I want to, it is the principle why I don't

It is a bad investment, why spend 100% to only get 50-75% back or sometime some games no gain
 
Zorachus said:
Exactly, why would any sane person pay 100% more for a another VideoCard, but only get back like 75% performance or sometimes none at all, or maybe just 50%

I would buy into SLI or CrossFire today if for sure it gave me exactly 100% or double the benchmarks in EVERY single game, and if it would just work right off the bat, plug in second card and bam you get twice the gain.

But reality is, it just does not work that way, and thats why it is silly to do so, why pay money for a second card, but get such little gains, it is a rip off scam. I can can afford another 8800Ultra if I want to, it is the principle why I don't

It is a bad investment, why spend 100% to only get 50-75% back or sometime some games no gain
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Well in my case I'm sick of waiting for the next big NVIDIA card and want the most cost effective gaming at 1920x1200. I'm not really happy with being "forced" to do SLI either. When the next cards come out I'll sell my 2 GTs and buy one (assuming it doesn't suck)
 
splooger said:
Well in my case I'm sick of waiting for the next big NVIDIA card and want the most cost effective gaming at 1920x1200. I'm not really happy with being "forced" to do SLI either. When the next cards come out I'll sell my 2 GTs and buy one (assuming it doesn't suck)
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The next generation VideoCards are right around the corner, they will be displayed at CES in early January, and most likely for sale in February. I have two systems both single cards and they play all games native rez 4AA/16AF smooth butter.

Main rig has a 8800GTX + C2D E6850 + 4gb DDR2, I play 2560x1600rez on 30" Display. Wifey's system has a 8800GT + C2D Q6600 + 4gb DDR2 she plays 1920x1200rez on 27" LCD.

Both those single cards systems play our games nice, Team Fortress 2, WoW, QuakeWars. As long as I get close to 60fps in games that is enough for me,look at this review HalfLife2 1920x1200 4xAA 16AF gets 68fps with single 8800GT
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_8800_gt_performance/page9.asp

Sure brand new games like CrySissy, and BioShock may bog down slideshow for, me but I don't really care for those single player games right now. I am happy with the few games I do play.
 
I used to have a 7950GX2 which uses SLI technology and every game I played worked.

Now you sort of have to define what "SLI supported" means.

1. Does that mean the game works - it doesn't freeze or crash or show garbled gibberish.

2. Does that mean the game actually benefits from SLI by running faster

Every game I played with SLI met point 1 - even if no profile was present.
Not all games I played with SLI met point 2 even with a profile.
 
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