GTX 1080's in SLI both cards not in full load

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ChronoDetector

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I just bought a pair of Gigabyte GTX 1080's and put them in SLI and I have a minor issue. I also have MSI Afterburner installed to monitor the temps, GPU usage and stats of both cards and I noticed that both cards are not fully utilized when under load in gaming, therefore resulting in inconsistent framerates. Does anybody have this issue or is it at my end? My specs are listed in my signature.
 
When you say inconsistent FPS, what are you actually getting? There is a way in Nvidia control panel to "Prefer Maximum Performance" and it will keep the cards clocked up to the base clock at least 100% of the time. One thing I might add, depending on your resolution (basically unless you are running 4K or 1440p 144hz) you probably won't be maxing out 2 1080's anyway.
 
SLI bridge attached? SLI enabled in NVCP? PCI-E power cables attached?

What games are you running that you're not seeing full utilization? Some games simply do not scale well.

What operating system? The 372-series drivers with Windows 10 AU and WDDM 2.1 are having issues with SLI.
 
ChronoDetector said:
I just bought a pair of Gigabyte GTX 1080's and put them in SLI and I have a minor issue. I also have MSI Afterburner installed to monitor the temps, GPU usage and stats of both cards and I noticed that both cards are not fully utilized when under load in gaming, therefore resulting in inconsistent framerates. Does anybody have this issue or is it at my end? My specs are listed in my signature.
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Does this happen in all games?

I would first do a clean install with Display Driver Uninstaller and Clean Install.

Have you tried going through the Nvidia Control Panel to make sure SLI is enabled? When you update a driver and from the get go it is not.

Check Physx to make sure it is not using one for graphics and another for Physx only.

Also try disabling SLI if none of that works to see if you still have the issue. I would also try physically removing a card.

If that doesn't work try uninstalling any GPU overclocking software. Test again.

Lastly there have been some issues with the new 10 series video cards from Nvidia with Power Management. Some cards needs settings adjusted in the Nvidia Control Panel. Some have even needed new firmware from what I have read and experienced thus far.

Best of luck!
 
Welcome to SLI. You are almost never going to see full utilization of both GPUs, that's normal.

Two biggest questions to determine if you have a problem or not:

1) What games are you running?
2) What utilization are you actually seeing on GPU 1 and GPU 2?
 
Most games I play show this issue, Shadow Of Mordor, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Hard Reset, Far Cry 4, Crysis 2 has inconsistent framerates and my GPU usage for both card varies, it's never consistent and will always fluctuate.

I already enabled "Prefer Maximum Performance" but the issue is still persisting. It's not really a major issue, I was just wondering if this was normal since it was been a while I've used SLI, my GTX 970's in SLI was a disaster and had the exact same issue, along with frequent microstutter though 1080's in SLI seemed somewhat better.
 
SLI has always been a nightmare. Did it once and never again. Half the games do not support it....half that do have issues. Hind sight is 20/20 in saying you should've just purchased a Titan X for the price you paid as you'd have less issues.
 
Would need to know percentages but I don't think you'll ever see 100% on both cards.

Really the card is not gona push max unless it needs to.

You should run 3dmark benchmarks.. those will be close. Firestrike extreme. Can get 3dmark threw steam if your using that.


Oh and what screen resolution are you using? 1080 isint gona stress the cards enough to make thrm run max. 1440 and 4k will.
 
evilwon said:
SLI has always been a nightmare. Did it once and never again. Half the games do not support it....half that do have issues. Hind sight is 20/20 in saying you should've just purchased a Titan X for the price you paid as you'd have less issues.
Click to expand...

Interested in an SLI Laptop by chance? rofl
 
ChronoDetector said:
Most games I play show this issue, Shadow Of Mordor, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Hard Reset, Far Cry 4, Crysis 2 has inconsistent framerates and my GPU usage for both card varies, it's never consistent and will always fluctuate.

I already enabled "Prefer Maximum Performance" but the issue is still persisting. It's not really a major issue, I was just wondering if this was normal since it was been a while I've used SLI, my GTX 970's in SLI was a disaster and had the exact same issue, along with frequent microstutter though 1080's in SLI seemed somewhat better.
Click to expand...
But what utilization are you actually seeing? You still haven't told us and that's kind of a key indicator of whether or not you're having problems.

Do you have Battlefield 4? That game has pretty good SLI support. Try that, play for a while, and screenshot the utilization graphs for both GPUs.
 
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That's pretty much normal. Very few games manage to load both gpus equally. Most common scenario is 99% on gpu1 and 70-80% on gpu 2. Having 70-80% on both gpus is also quite common, I think fallout4 was one of the games that managed to give sub-60fps with 50% cpu load ant 70-80% gpu load for me.
So it really depends on the optimization.
 
Koween said:
That's pretty much normal. Very few games manage to load both gpus equally. Most common scenario is 99% on gpu1 and 70-80% on gpu 2. Having 70-80% on both gpus is also quite common, I think fallout4 was one of the games that managed to give sub-60fps with 50% cpu load ant 70-80% gpu load for me.
So it really depends on the optimization.
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This has been my experience with SLI as well.
 
I think what OP should try is turning SLI off and seeing what FPS he has, then he can figure out if he has a CPU bottleneck or something else. I see most people have come in saying they haven't had good luck with SLI so I will be the opposite side of the fence and say my SLI setup's over the years have been pretty good. It either works or it doesn't, and I could always get over 90% usage on both cards if I cranked the settings high enough. Probably a CPU bottleneck if you cannot if you ask me.
 
Well, I'm not saying that SLI is trash or anything. On a lot of games it works and works well. Skyrim, for instance, gave me arund 90% sli scaling (660ti, a lot of game mods). The issue, though, is that it's inconsistent. Also, some nvidia inspector tweaks (if there are any for the game in question) may be helpful. I doubt a 5820k at 4.2ghz can be a bottleneck.
 
Koween said:
Well, I'm not saying that SLI is trash or anything. On a lot of games it works and works well. Skyrim, for instance, gave me arund 90% sli scaling (660ti, a lot of game mods). The issue, though, is that it's inconsistent. Also, some nvidia inspector tweaks (if there are any for the game in question) may be helpful. I doubt a 5820k at 4.2ghz can be a bottleneck.
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You wouldn't think so, but I am talking games that don't use multiple cores well. I sometimes will see a CPU bottleneck in games with my 4790K, even though the CPU is only 25-50% used. Those couple cores are maxed out while the rest are never utilized. That is what I was talking about.
 
I've been running SLI setups for a long time as have many here and mostly it's been a pretty good time overall. Yes, it's frustrating at times when certain games/engines don't support SLI properly or at all but that comes with the turf and always has. I tend to play mostly BF4 SWBF both which are frostbite games and it supports SLI pretty well. For kicks I would run firestrike extreme and see if your cards are maxed out. I just ran it yesterday for kicks on my rig all 3 gpu's were 99/100% the whole run through. I hadn't run it in a while and I was just curious.

I've been following whats going on with DX12/vulcan and SLI support going foward and I still plan to upgrade my 3 980's to 2 1080TI's when they launch sometime early next year. I like overkill what can I say. Oh and I'l be moving to a 34" 120hz panel of some sort as well so that should use some juice. I like my SLI, I just do lol. Yes even *gasp* Tri-SLI which for the most part in the games I play has been pretty cool and not a waste of money imo.
 
Savoy said:
I've been running SLI setups for a long time as have many here and mostly it's been a pretty good time overall. Yes, it's frustrating at times when certain games/engines don't support SLI properly or at all but that comes with the turf and always has. I tend to play mostly BF4 SWBF both which are frostbite games and it supports SLI pretty well. For kicks I would run firestrike extreme and see if your cards are maxed out. I just ran it yesterday for kicks on my rig all 3 gpu's were 99/100% the whole run through. I hadn't run it in a while and I was just curious.

I've been following whats going on with DX12/vulcan and SLI support going foward and I still plan to upgrade my 3 980's to 2 1080TI's when they launch sometime early next year. I like overkill what can I say. Oh and I'l be moving to a 34" 120hz panel of some sort as well so that should use some juice. I like my SLI, I just do lol. Yes even *gasp* Tri-SLI which for the most part in the games I play has been pretty cool and not a waste of money imo.
Click to expand...

What resolution are you running? I'm running 2K 1440p at 165hz. Only need one 980 Ti. You're right though, games that tend to need it usually support SLI.

I have another system that is an SLI rig. I don't think that I'd ever do it again. But in that instance and most now, there are single card options with enough power. I don't know if the 1080 Ti will be enough. Perhaps the next iteration.

Seems like AMD is pretty much out of contention for now at the mid to high end :/

I'm guessing that the next round of Nvidia cards will be quite pricey though. Perhaps making SLI a cost and not a performance alternative again.
 
ChronoDetector said:
Most games I play show this issue, Shadow Of Mordor, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Hard Reset, Far Cry 4, Crysis 2 has inconsistent framerates and my GPU usage for both card varies, it's never consistent and will always fluctuate.

I already enabled "Prefer Maximum Performance" but the issue is still persisting. It's not really a major issue, I was just wondering if this was normal since it was been a while I've used SLI, my GTX 970's in SLI was a disaster and had the exact same issue, along with frequent microstutter though 1080's in SLI seemed somewhat better.
Click to expand...

This really isn't helping troubleshoot the issue since all you did is reword your OP and not actually provide any details that are being asked for.

Simply saying GPU usage and FPS is varying doesn't help. GPU usage varies all the time, FPS varies all the time, this is normal because the scene is varying all the time and won't always have the same demands.
 
Kwaz said:
What resolution are you running? I'm running 2K 1440p at 165hz. Only need one 980 Ti. You're right though, games that tend to need it usually support SLI.

I have another system that is an SLI rig. I don't think that I'd ever do it again. But in that instance and most now, there are single card options with enough power. I don't know if the 1080 Ti will be enough. Perhaps the next iteration.

Seems like AMD is pretty much out of contention for now at the mid to high end :/

I'm guessing that the next round of Nvidia cards will be quite pricey though. Perhaps making SLI a cost and not a performance alternative again.
Click to expand...


I run a korean overclocked 120hz 1440p panel for now. I'm due fir a nice monitor upgrade soon. I just want a nice native 120hz 34" ultra wide. Not one of the overclocked 100hz acers that came out last year.
 
RamonGTP said:
This really isn't helping troubleshoot the issue since all you did is reword your OP and not actually provide any details that are being asked for.

Simply saying GPU usage and FPS is varying doesn't help. GPU usage varies all the time, FPS varies all the time, this is normal because the scene is varying all the time and won't always have the same demands.
Click to expand...

This unless your FPS are maxed and capped with vsync, which is not the case
Savoy said:
I run a korean overclocked 120hz 1440p panel for now. I'm due fir a nice monitor upgrade soon. I just want a nice native 120hz 34" ultra wide. Not one of the overclocked 100hz acers that came out last year.
Click to expand...

They're coming! There was word of some better panel technology coming out.

Part of it is market realization. As where there's a will, a way will be plotted. I think they've realized people want these things now. Plus, now that 4k has gone mainstream, where else will the market be driven? Refresh rate :)
 
Kwaz said:
This unless your FPS are maxed and capped with vsync, which is not the case


They're coming! There was word of some better panel technology coming out.

Part of it is market realization. As where there's a will, a way will be plotted. I think they've realized people want these things now. Plus, now that 4k has gone mainstream, where else will the market be driven? Refresh rate :)
Click to expand...

Ya to me 3k 34" ultrawide is the gaming sweet spot as long as it's at least 120hz. I think I will be very happy with that type of screen for a while. Since I like to have high fps and max games out at the same time. I don't want to run a game maxed at 4k and have 40fps...uhh no, just no. lol
 
Savoy said:
Ya to me 3k 34" ultrawide is the gaming sweet spot as long as it's at least 120hz. I think I will be very happy with that type of screen for a while. Since I like to have high fps and max games out at the same time. I don't want to run a game maxed at 4k and have 40fps...uhh no, just no. lol
Click to expand...

Yeahhhh, I know. That's why I went 2k GSYNC early this year. Can't stand the dips and stuttering.

Di, di, di, did I do that?

S, s, s, sorry.

It's funny now thinking about in hmm's and umm's are human frame buffer.
 
Did SLI once, never again. The idea itself sounds cool but it's not practical and there are always issues.

Not say technology won't improve and this concept may be used again in the future, but for right now it's a no-go for me.
 
I had crossfire and SLI, both was OK, but never really satisfying. Switched back to one card. Sell both 1080 and get a TItan X Pascal, that´s what i would do.
 
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