SLI-Options

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millerpa17

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 18, 2005
Messages
171
How come in the latest nvidia drivers there are only 3 sli settings: sli-multi-gpu, sli-single-gpu, and sli-AA. I thought there were other ones like alternate frame rendering and such. Also what's sli-single gpu?

System:
FX-55
2xevga 7800 gt co
dfi lanparty nf4 sli-d
2gb mushkin redline PC4000
74gb raptor
 
What exactly are you looking at? I'm using Forceware 81.98 and there are setting for AFR/AFR2/SFR/SLI-AA and others. I'm not at my SLI rig right now, those are the ones I can remember of the top of my head.
 
heatlesssun said:
What exactly are you looking at? I'm using Forceware 81.98 and there are setting for AFR/AFR2/SFR/SLI-AA and others. I'm not at my SLI rig right now, those are the ones I can remember of the top of my head.
Click to expand...
yea thats the driver set I have too. And how come single gpu rendering works better than multi gpu?
 
millerpa17 said:
How come in the latest nvidia drivers there are only 3 sli settings: sli-multi-gpu, sli-single-gpu, and sli-AA. I thought there were other ones like alternate frame rendering and such. Also what's sli-single gpu?

System:
FX-55
2xevga 7800 gt co
dfi lanparty nf4 sli-d
2gb mushkin redline PC4000
74gb raptor
Click to expand...

the settings for AFR and SFR, etc.. are in the advanced section of the quality and performance section of the advanced menu... change the drop down from "basic" to "advanced" and scroll to the bottom of that menu window... you'll see them.

The SLI profile for whatever app will always over-ride that global setting, so you may want to grab a copy of nHancer and tweak the SLI profile for whatever game you're wanting to test different rendering modes on.
 
I have the same question. I have 81.98. Rivatuner installed so I can see all of my options. I go to Performance&Quality tab. I click on the advanced options instead of basic where you only get quality setting, aa, af and vsync selections. Once I click on advanced I can now set those options plus select what kind of aa, triple buffering, lod bias, etc. etc. Scroll down to Sli. Check the box and only have the option of multigpu-singlegpu-or SliAA. I don't get any of the options like afr sfr etc. etc. etc.

This was discovered because I was trying to make a profile for the x3 demo.
Is it because I'm using Rivatuner instead of the coolbits thing.

I followed the instructions for creating an Sli profile on Nvidia Sli Zone and they specifically mention Coolbits. Something about changing the DWORD to 8......

Am I on the right track here? Do you only see them if you use Coolbits hack?

I tried making a profile anyway just selecting sli-multigpu and it doesn't work. Framerate stays the same and when I enable "show load balancing" the bar just slides to the bottom.
 
I have only seen those options after doing the coolbits reg hack... I have not used rivatuner to get access to them so I cannot comment on it...

this is a pretty good (older) URL for info on getting to the different rendering modes by using the coolbits reg hack method and the nvidia driver control panel.. with pictures and examples. :)
 
Yup.....you have to use the Coolbits change as directed on the nVidia site to get all the SLI selections. Then youll see all kinds of stuff.....but I think if there is a profile for your game in the performance settings list it will automatically default to that.......you can change it but its complicated. Youd need to read the release notes.
 
Thanks.

There is indeed an Sli profile for the actual game. There is not a profile for the demo. It has a different exe than the game.
I figured out how to browse and select the file that launches the demo by looking at the instructions on SliZone.

Guess I'll get me some Coolbits when I get home.

Gonna go noob on you here but I'm guessing I should direct Rivatuner to restore everything to default and then uninstall it before applying the Coolbits registery hack.
 
ok but can anyone explain what the difference is between SLI multi-gpu rendering, SLI single-gpu rendering, and SLI-AA?
 
I fixed the coolbits thing so I can see them all now, but what is the difference between all of them?
 
Well - SLI-multi gpu rendering is when both graphics cards are enabled to work together to increase the performance of 3d applications... (what I would consider to be called "normal SLI operation")... SLI-single gpu rendering is when only one card (gpu0 - pci-e slot nearest the cpu) is enabled to draw a 3d application, but SLI is still technically enabled, even though the other card is doing nothing, it still taxes the system a little, just to manage it while in a "paused" state... you would use this when running a 3d application which does not support SLI... then SLI-AA is well... let's take a segment from that URL I posted above, it explains it very well.

"The concept of SLI anti-aliasing throws this idea out of the window - Rather than having each video card work on separate frames or portions of a frame, instead both boards are put to work rendering each and every frame, as though they were running in a single GPU configuration. The trick to SLI AA is that while each video card renders the scene using the same level of anti-aliasing, the sample patterns used are slightly offset from one another. Then, when both boards have rendered the complete scene for a particular frame, the finished results from both boards are blended together, effectively combining and doubling the number of anti-aliasing samples used and giving a higher level of AA than could normally be achieved by a single board in isolation. "


SLI-AA can be really taxing on 6800 series video cards, so it's not really usable there, but you can check it out for seeing the IQ improvements... but on the 7800 series cards it works better... I still do not use it, but it's there to play with for just goofing around. I leave my rendering mode at "auto", but I notice when I install new drivers is comes up as "SLI-single gpu rendering"... and SLI still works fine, .... because of the SLI profiles... they override those global settings. Anyways... hope that helps..
 
revenant said:
Well - SLI-multi gpu rendering is when both graphics cards are enabled to work together to increase the performance of 3d applications... (what I would consider to be called "normal SLI operation")... SLI-single gpu rendering is when only one card (gpu0 - pci-e slot nearest the cpu) is enabled to draw a 3d application, but SLI is still technically enabled, even though the other card is doing nothing, it still taxes the system a little, just to manage it while in a "paused" state... you would use this when running a 3d application which does not support SLI... then SLI-AA is well... let's take a segment from that URL I posted above, it explains it very well.

"The concept of SLI anti-aliasing throws this idea out of the window - Rather than having each video card work on separate frames or portions of a frame, instead both boards are put to work rendering each and every frame, as though they were running in a single GPU configuration. The trick to SLI AA is that while each video card renders the scene using the same level of anti-aliasing, the sample patterns used are slightly offset from one another. Then, when both boards have rendered the complete scene for a particular frame, the finished results from both boards are blended together, effectively combining and doubling the number of anti-aliasing samples used and giving a higher level of AA than could normally be achieved by a single board in isolation. "


SLI-AA can be really taxing on 6800 series video cards, so it's not really usable there, but you can check it out for seeing the IQ improvements... but on the 7800 series cards it works better... I still do not use it, but it's there to play with for just goofing around. I leave my rendering mode at "auto", but I notice when I install new drivers is comes up as "SLI-single gpu rendering"... and SLI still works fine, .... because of the SLI profiles... they override those global settings. Anyways... hope that helps..
Click to expand...
Then how come when I do a benchmark with fraps for day of defeat source, with sli multi-gpu rendering and sli single-gpu rendering I get better fps with the single gpu rendering?
 
Not sure... maybe the game is not SLI friendly? maybe check the game's home site for a patch... does it have an SLI profile? if it does, then that should be taking over no matter what you change in the global rendering settings anyways... SLI still has some oddities on certain apps, but it's a heck of a lot better than it used to be... most of the time "it just works" and you don't have to fuss with those rendering options... unless you want to really tweak the IQ settings.. anyways, have to run now. good luck!
 
This makes absolutely no sense. I have set it to sli-enabled, and then under rendering mode when I set it to single-gpu, it still runs sli, and single gpu actually runs better than multi-gpu rendering...What do these settings mean, cause they can't possibly mean what I thought they meant...sli=multi-gpu rendering, not sli=single-gpu rendering.
 
The advanced setting I'm talking about is:
"When Sli is enabled use: Sli Single-GPU rendering" Instead of SLI Single-GPU rendering there are all the other choices as well, including SLI-AA, AFR,AFR2, etc
 
I'm confused about what I should set the sli option too...and what the purpose of the profiles are? What do they do? Do they override the global settings that I set?
 
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