Sli GTX 570s, AWFUL performance in BFBC2

[Horrux]

It's to the point where disabling SLi makes things smoother. My GPU utilization with SLI is around 50% and I don't think I've ever seen it get to 70% in BFBC2. I think the rest of my rig should be enough to push them a bit more than that? Often the GPU utilization sinks in the 25% range and FPS drops below 40.

I am playing at high settings, HBAO on, AF 16x, MSAA 8x.

Is this a driver issue? Is there a known best driver for SLI performance under BFBC2 or a tip to make it better?

Thanks

 

[xenocide]

Did they recently patch BC2 or something? This guy says he has problems with a multi-card setup as well; http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149787

 

[Zubasa]

Did they recently patch BC2 or something? This guy says he has problems with a multi-card setup as well; http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149787

BFBC2 runs great on my 5870s so yeah they fixed that problem at lease for some people.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Was this happening lately? Have you switched to other drivers? I'm running on 275.33 a GTX570 SC, max settings HBAO on, AFx16, 32xCSAA vsync on and it's locked at 60FPS albeit on 1680x1050.

 

[mlee49]

Yeah, what drivers are you using? Also, some manufactures have SLI profiles for major games. eVGA for example does release these profiles before Nvidia includes them in their driver updates. Might look to that as an alternative.

Also, have you tried looking in Nvidia's SLI Profile for BC2 and check the settings? Might need to manually adjust some settings within the SLI panel.

 

[newtekie1]

Hi

Looks like your M4A79 Deluxe is a crossfire motherboard; Read chapter 5 of your motherboard manual

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M4A79_Deluxe/

It will support 1x GTX 570 @x16 PCIe or equivalent nvidia vga card

or

up to 4x AMD cards in crossfireX @x8 PCIe

Hope this helps

atb

Law-II

I'm assuming he uses the SLI hack.

 

[xenocide]

I'm assuming he uses the SLI hack.

Wouldn't that possibly offer less than optimal results would could also explain it?

 

[Horrux]

Yeah, what drivers are you using? Also, some manufactures have SLI profiles for major games. eVGA for example does release these profiles before Nvidia includes them in their driver updates. Might look to that as an alternative.

Also, have you tried looking in Nvidia's SLI Profile for BC2 and check the settings? Might need to manually adjust some settings within the SLI panel.

I had these results with the 275.33 and 275.50, as well as any others I have tried recently, namely the 266.58, 267.24, 270.61, 275.27. I didn't try the 280.19 yet, but these are differently patched from the other ones.

I will go check out the profiles and see what's what, thanks for the idea.

Was this happening lately? Have you switched to other drivers? I'm running on 275.33 a GTX570 SC, max settings HBAO on, AFx16, 32xCSAA vsync on and it's locked at 60FPS albeit on 1680x1050.

We probably have the same cards. I too, get similar performance out of a single MSI GTX 570 sc, although generally speaking I run BFBC2 at 8x MSAA. It seems more crisp. However, when using both cards, I get wild FPS fluctuations as indicated, as low as the high 30s with GPU utilization very low...

Wouldn't that possibly offer less than optimal results would could also explain it?

The sli "hack" is just a mobo name patch. In other words, the patch only replaces the name of my motherboard with the name of a motherboard that is officially supported by nVidia for SLI, and off it goes. I seem to get better performance in other games, I would have to try something like Metro 2033 benchmark. Yeah, I'll do just that and see what's what.

But given the nature of the "hack", it should either work or not, but not give this half-assed performance. Many users are reporting great performance with this hack, near 100% scaling.

 

[erocker]

Are you overclocked? The AMD CPU/NB (a.k.a. memory controller) can be a big bottleneck for dual GPU systems.

 

[Melvis]

Id say its not his CPU holding back the cards, its some weird SLi issue (as i have one atm with steam)

With my current set up i get between 60 and 120FPS with all settings to the MAX.

 

[Horrux]

Are you overclocked? The AMD CPU/NB (a.k.a. memory controller) can be a big bottleneck for dual GPU systems.

No overclock here.

I ran the Metro 2033 benchmark (the only scene I have access to is called "Frontline") and ran it with SLI enabled. These are the full settings:

Directx: Dx11
Resolution: 1680x1050
Quality: Very high
Antialiasing: MSAA 4X
Texture Filtering: AF 16X
Enable advanced physX: yes
DOF: yes

Motion blur: Camera + objects
Skin shading: sub-scattering
Bump mapping: Precise
Shadow resolution: 9.43mpx
Light-material interaction: full
Geometric detail: very high
Detail texturing: Enabled
Ambient occlusion: Precomputed + SSAO
Image post-processing: Full
Parallax mapping: Enabled with occlusion
Shadow filtering: Hi-quality
Analytical Anti-Aliasing: Enabled
Volumetric texturing: Full quality, including sun


Average Results
Average Framerate: 48.33
Max. Framerate: 190.84
Min. Framerate: 9.95

Note that this 9.95 seemed to happen only for an incredibly short time, and that the action seemed smooth throughout, even the short part where it was going about 30fps. The fastest and slowest frames were close together on all runs, which leads me to believe they happened due to rendering complexity and not some random problem with my setup. Overall it felt very smooth, and my GPU utilization was above 90% for both cards for almost the entire run, never fluctuating much.

Overall, I'd say SLI is working great at least in Metro 2033, which I believe is the most graphically intense benchmark out there.

The problem seems to belong to BFBC2...

 

[Horrux]

So a few hours after the Metro 2033 benchmark, I reread that thread about the other guy (linked above) who also has terrible performance in BFBC2 with his crossfire Radeon 5850s. His problem is only online, but not in single player. So, I fired up BFBC2 single player (I was due for a second play-through anyway) and lo and behold, my GPU utilization was of the order of 90% to 95% for both GPUs, CPU utilization was 70% to 80% and my FPS rarely dipped below 120 with everything prett much maxed (only FSAA was at MSAA 8x insted of the max CSAA 32x, but only because my setting looks better anyway).

So... In Metro and BFBC2 (offline) I get the performance I have this hardware for, but not online... The mystery deepens.

 

[newtekie1]

Maybe your connections to the servers are slow and causing the game to lag?

 

[Black Haru]

Maybe your connections to the servers are slow and causing the game to lag?

or maybe his xfire setup is messing with his LAN controller (if it's part of the mobo)

 

[xenocide]

It's pretty much not an issue with the cards, that means it has to be something with the fact that the game is being played online. Do you have any other Online games that are decently demanding to test?

 

[Crap Daddy]

Crysis 2 DX11 high-res pack

 

[The_Ish]

So a few hours after the Metro 2033 benchmark, I reread that thread about the other guy (linked above) who also has terrible performance in BFBC2 with his crossfire Radeon 5850s. His problem is only online, but not in single player. So, I fired up BFBC2 single player (I was due for a second play-through anyway) and lo and behold, my GPU utilization was of the order of 90% to 95% for both GPUs, CPU utilization was 70% to 80% and my FPS rarely dipped below 120 with everything prett much maxed (only FSAA was at MSAA 8x insted of the max CSAA 32x, but only because my setting looks better anyway).

So... In Metro and BFBC2 (offline) I get the performance I have this hardware for, but not online... The mystery deepens.

I actually played through Metro 2033 like yesterday. No problems there for me either.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

The sli "hack" is just a mobo name patch. In other words, the patch only replaces the name of my motherboard with the name of a motherboard that is officially supported by nVidia for SLI, and off it goes. I seem to get better performance in other games, I would have to try something like Metro 2033 benchmark. Yeah, I'll do just that and see what's what.

But given the nature of the "hack", it should either work or not, but not give this half-assed performance. Many users are reporting great performance with this hack, near 100% scaling.

Still that doesnt escape the fact that its an unsupported platform, hence lack of optimization, through both software and hardware. They might test the game to run on a real sli platform, but not on a patched up one and may lack a tweak or two.

And why the heck are you only playing offline on bfbc2? Your missing the whole essence of the game. The campaigns suck and runs pale to the adrenaline rush of its mp.

 

[The_Ish]

Still that doesnt escape the fact that its an unsupported platform, hence lack of optimization, through both software and hardware. They might test the game to run on a real sli platform, but not on a patched up one and may lack a tweak or two.

And why the heck are you only playing offline on bfbc2? Your missing the whole essence of the game. The campaigns suck and runs pale to the adrenaline rush of its mp.

Read again.

 

[Horrux]

Crysis 2 DX11 high-res pack

Ha, that's one of the few I don't have... Any other ideas? Who wants to hit Shogun 2 with me? Is that demanding enough?

 

[Horrux]

I am just finishing up a new install of Win 7 on my brand new SSD, so we'll see how that works out.

 

[The_Ish]

Well i spent 4 hrs yesterday trying different drivers. But none of them work.

 

[The_Ish]

I had this theory after speaking with a guy on YouTube who mentioned he had read or heard somewhere, that BC2 required you to have a good sound card to get the best possible performance.

Horrux@ Are you using the specs in your profile? I can see that you have a sound card. And a somewhat expensive one to, if I'm not mistaken? Are you using latest drivers? There's a lot of shit doing on sound wise in this game, so it could be part of the problem.

I remember when i was using an AC-1 card on my 5870, I had equal fps of what have now with two better cards in crossfire. And as far as benchmarks go, the consensus seems to be that this game should in practice scale quite well. Obviously it doesn't for us however. I don't *think* that card fits my mobo if you have two GPU's and the reason I removed it in the first place was because the on board simply sounded better (I hate Razer with a passion).

Could you double check with your sound drivers maybe?

edit/ I have just confirmed at least one case with an acquaintance, that whenever he forgot to switch on his G35 headsets sound card the game constantly crashes. There might be some truth to this.
edit2/ Well installing my old sound card did absolutely nothing.

 

[Horrux]

I had this theory after speaking with a guy on YouTube who mentioned he had read or heard somewhere, that BC2 required you to have a good sound card to get the best possible performance.

Horrux@ Are you using the specs in your profile? I can see that you have a sound card. And a somewhat expensive one to, if I'm not mistaken? Are you using latest drivers? There's a lot of shit doing on sound wise in this game, so it could be part of the problem.

I remember when i was using an AC-1 card on my 5870, I had equal fps of what have now with two better cards in crossfire. And as far as benchmarks go, the consensus seems to be that this game should in practice scale quite well. Obviously it doesn't for us however. I don't *think* that card fits my mobo if you have two GPU's and the reason I removed it in the first place was because the on board simply sounded better (I hate Razer with a passion).

Could you double check with your sound drivers maybe?

edit/ I have just confirmed at least one case with an acquaintance, that whenever he forgot to switch on his G35 headsets sound card the game constantly crashes. There might be some truth to this.
edit2/ Well installing my old sound card did absolutely nothing.

Yes, my sound card is a fairly high end model with great, great sound and very good acceleration and EAX 5.0 for games.

Right now I am running a fresh install of win 7 with all the newest drivers (sometimes nvidia's drivers require unholy hoop-jumping to clean between installs) and I am getting the performance I need, namely a minimum of 80 fps in game. I am pretty sure FRAPS was one of my problems earlier. Also, my RAM was running at DDR2 533 instead of 1066, which obviously makes a notable difference, especially along with my "peer to peer connection between video cards" thing disabled in BIOS.

So right now I'm pretty happy. I think it might be worth it to work up a new install of windows for you. It's a hassle, but at least you can eliminate a whole bunch of things that way.

 

[xenocide]

Wait, you're running 2 near top of the line cards, which cost around $800 combined, but you won't drop $50 on getting DDR3-1600 memory?