Debating multi gpu? Just do it!

[Frag_Maniac]

i ran crossfire for years with minimal drama, the main problem is the space and heat.

as an example, firing up youtube would turn on the second card and add upto 100W of extra power usage - for someone who pays their own bills, or dealing with 40C+ summer heat that was a nightmare.

I could see how that in itself would be a problem. That said, I don't see why by now there shouldn't be an option in your GPU panel to only use Crossfire or SLI in games that use it. Under the Gaming tab there should be an option to keep Crossfire/SLI disabled in desktop use, and each game profile should have an option to automatically turn it on or off when the game is launched, then disable it when the game is exited.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

What I was getting at, which should have been quite clear in my first post and thread title, is that anyone already considering crossfire should not be put off by the many (many!) people saying the majority of games don't work and it won't produce good results in those that do work.

I'm sure crossfire does have issues, not in anything I've tried so far, but its well known that games at release often do have issues.

But, and it's a big but, anyone considering crossfire is likely aware of that and willing to accept they may have to wait for patches/profiles, but nothing is stopping them lowering the res/settings for a month to run it in single card mode if necessary.

I just think its important for people considering it to know that the rubbish about 90% pure issues is just that.

I too had few issues while using crossfire, but you have to realise that the impetus to complain far out strips the impetus to compliment so for every 1 published complaint there are more than a fair few no comments.
I mean look how your Op has been abashed and no money changed hands, to be fair to those who are negative on multi gpu and Have tried it , when you do have an issue and it wastes part of your free time ,it can be really annoying and it's those moments that are remembered easiest.

 

[AsRock]

I'm thinking about doing it with my R9 380 as well. Which games do you play that you got good results in? Do you have any measurements on the power you're using? I'm already peaking @ 600 watts with 1 GPU.

Whats telling you your system is taking 600w lol, sorry i cannot and will not believe that a 380 takes over 150-200w more than a 290X and that's with using OCCT .

 

[FYFI13]

Whats telling you your system is taking 600w lol, sorry i cannot and will not believe that a 380 takes over 150-200w more than a 290X and that's with using OCCT .

My CPU and GPU are overclocked and whole system draws up to 430W from wall socket while gaming. 600W should be enough for x2 R9 380's

 

[AsRock]

My CPU and GPU are overclocked and whole system draws up to 430W from wall socket while gaming. 600W should be enough for x2 R9 380's

oops sorry response ( i was reading to much in to the last part of what you said) yeah so how the hell does his take 600w lol.

 

[cadaveca]

While I Do respect you're opinion,, I have to say xfire 2900 XT latency issues, are not going to be about if I xfired 2x R9390 as both NV and AMD have worked very hard on latency within their gpu Architecture to reduce latency for VR , its still there yes but no where near as bad and good enough for liquid Vr with a produo for example.

My point was that such issues have existed, and do still at times. There are many years between 2900XT and now, but still they struggle to fix this particular problem. It is still highly driver-dependent.

 

[trog100]

Glad it worked out for you! One problem I noticed with open air blower designs like those (I have an evga 980 ti) is that CPU cooling takes a huge hit if the cooler is above the GPU. I use a H60 for CPU cooling, and after moving the radiator to the front as an intake, CPU temperatures dropped by about 20 C. It's not a big deal because the CPU is an i5-6600K that barely draws power anyways, but it's nice to see it in the 30s range under load instead of >50 C.

mine took a huge hit with a normal side flow cpu cooler.. the cards creates a pocket of hot air which the cpu cooler sits in.. the top flow cooler directly fed room temp air from a couple of case side fans solved the problem.. i did think about doing what you have done but my case design didnt permit it..

and toothless.. my rats nest of cables do no harm and are part of having too much stuffed in a smallish case..

my system was never built to look pretty but it does look kind of mean and purposeful and not just a half empty box with some coloured water pipes and leds..

trog

 

[JrockTech]

My corsair Link says I'm using 490 watts peak in GTA V, and 595 watts peak in Counterstrike. I have no idea why a less demanding game is drawing more power.

Edit - Maybe Counterstrike is more GPU dependant, while GTA is CPU which draws less power?

 

[Batou1986]

My corsair Link says I'm using 490 watts peak in GTA V, and 595 watts peak in Counterstrike. I have no idea why a less demanding game is drawing more power.

Edit - Maybe Counterstrike is more GPU dependant, while GTA is CPU which draws less power?

Higher framerate = more utilization = more power draw and more heat

 

[Kanan]

My corsair Link says I'm using 490 watts peak in GTA V, and 595 watts peak in Counterstrike. I have no idea why a less demanding game is drawing more power.

Edit - Maybe Counterstrike is more GPU dependant, while GTA is CPU which draws less power?

Use Framelimit in CS:GO ... limit it at about 125 or 150 fps max. to save energy.

 

[JrockTech]

Use Framelimit in CS:GO ... limit it at about 125 or 150 fps max. to save energy.

I have CS:GO limited to 150FPS from the startup using autoexe.cfg. I need it for 144hz.

 

[Kanan]

I have CS:GO limited to 150FPS from the startup using autoexe.cfg. I need it for 144hz.

Surprising energy consumption numbers then ... I'm curious why GTA V is using less power, it's way more heavy than CS:GO (it has heavy usage even on an i7, and max GPU usage).

 

[Shou Miko]

I tried SLI a couple of times in my life and not really happening for me, bcs I dunno what's wrong never get it to work properly, last time I tried was with 2x8800GT's running Mafia 2 back when it was released I didn't get benefits out of that like a few fps more and than I dedicated one of the 8800GT's as a PhysX card than I gain like ~10fps more but nuth overall that would make me want to get another card, so I just try to get one good single card I can afford for my resolution and be happy with it even that I would love to have a GTX 980 Ti or Titan X but that's just bcs of the vram, that's the only thing that disappoints me of the GTX 970/980 they only have 4gb of vram but I hope Pascal can fix.

 

[AsRock]

My corsair Link says I'm using 490 watts peak in GTA V, and 595 watts peak in Counterstrike. I have no idea why a less demanding game is drawing more power.

Edit - Maybe Counterstrike is more GPU dependant, while GTA is CPU which draws less power?

Sorry but it has to be wrong, no game has come any were near pushing my system 450w and that's with a 3770 @ 4.2 and GFX @ 1050 \ 1250.

Do your self a favor and get a KIll A Watt if available to you a decent UPS will show usage as well if your electric company went digital you should be able to check by that too.

Anyways i should be playing ED .,

 

[JrockTech]

Sorry but it has to be wrong, no game has come any were near pushing my system 450w and that's with a 3770 @ 4.2 and GFX @ 1050 \ 1250.

Do your self a favor and get a KIll A Watt if available to you a decent UPS will show usage as well if your electric company went digital you should be able to check by that too.

Anyways i should be playing ED .,

Ya I figured it was wrong. My CPU is @ 1.62V so I thought that might have something to do with the higher power draw as well, but you're probabaly right.

 

[Orijin16]

my system was never built to look pretty but it does look kind of mean and purposeful and not just a half empty box with some coloured water pipes and leds..

trog

Mine doesn't look half empty (at least I don't think so) and if you've never seen an enthoo primo in person believe me, pictures don't do justice to how massive it is!

I do like the small form factor builds, but because my pc is in my bedroom silence is a must so watercooling was my only real option.

Which brings me nicely onto temperatures... My top card hits a maximum of 73c under Heaven, the bottom one is always 5c lower.

These are MSI Twinfrozer V cooled so the fans don't actually spin at all until ~62c, making noise a non issue as well.

My CPU is cooled by a custom loop with 240x120x80mm + 240x120x29mm rads, so that rarely goes above 40c and all fans are pwm so restricted to low levels.

 

[R-T-B]

Trog, you sure do like to show off your rats nest of cables.

He's got nothing on my rig... but I make up for it with absurd airflow fans.

I just dumped SLI personally. The card may be showing up on firesale soon. I just play a lot of indie games and support there is very hit and miss.

It worked fine on AAA titles though... although I do encounter some thermal throttling due to the EVGA mobo I have having the PCIe slots too close together. That contributed to me dumping it.

 

[Orijin16]

He's got nothing on my rig... but I make up for it with absurd airflow fans.

I just dumped SLI personally. The card may be showing up on firesale soon. I just play a lot of indie games and support there is very hit and miss.

It worked fine on AAA titles though... although I do encounter some thermal throttling due to the EVGA mobo I have having the PCIe slots too close together. That contributed to me dumping it.

Are there any indie games that would need sli? Even at high res?

I've not really paid attention to the indie scene to be honest so I wouldn't know.

I'm quite lucky in that my mobo has an extra slot between the two top 16x pcie (8x mode when both in use), which certainly helps with cooling.

As does the fans on top of my monsta rad in the bottom mount being so close to the bottom card.

 

[Vayra86]

Fun fact: I just learned that The Division is still lacking Crossfire support.

Release date: March 8. AAA game. Big publisher. Heavy game. Yup.

'just do it'

 

[Orijin16]

Fun fact: I just learned that The Division is still lacking Crossfire support.

Release date: March 8. AAA game. Big publisher. Heavy game. Yup.

'just do it'

It's not lacking support, it does actually see a boost with multi gpus, the issue is that there's loads of flickering which apparently makes it unplayable.

Thankfully for me the reviews were all pretty rubbish so despite getting 2 free game keys for it it's still sitting in my uPlay library uninstalled... Probably won't ever be installed even if they fix the flickering because I can't even give the second key away, so it's not like I'm missing out on some co-op action with my friends lol!

Edit: Just noticed the bit about "big publisher", the big publisher in question being Ubisoft, a company well known for releasing games in an unfinished state that are full of issues specific to multi gpus or not.

Thing is, just because 1 (pretty rubbish) triple A title doesn't work properly with crossfire that's not a reason not to have crossfire, it's a reason to wait until after release for the bugs to be ironed out (potentially saving you paying £50 for a rubbish game in the process).

 

[Vayra86]

So far, playing the Division has been an amazing blast to be honest And that's coming from someone who generally shits all over Ubisoft. It's also not the kind of game you'd want to step in a year later, because it's essentially an MMO shooter. You get behind the curve way too much.

Don't write it off too soon, especially if you have free keys to burn! It's a really strong game. But you get my point, I reckon - it was to show how support can be lacking and gets you stuck into single GPU land. Mind you, there are also games (like Elder Scrolls Online) that *never* get the proper support. Seen it all happen first hand...

Also, about publishers and multi GPU support: the actual support for crossfire and SLI exists because publisher/developer and the driver team of Nvidia/AMD *work together* to create profile and compatibility bits for every specific game. It is way too simple to just point at Ubisoft for lacking support: support always is a function of the cooperation between dev and gpu architect.

 

[R-T-B]

Are there any indie games that would need sli? Even at high res?

I've not really paid attention to the indie scene to be honest so I wouldn't know.

Mostly unity engine based titles, but yes. Most of them will work but making your own profiles quickly becomes bothersome.

That, and a single GTX 980 will run most anything I need, so there's that too.

 

[Orijin16]

So far, playing the Division has been an amazing blast to be honest And that's coming from someone who generally shits all over Ubisoft.

Don't write it off too soon, especially if you have free keys to burn! It's a really strong game. But you get my point, I reckon - it was to show how support can be lacking and gets you stuck into single GPU land. Mind you, there are also games (like Elder Scrolls Online) that *never* get the proper support. Seen it all happen first hand...

Fair enough, I haven't actually played it myself yet so can't really comment but a lot of my friends have a lot more time for multiplayer games than I do and the general reaction to me offering them the spare key was "ewww" or "wtf do I want that for?" so I can only really go by that, might put it on ebay for a tenner or something.

It must be frustrating for people who want to play certain games on multi gpus that can't, or not properly, I do get that.

But the whole point of this thread as I've said multiple times is that for people who are considering it not to be put off by people saying "game A doesn't work therefore you're crazy to even consider it"... There's far too much of that on forums, it nearly made me pay £300+ more than I did, and because everything I play does work I'm very glad I didn't listen!

And yes that's a good point about the developers and driver teams working together, more often people blame the gpu vendor when it's not just them.

Sadly, both Ubisoft and AMD have a habit of dragging their feet in releasing fixes, so in this case it's a more exasperated problem that will likely take a while to fix.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Mine doesn't look half empty (at least I don't think so) and if you've never seen an enthoo primo in person believe me, pictures don't do justice to how massive it is!

I do like the small form factor builds, but because my pc is in my bedroom silence is a must so watercooling was my only real option.

Which brings me nicely onto temperatures... My top card hits a maximum of 73c under Heaven, the bottom one is always 5c lower.

These are MSI Twinfrozer V cooled so the fans don't actually spin at all until ~62c, making noise a non issue as well.

My CPU is cooled by a custom loop with 240x120x80mm + 240x120x29mm rads, so that rarely goes above 40c and all fans are pwm so restricted to low levels.

I run the enthoo pro.M,acryllic edition,and sli 970's is a nice look,also never had perf issues, but to be fair i hardly ever really run em.looks totally different now with it being finished and all, but you get the idea.

 

[Orijin16]

I was debating that case, it looks lush and not over sized like the primo, the only thing that made me go bigger was the possibility of dual thick 480mm rads for maximum fan reduction when I eventually add the gpus to the loop.

I'm in quite a similar situation with not running my gpus much too, with 3 kids a full time job and a college course to do there's not much time left for gaming these days, I just enjoy building my rig and being impressed with the performance when I do get chance to fire a game up, but for the most part it's used as a kick-ass Eastenders catch up TV box for the wife lol!

Once I have the final parts for the watercooling I'll stop throwing money at it (probably), then I'll just look at overclocking it when the performance starts to drop off as games get more demanding.