Hardware & Technical Elite and SLI - dual 1080's?

[Viking84]

Hi chaps (and chapettes),

what is the consensus regarding dual graphics cards for Elite, do these setups work? Do you get twice the performance (ish) or are there some serious drawbacks?

With the arrival of the 1180 (or 2080?) cards from nVidia scheduled this summer I expect the price of 1080 cards to plummet. Considering getting a second one for my setup if this will give a significant jump in performance.

/Viking84

 

[Patrick_68000]

I believe that the SLI never gives twice the performance (I believe 50-60% of more)

And past experience shows that the arrival of a new generation of graphics card does not allow the collapse of prices of the previous generation

At most a small discount (I believe 10-20%)

 

[Viking84]

It seems that this is not a sensible solution then - same feedback from X-Plane means it makes more sense to just swap out the 1080 with an 1180 once it arrives and sell the old one

/Viking84

 

[Jon flint]

Can only speak to having tried it with sli 1080ti's, and running with 2 cards saw me loose FPS rather than gain anything. Always better to go with one good card rather than 2 lesser ones.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Can only speak to having tried it with sli 1080ti's, and running with 2 cards saw me loose FPS rather than gain anything.

Unbelievable !

 

[Caramel Clown]

Hi chaps (and chapettes),

what is the consensus regarding dual graphics cards for Elite, do these setups work? Do you get twice the performance (ish) or are there some serious drawbacks?

With the arrival of the 1180 (or 2080?) cards from nVidia scheduled this summer I expect the price of 1080 cards to plummet. Considering getting a second one for my setup if this will give a significant jump in performance.

/Viking84

There will definitely not be any "plummeting" of prices, especially for 1080s. History shows Nvidia's flagship models of previous generation hold their price for quite a while into new gen. Looking back it's quite likely 1080 will be about equivalent to 1170. So why would they get cheap instantly?

 

[Bill Clement]

Can only speak to having tried it with sli 1080ti's, and running with 2 cards saw me loose FPS rather than gain anything. Always better to go with one good card rather than 2 lesser ones.

Concur, even with two extremely trick cards Elite doesn't play much better in SLI. I added a second GTX 690 to my rig a couple of years back. Most titles ran considerably better, Elite didn't improve much. Quite the reverse, it picked up a nasty flicker around moons and planets. Pants... [sour]

Still, the bitcoin miners gave me a decent price for my old GPU earlier this year, so it's not all bad.

 

[Patrick_68000]

There will definitely not be any "plummeting" of prices, especially for 1080s. History shows Nvidia's flagship models of previous generation hold their price for quite a while into new gen. Looking back it's quite likely 1080 will be about equivalent to 1170. So why would they get cheap instantly?

The manufacturers would prefer to destroy their stocks.

The generosity is not their first quality

 

[Zelos1983]

Hi chaps (and chapettes),

what is the consensus regarding dual graphics cards for Elite, do these setups work? Do you get twice the performance (ish) or are there some serious drawbacks?

The setup works, however, you don't get twice the performance. The Cobra engine is coded rather bad and can't make much use of parallelism, neither on the CPU nor on the GPU side.

I have a tripple TitanX setup. CryEngine games run super smooth and detailed at 4kp60, however, Elite experiences framedrops, especially around stations.
Max load per card is around 30 to 35%, so they are pretty much idling around as FDEV struggles to make use of the hardware.

 

[Caramel Clown]

The setup works, however, you don't get twice the performance. The Cobra engine is coded rather bad and can't make much use of parallelism, neither on the CPU nor on the GPU side.

I have a tripple TitanX setup. CryEngine games run super smooth and detailed at 4kp60, however, Elite experiences framedrops, especially around stations.
Max load per card is around 30 to 35%, so they are pretty much idling around as FDEV struggles to make use of the hardware.

The fact that even Nvidia doesn't want to support three way, or even two way SLI anymore should've told you maybe it's not worth it in general
Maybe there's not much performance to be made in Elite, it's a very well optimized game. You already get lots of frames. Also, Elite makes a good use of processor cores.

 

[Zelos1983]

The fact that even Nvidia doesn't want to support three way, or even two way SLI anymore should've told you maybe it's not worth it in general

That's ridiculous. 3 way is supported for my card generation.

Maybe there's not much performance to be made in Elite, it's a very well optimized game. You already get lots of frames. Also, Elite makes a good use of processor cores.

That's utter nonsense you are talking.
Elite is not optimized. The Cobra engine produces far less FPS than CryEngine Games for example (Prey, Star Citizen etc.) even though the graphics are less impressive.
It also doesn't utilize the CPU very well, resource intensive compute jobs are tied to the main game loop. You could see it earlier for example when the route planner still was more buggy. Took 10 to 15min to calculate a route in the core, without significant CPU load (8 cores/16 threads available), but with a very sluggish UI.
Again, in Contrast, with a bit of Tweaking you could get >80% overall CPU load on some Star Citizen Versions. Same with GPU, and then it run's smooth as hell.

Please don't talk without doing your research first.

 

[Caramel Clown]

That's ridiculous. 3 way is supported for my card generation.



That's utter nonsense you are talking.
Elite is not optimized. The Cobra engine produces far less FPS than CryEngine Games for example (Prey, Star Citizen etc.) even though the graphics are less impressive.
It also doesn't utilize the CPU very well, resource intensive compute jobs are tied to the main game loop. You could see it earlier for example when the route planner still was more buggy. Took 10 to 15min to calculate a route in the core, without significant CPU load (8 cores/16 threads available), but with a very sluggish UI.
Again, in Contrast, with a bit of Tweaking you could get >80% overall CPU load on some Star Citizen Versions. Same with GPU, and then it run's smooth as hell.

Please don't talk without doing your research first.

Not just arrogant, also mostly made up nonsense...Could've not picked worse example for an optimized engine. It must be a joke, right?
Also, Star Citizen lol? You mean sub 40fps mess we've all "enjoying" at the moment? We must be playing different games.
Elite utilizes multiple cores fairly well, in fact more than most modern titles. It doesn't load them, because there isn't much load to put on them...

 

[Morbad]

I haven't used SLI with ED, but I actually had reasonably good success with CFX. Scaling was very good on my 290Xes and both GPUs were fully utilized, but there were a few frame timing issues and the occasional flickering texture from stuff that didn't handle AFR well. Regardless, the final result was much better than a single card.

Since SLI is officially better supported than CFX, I would expect at least passable support, especially if you are willing to tinker. However, as I said, I haven't tried it personally.

Regardless, a single fast GPU is always going to be a more straightforward and generally smoother experience.

I do expect 1080 prices to fall, but probably not as quickly as many would hope.

 

[Zelos1983]

Not just arrogant, also mostly made up nonsense...Could've not picked worse example for an optimized engine. It must be a joke, right?

I see, you are just trolling or you have no gaming experience whatsoever .

Elite utilizes multiple cores fairly well, in fact more than most modern titles. It doesn't load them, because there isn't much load to put on them...

Sure, because an algorithm that runs 15 minutes (!) is not "much load". You really make me laugh

Well, at least they removed the offending part of the code. Now the route quality slightly deteriorated, but that's fair enough for a workaround. Not that the community provided enough feedback to provide for better threading (e.g. always detach UI and compute or I/O heavy stuff from each other) and pointed out routing algorithms that could run multi-threaded (thus you could briefly run 4 to 6 cores without impacting the game).

So, how do you explain that E stutters quite often and experiences framedrops, while other games do not? And we are talking 4k of course.
I wonder how you get out of that one

To be fair, it's not just Cobra. There are even worse engines like Unity and Arma3. But also better ones.

BTW: SC is still in development and not optimized. You have to manually tune the config file and specify number of cores, threads etc. experiment a bit around, but that significantly makes the performance better. Can't do that with E.

 

[Zelos1983]

Regardless, a single fast GPU is always going to be a more straightforward and generally smoother experience.

Yes, that's what I would recommend as well. As GPUs get more powerful, the need for SLI for 4k/VR/tripple Monitor is reduced.

With a single, powerful card there is less hassle in setup, both hardware- and softwarewise.

 

[Jon flint]

I see, you are just trolling or you have no gaming experience whatsoever .



Sure, because an algorithm that runs 15 minutes (!) is not "much load". You really make me laugh

Well, at least they removed the offending part of the code. Now the route quality slightly deteriorated, but that's fair enough for a workaround. Not that the community provided enough feedback to provide for better threading (e.g. always detach UI and compute or I/O heavy stuff from each other) and pointed out routing algorithms that could run multi-threaded (thus you could briefly run 4 to 6 cores without impacting the game).

So, how do you explain that E stutters quite often and experiences framedrops, while other games do not? And we are talking 4k of course.
I wonder how you get out of that one

To be fair, it's not just Cobra. There are even worse engines like Unity and Arma3. But also better ones.

BTW: SC is still in development and not optimized. You have to manually tune the config file and specify number of cores, threads etc. experiment a bit around, but that significantly makes the performance better. Can't do that with E.

Really not sure how you can hold up SC as an example of optimisation, in its current state its utterly appalling, constant server hitches, 35-50 fps regardless of settings (720p/low vs 4k/very high should not have the same FPS!). At one point over the weekend I was seeing 25fps, my gpu was at 12% usage, SC has a long way to go before its anything close to the shining example of engine optimisation you pretend it to be.

As for Elite, while it sadly doesn't properly support SLI, it is at least a very well optimised engine, hell it works on everything form the worst potato pc to consoles to high end rigs, its an incredibly flexible engine. Don't know why you're seeing stutters with ED, if you have a modern gaming rig you should be just fine, I cant get ED to drop frames until I start landing on planets in 8k resolution, only then does it drop below 60, id hardly call that unoptimized.

I will agree, there's definitely better optimised engines, unreal engine 4 springs to mind, it'll scale to pretty much anything including non-sli multi gpu stuff via dx12s explicit multi gpu, I know someone who tried out twin titanVs and they worked a treat with this method despite not supporting hardware SLI.

 

[Zelos1983]

Really not sure how you can hold up SC as an example of optimisation

I didn't. In fact: I said that it's not optimized yet as it is still in development.

That said, it performs often (depending on the release) way better than Cobra on the same hardware. More constant FPS despite more detailed graphics at 4k.

Other CryEngine games that have been released have of curse fewer issues. I've been playing Prey extensively last year. With all bells and whistles it delivers constant 60fps at 4k. No occasional stutter.

As for Elite, while it sadly doesn't properly support SLI, it is at least a very well optimised engine,

No, it isn't. I don't know why people insist on that out of pure fanboyishness. But an engine that stutters and produces UI lags is simply not optimized, especially when hardware and OS issues can be ruled out.

 

[Jon flint]

. But an engine that stutters and produces UI lags is simply not optimized, especially when hardware and OS issues can be ruled out.

I agree, but Elite doesn't stutter or have UI lag that I've ever observed and I can only judge by my own experiences.

I've played Elite on a range of hardware, i7 4790 with gtx970, later gtx1070, then onto an i7 8700k with twin 1080ti's, currently just a single 1080ti since I sold one. Never on any of those hardware combinations, have I ever seen stutter or lag except where I've pushed the game too far, like trying to play at 8k or using excessive supersampling in VR.

There's no fanboyishness there whatsoever, just my experience with the game.

 

[Caramel Clown]

I didn't. In fact: I said that it's not optimized yet as it is still in development.

That said, it performs often (depending on the release) way better than Cobra on the same hardware. More constant FPS despite more detailed graphics at 4k.

Other CryEngine games that have been released have of curse fewer issues. I've been playing Prey extensively last year. With all bells and whistles it delivers constant 60fps at 4k. No occasional stutter.



No, it isn't. I don't know why people insist on that out of pure fanboyishness. But an engine that stutters and produces UI lags is simply not optimized, especially when hardware and OS issues can be ruled out.

You just don't seem to accept the fact that you are absolutely clueless about this topic.
Don't rule out OS or hardware, because people run ED on all kinds of machines and stutter or lag is not something they complain about. Must be just you.
Prey was made with a 5-year old version of an engine. Boo hoo, what a surprise that it runs well on modern hardware.
Go troll somewhere else, please. This is not funny anymore.

 

[dunno]

A thought about card drivers, I wonder if Card OEM's slow the previous generation cards down with their "latest" drivers in order to force their client base to buy the next gen hardware ?, I wonder......