Elite Dangerous, the DK2 and SLI discussion thread.

Kietrax

Volunteer Moderator
Kietrax
CylonSurfer said:
I installed a second GTX 980 yesterday, manager to run 2x SS with all settings on high in 1.4 and 1.5x SS in Horizons beta 3, again with all settings on high other than the terrain settings which I put on low. Sli certainly made a large improvement for me! Would be nice to see game works support though for proper VR Sli.
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Interesting - been reading through this thread now I found it (after trying to start a new one and getting it shut down - oops!). I'm considering adding a second 980 to my rig for this purpose but peoples experiences seem to vary a lot from "works great" to "it's even worse than with a single card" ... Reasonable investment still for a "might work" solution, so success stories are good to hear - thanks!
 

WolfishHickory

W
Kietrax said:
Interesting - been reading through this thread now I found it (after trying to start a new one and getting it shut down - oops!). I'm considering adding a second 980 to my rig for this purpose but peoples experiences seem to vary a lot from "works great" to "it's even worse than with a single card" ... Reasonable investment still for a "might work" solution, so success stories are good to hear - thanks!
Click to expand...

Likewise interesting. I added a second Titan X yesterday - more to prepare for 'VR 1.0' and 1gpu-per-eye, as I know SLI support is currently patchy at best.

Still, was interested to see what would happen.

First, I did indeed have to do a lot of detailed tweaking to ensure that a) I had sli focus on the dk2 and b) ed64 was working with SLI. But ultimately I got it working and making good use of both cards according to Afterburner. Also no issues with CPU bottleneck as far as I could see.

Then I got sidetracked by the fact that the sky started randomly turning bright blue (physical issue with the sli bridge it turns out!)

On very brief first impressions though, I would summarise with 'performance enhanced but much more temperamental'. Could run everything in the station on ultra with 1.5 SS and full HMD quality. Felt incredible. Flew outside and had my worst judder in normal flight for quite some time. SC great. Once on surface everything was great with some reduction to shadows and hmd quality .

So I'm going to play around a bit more tonight. It was kind of promising but I don't expect to see the full benefit until direct mode and nvidia vr come into play properly.
 

Kietrax

Volunteer Moderator
Kietrax
Thanks - sounds like it might be time to break out the credit card then (especially since the year-end bonus just came in :))!

By the way, was that in 1.4 or the Horizons beta?
 

CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
Kietrax said:
Thanks - sounds like it might be time to break out the credit card then (especially since the year-end bonus just came in :))!

By the way, was that in 1.4 or the Horizons beta?
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I tested under 1.4 and Horizons beta 4. For Horizons you would need to apply the following fix:

  • Get NVIDIA Inspector.
  • Open NVIDIA Inspector. Click the 'Spanner and Screwdriver' icon next to where it lists your driver version.
  • Create a new profile and give it a name using the 'star' icon.
  • Add an application to the profile. You will need to browse to the install location of your E:D copy and find EliteDangerous64.exe
  • Back in NVIDIA Inspector, under the Compatibility section, change the 'SLI compatibility bits (DX1x)' to '0x000000F5'.
  • Under the 'SLI' section, change the 'SLI rendering mode' to 'SLI_RENDERING_MODE_FORCE_AFR2'.
  • Apply your changes.
  • Load Horizons and enjoy your SLI working flawlessly.
 
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WolfishHickory

W
Kietrax said:
Thanks - sounds like it might be time to break out the credit card then (especially since the year-end bonus just came in :))!

By the way, was that in 1.4 or the Horizons beta?
Click to expand...

Horizons beta 4 :)

I should add that I benchmarked before and after and my avg fps doubled which I was not expecting. Way exceeded my expectations on that front. Witcher 3 now runs completely maxed out in 1440p ultrawide without batting an eyelid. Rock solid 60fps everywhere. So a result whatever happens.

Going to try that ^ as soon as I get home :D
 
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hapklaar

hapklaar
CylonSurfer said:
I tested under 1.4 and Horizons beta 4. For Horizons you would need to apply the following fix:

  • Get NVIDIA Inspector.
  • Open NVIDIA Inspector. Click the 'Spanner and Screwdriver' icon next to where it lists your driver version.
  • Create a new profile and give it a name using the 'star' icon.
  • Add an application to the profile. You will need to browse to the install location of your E:D copy and find EliteDangerous64.exe
  • Back in NVIDIA Inspector, under the Compatibility section, change the 'SLI compatibility bits (DX1x)' to '0x000000F5'.
  • Under the 'SLI' section, change the 'SLI rendering mode' to 'SLI_RENDERING_MODE_FORCE_AFR2'.
  • Apply your changes.
  • Load Horizons and enjoy your SLI working flawlessly.
Click to expand...

Even though EDH does run without any judder with these settings @SSx2 with everything set to high (2x GTX970), it creates so much extra lag it is unplayable for me. It's like when you move your head, the image is dragged behind. Pre-rendered frames is already at 1, so no clue if/how I can get rid of this extra lag.

Really curious if this lag doesn't happen for you, or maybe you don't notice it?
 

atlas974

atlas974
hapklaar said:
Even though EDH does run without any judder with these settings @SSx2 with everything set to high (2x GTX970), it creates so much extra lag it is unplayable for me. It's like when you move your head, the image is dragged behind. Pre-rendered frames is already at 1, so no clue if/how I can get rid of this extra lag.

Really curious if this lag doesn't happen for you, or maybe you don't notice it?
Click to expand...

Just tryed it and same thing here, extra latency is sky rocketing, unplayable due to trailing image in the DK2
 

CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
hapklaar said:
Even though EDH does run without any judder with these settings @SSx2 with everything set to high (2x GTX970), it creates so much extra lag it is unplayable for me. It's like when you move your head, the image is dragged behind. Pre-rendered frames is already at 1, so no clue if/how I can get rid of this extra lag.

Really curious if this lag doesn't happen for you, or maybe you don't notice it?
Click to expand...

SLI increases latency, this is well known side effect of the technology. In VR the added latency is much more noticeable than it normally would be. I noticed a slight increase in latency when running SLI in VR for the first time, after a few play sessions I don't notice it anymore. Hopefully Frontier will implement NVidia Gameworks in order to fix / reduce the problem.

atlas974 said:
Just tryed it and same thing here, extra latency is sky rocketing, unplayable due to trailing image in the DK2
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Enabling SLI doesn't make my image trail - low FPS would do that though. My 2 GTX980's can't maintain smooth game play at 2.0x SS, but does at 1.5x SS, at least in the Horizons beta anyway. There is also the bug in 1.4 which causes low FPS / trailing image in super cruise, maybe that's the source of your problem? I can't say for sure as you didn't really add much detail regarding the problem so that's just a guess.
 
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hapklaar

hapklaar
CylonSurfer said:
My 2 GTX980's can't maintain smooth game play at 2.0x SS, but does at 1.5x SS, at least in the Horizons beta anyway.
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Did you try raising the power limit using MSI Afterburner to 125% on your cards? It makes just the difference for me, allowing SSx1.5 in single GPU and SS2.0 is dual GPU mode judderfree. If you haven't yet, give it a try.

In Afterburner you can also enable a graph for power limit, power used and fps, to see the effect.
 

CylonSurfer

CylonSurfer
hapklaar said:
Did you try raising the power limit using MSI Afterburner to 125% on your cards? It makes just the difference for me, allowing SSx1.5 in single GPU and SS2.0 is dual GPU mode judderfree. If you haven't yet, give it a try.

In Afterburner you can also enable a graph for power limit, power used and fps, to see the effect.
Click to expand...

Interesting - I might give it a try. Cheers.
 

Deimos-GOW

D
Initial SLI test in Horizons:
There is no profile for Horizons SLI so you have to force it. AFR mode 2 is the only option (mode 1 is really bad). IMO this setup is worse than pre-Horizons as the lag is worse.

Tips:
No VR; SLI runs very well. Should be able to cope with very high res and high detail settings without issue.
With VR; Make sure you create a new application profile in the nVidia CP as the CP will not pick up the new executable on it's own, then set up the usual max VR frames, disable triple buffering, disable SLI etc.
 

CMDR Evolution

CMDR Evolution
Hello everyone,

Sorry if this has already been answered but I can't find anything official. Any plans for fdevs to allow support for Vr sli?
Also dx12?

Thanks and fly safe
 

Deimos-GOW

D
I tested SLI when OH was released and my initial impressions are promising. The massive lag has been eliminated, to the point where I cannot tell the difference between SLI on and off (and I was on here often complaining about how bad it was). However it is far from useable on my setup. SLI introduces micro stuttering, offers no performance improvement over a single 980Ti (already a monster) and is unstable (crashed after just a few minutes of game time). Someone else mentioned tracking issues with SLI enabled which I did notice for a moment before the crash.

Ultimately I'm not sure if SLI is at all necessary with a high end card and all the other VR content available right now needs bugg3r all in the video card department, for example, Lucky's tale was consistently using only 10-15% GPU making SLI utterly pointless.
 
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