So, Sigil, what's the word on SLI?

[Portlis]

Here we are with a "third generation" MMORPG with super fancy nice looking graphics. We are expected to go out and get new computers to handle all these graphics, so many of us put together a pretty sweet SLI system. The problem? Apparently Vanguard and SLI don't get along. How can this NOT be at the very front of Sigil's "to do" list? The absolute only reason to have a SLI set up is for new cutting edge graphics is graphics intense games. Does Vanguard not qualify as this? Why does it seem EVERY other game on the market is optimized for this except for Vanguard?

My system benchmarks at 12,100 on 3dmark06. To put that into perspective, only 1.1% (or less than 10,000) of all tested computers performed better out of 850,000ish total tests. Yet I STILL only get 30 FPS in town, with lots of hitching and often times my FPS dips down to 10-15 even. I'm not even maxing out the performance. I've got my settings at 1600x1200 on "High Quality". Yes, 1600x1200 is a somewhat high res, but nothing compared to what people are running on their 24-30 inch widescreen LCD's.

Yes, I know all about bottlenecks etc, but there is no way my Core 2 Duo machine overclocked to 3ghz with 4 gigs of ram and dual SLI 8800GTS (also both overclocked) is bottlenecked at any given point to where Vanguard should be performing this poorly. Yes, drivers are current too.

Heck, my old system got 20 FPS in town with the same hitching and FPS dips running at 1024x768. For comparison, this machine scores a 1,300 benchmark score. This old system was a single core 3ghz with 1 gig of ram and a single 6600GT card. I've got more VIDEO MEMORY ALONE in my new computer than my old computer's RAM + video memory together!

It would be REAL nice to get an actual answer from a person who actually works for Sigil and knows what the situation is regarding SLI and performance on high end machines.

[Deadguy]

Games (MMORPG) dont use much of SLI,DuelCore,or 4gb memory.So basicly you got your old computer with a better video card and 1gb more memory.On the brite side maybe in another year they might have support.Then again we hoped last year it might happen this year.

[Cronjob]

Games (MMORPG) dont use much of SLI,DuelCore,or 4gb memory.So basicly you got your old computer with a better video card and 1gb more memory.On the brite side maybe in another year they might have support.Then again we hoped last year it might happen this year.

This one has a need for SLI. Building a high end machine simply isn't going to give you the greatest performance in the game. I have an Intel E6600 (2.4ghz) dual core overclocked to 3.2ghz with 2gb DDR2 tightly timed, and a GeForce 8800 GTX and on my 30" Apple Cinema Display, I can run in 1600x1024 (widescreen) with playable performance of ~30fps average. Of course, that doesn't help with the constant chunking as you wander around (large, contiguous pagefile, 15,000 RPM SCSI). And I discovered that when I'm grouping, I have to drop my settings so that I'm actually running at 1280x800 (on a HUGE monitor - it's fricking UGLY!). Otherwise, I might find myself grouping with five other people and getting seconds per frame rather than frames per second (I'm unsure if that's due to gameplay lag or if it's due to chunking, though).

Going SLI with a second 8800 would add significant performance. Even if it wer only 40% to 60%, that would make the game very playable at high frame rates, in high resolution with all the candy in a group setting.

[DCpunk]

This one has a need for SLI. Building a high end machine simply isn't going to give you the greatest performance in the game. I have an Intel E6600 (2.4ghz) dual core overclocked to 3.2ghz with 2gb DDR2 tightly timed, and a GeForce 8800 GTX and on my 30" Apple Cinema Display, I can run in 1600x1024 (widescreen) with playable performance of ~30fps average. Of course, that doesn't help with the constant chunking as you wander around (large, contiguous pagefile, 15,000 RPM SCSI). And I discovered that when I'm grouping, I have to drop my settings so that I'm actually running at 1280x800 (on a HUGE monitor - it's fricking UGLY!). Otherwise, I might find myself grouping with five other people and getting seconds per frame rather than frames per second (I'm unsure if that's due to gameplay lag or if it's due to chunking, though).

Going SLI with a second 8800 would add significant performance. Even if it wer only 40% to 60%, that would make the game very playable at high frame rates, in high resolution with all the candy in a group setting.


Even with SLI it would likely only be about a 20% increase in performance.