Plans for SLI support?

[Lucidious]

I don't really know where to post this but I'm hoping someone from Sigil checks these boards.

Just before the new 8800's came out I bought the best nVidia card I could find in anticipation of Vanguard - the 7950GX2 two video cards fused together in an unholy alliance using one PCIe X16 slot, an SLI set up basically. It was very expensive.

In fact, I bought an entirely new machine that I'm quite proud of.

Sadly, Vanguard doesn't support SLI at this time (detects it according to the numerous crash logs, but doesn't support it). I was -extremely- disappointed by this to say the least, especially since I thought Vanguard was on the cutting edge of technology.

This means my (what I consider anyway) pretty high end graphics set up is... well, "ok". I struggle along at 20FPS on high performance, I finally gave up and switched to balance but I still lag about, especially in cities (dropping to 19 or even a pitiful 6 when buildings come into view - I mean, this just CAN'T be the way it's meant to be played can it?!). I'm quite sad considering all the cash I spent.

I thought I had read somewhere that SLI would be supported "shortly" after release, also true with Vista and Core2(not so sure on the other two, SLI is my main concern).

Is this still true, how close is it? I thought I had read in the beta forum (in the where did Brad go thread) that SLI was in testing and there was an up to 50% performance increase. I truly, truly hope that this is so.

Anyknow know any specifics?

[tennex]

Unfortunately many people are having problems with that card. Should get better once SLI is in place. Sorry, bud. Wish you would have asked on the hardware forums before purchasing.

[Fortano]

Actually.....

Vanguard does support SLI it is already in the code. They just haven't updated the code to recognize the current drivers etc.. Here is a slick work around. It has a graph that will show you whether or not you are in SLI mode.

My frame rate jumped 50%!

First, download nHancer (http://www.nhancer.com) and open it.

Next, click on Global on the Settings pane

Go to the SLI Mode tab and enter the following hex value: 402209.

Now, go to the SLI tab , and click on both the checkbox next to "SLI Load Balancing Graph" and the one next to "on".
The screen should flicker for a second.

Now load vanguard. If you see a green vertical bar on the left side of the screen, sli is enabled.

[Lucidious]

Actually.....

Vanguard does support SLI it is already in the code. They just haven't updated the code to recognize the current drivers etc.. Here is a slick work around. It has a graph that will show you whether or not you are in SLI mode.

My frame rate jumped 50%!

First, download nHancer (http://www.nhancer.com) and open it.

Next, click on Global on the Settings pane

Go to the SLI Mode tab and enter the following hex value: 402209.

Now, go to the SLI tab , and click on both the checkbox next to "SLI Load Balancing Graph" and the one next to "on".
The screen should flicker for a second.

Now load vanguard. If you see a green vertical bar on the left side of the screen, sli is enabled.

Really?! I shall have to try that then as soon as I get home from work! If it works as well for me, I'll...I'll.... uhm...hmmm - I'll kiss you!

[Lucidious]

Actually.....

Vanguard does support SLI it is already in the code. They just haven't updated the code to recognize the current drivers etc.. Here is a slick work around. It has a graph that will show you whether or not you are in SLI mode.

My frame rate jumped 50%!

First, download nHancer (http://www.nhancer.com) and open it.

Next, click on Global on the Settings pane

Go to the SLI Mode tab and enter the following hex value: 402209.

Now, go to the SLI tab , and click on both the checkbox next to "SLI Load Balancing Graph" and the one next to "on".
The screen should flicker for a second.

Now load vanguard. If you see a green vertical bar on the left side of the screen, sli is enabled.

Can I ask what GFX card, driver version and OS you are using?

I am using the lastest forceware drivers from nVidia (100.59 I believe), WIndows Vista Premium, and the 7950 GX2.

When nHancer loads my CPU spikes to about 50% and remains there - sometimes it jumps as much as 75% (but drops back to 50). The memory will steadly increase until I end the process - at about 1.3gigs last time.

The program never actually successfully loads.

I checked their website and the newest version (which I downloaded) supports Vista and my version of forceware.

Did you experience anything similar and if so how did you overcome it?

[tennex]

Actually.....
Vanguard does support SLI it is already in the code. They just haven't updated the code to recognize the current drivers etc.. Here is a slick work around. It has a graph that will show you whether or not you are in SLI mode.


Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Hope it works out.

[Fortano]

I doubt this will work with vista.

My recommendation there is uninstall vista...that is going to be way buggy for along time and Anandtech did the benchmarking on it, and it will be a while before you really see any significant advantage to using vista for gaming.

I had a copy as well and uninstalled it and went back to xp.


nhancer would have to be updated to be vista compatible.

[Iron_Freeze]

I am using the lastest forceware drivers from nVidia (100.59 I believe), WIndows Vista Premium, and the 7950 GX2.

When nHancer loads my CPU spikes to about 50% and remains there - sometimes it jumps as much as 75% (but drops back to 50). The memory will steadly increase until I end the process - at about 1.3gigs last time.

The program never actually successfully loads.

I checked their website and the newest version (which I downloaded) supports Vista and my version of forceware.

Did you experience anything similar and if so how did you overcome it?

I don't think your going to be able to overcome that problem, at least not at current. The 100.59 drivers only support SLI for 8800's in DX9, the other cards don't have SLI support yet. NHancer is probably just getting confused (since you have a dual card, that can't SLI, but it's supposed to.... and crash goes NHancer).

[Lucidious]

I don't think your going to be able to overcome that problem, at least not at current. The 100.59 drivers only support SLI for 8800's in DX9, the other cards don't have SLI support yet. NHancer is probably just getting confused (since you have a dual card, that can't SLI, but it's supposed to.... and crash goes NHancer).


And that makes me sad. nHance does support Vista and the latest versions, but good point on the non-SLI support. *sigh* I hate everything right now.

There's no uninstalling Vista for me, it would be a wipe and reload to XP.

[Lucidious]

And that makes me sad. nHance does support Vista and the latest versions, but good point on the non-SLI support. *sigh* I hate everything right now.

There's no uninstalling Vista for me, it would be a wipe and reload to XP.

I've fixed the problem by buying a nVidia 8800 GTX. No more SLI for me...

[Razorwire]

great stuff, but how can I get rid of the green bar?

[smog]

great stuff, but how can I get rid of the green bar?

Go back into nHancer and turn it off

I have 2 7900 GTX cards and it appears SLI works fine.

Is anyone using 2 8800 GTX cards yet?

ASUS A8N32-SLI DLX
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
Corsair Twin2048-4000PT
Maxtor 300GB SATA
2 - XFX 7900 GTX

[Iron_Freeze]

Go back into nHancer and turn it off

I have 2 7900 GTX cards and it appears SLI works fine.

Is anyone using 2 8800 GTX cards yet?

ASUS A8N32-SLI DLX
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
Corsair Twin2048-4000PT
Maxtor 300GB SATA
2 - XFX 7900 GTX

Yes, it works fairly well. The performance boost from one to two 8800's is only around 30-40%, but for this game, that's better than nothing.

[Sundrowner]

Yes, it works fairly well. The performance boost from one to two 8800's is only around 30-40%, but for this game, that's better than nothing.

I tried this and i have to say...WHOA...the frame rate boost is INSANE, i am able to play smoothly at the HIGHEST settings with an average FPS of 61! but i dont understand why it seems when i am running that there is almost like this constant "start stop stutter" to the animation now and my screen seems to flicker alot, if anyone has ANY idea how to fix those issues than i declare this info as the GREATEST info EVER! :)

[Ulfgar]

I tried this and i have to say...WHOA...the frame rate boost is INSANE, i am able to play smoothly at the HIGHEST settings with an average FPS of 61! but i dont understand why it seems when i am running that there is almost like this constant "start stop stutter" to the animation now and my screen seems to flicker alot, if anyone has ANY idea how to fix those issues than i declare this info as the GREATEST info EVER! :)

For flickering do you mean just random objects? If so try turning off hardware occlusion. For the stutter this is normally the slowdown of textures being loaded/unloaded. Make sure you defrag the drive with VG on it often and I think turning on pre-caching helps also. Look in the stick article at the top of this forum about performance. Lots of good tips there.

Ulfgar