970's in SLI not hitting 99% usage in game

[Inky_Enston]

Hi, all. My second rig is a 4770k @4Ghz, 16Gb ram, MSI G45, Corsair CX750M and 2x Gigabyte Windforce G1 Gaming SOC 970's in SLI. They never shift past 70% usage in games @4k Ultra and performance drops dramatically with any over clocking - even by 1Mhz or 0.1%. However, when in Firestrike they'll often hit 99% each and there's a major performance increase when over clocking. If Firestrike can utilise the cards full potential, why are recent games like GTA 5, Pcars, Witcher 3 etc not able to?

 

[TROLOLOLOLO]

Maybe your system is overkill for even ultra 4k gaming lol
how much fps you get?

 

[RobCrezz]

Whats your CPU usage like at the same time?

 

[Inky_Enston]

With out AA (no point with 4k) I'm not hitting what others have in there benchmarks apart from Firestrike which is faster than well known YouTueists have scored with lesser or stock 970's. In game the YouTueists are getting better fps in 4k than a Titan X and 980Ti or very similar. I'm 10fps down on a 980Ti and their stock 970 in SLI results.

 

[Inky_Enston]

CPU maxes at 53%

 

[RobCrezz]

Are you using the same driver version as the other people?

 

[Inky_Enston]

I'm using the latest driver's and a fresh install of Windows. Doesn't make sense that I can over clock for Firestrike and that Firestrike hits 99% but in game I can't. The mere wiff of an over clock in game's makes fps drop to similar to that of a single 970 and it becomes incredibly laggy

 

[redgarl]

Maybe your system is overkill for even ultra 4k gaming lol
how much fps you get?

Two 970 GTX are not incredible at 4k. The video memory is killing them.

Games are way different than benchmarks. Witcher 3 is having poor implementation of dual GPU setups. It will take another month before having almost perfect drivers and patches.

CF and SLI work perfectly... after 2 months of the release of the game. It's the sad truth. I am not an early adopter, however I did bought The Witcher 3 on launch. I had to wait a week for simply a driver able to activate CF. Even there, it is far from perfect.

 

[Inky_Enston]

I can't see my having the latest driver's and what are considered the fastest air cooled 970's would give me worse performance than stock 970's on reputable YouTube channels. Yet I blitzed their EVGA 970 SSOC stock Firestrike score's!

 

[Inky_Enston]

I agree that it takes a few months for sli and cf to sort themselves out - sometimes they never do in some games but I've benchmarked Metro last light, again I'm 13 fps down on a 980Ti and 970's in sli. That games been around a while and they're running AA maxed in all their titles which is a gpu killer. I have AA off which gives me 60fps Ultra in Pcars but 42fps if it rains. They average 71fps!

 

[Inky_Enston]

AA off in Pcars ultra 4k vram only hits 2.6Gb max. Most games sit under 3Gb vram if AA is off

 

[Inky_Enston]

My vram rarely hits anywhere near 3.5Gb in games plus, in Firestrike it hit 3.8Gb of vram usage Project CARS 4k Ultra (No AA) 60fps Multiplayer C…: https://youtu.be/MNNahN8dxH0

Edit: I've just tried GTA 5 4k Ultra everything at 4k no AA. The vram hits 3.8-3.9Gb pretty much the entire time and fps max @112fps and min @32fps. It hovers around 50-55fps most of the time. Funnily enough, I didn't try the benchmark - I forgotten at that point.

 

[Or Nah]

970 SLI user here. The only time you will see perfect scaling (both GPUs above 95% usage) is during benchmarks.

It solely depends how well optimized the game is for SLI,

Another thing is making sure you have the correct SLI settings enabled and using the right SLI profiles through inspector.

In battlefield 4 Both my cards never exceeded 40% usage, then once I used the correct SLI profile... BOOM! both cards above 90% usage.

To sum it up, perfect usage on both cards in games is all but a dream currently.

 

[Inky_Enston]

970 SLI user here. The only time you will see perfect scaling (both GPUs above 95% usage) is during benchmarks.

It solely depends how well optimized the game is for SLI,

Another thing is making sure you have the correct SLI settings enabled and using the right SLI profiles through inspector.

In battlefield 4 Both my cards never exceeded 40% usage, then once I used the correct SLI profile... BOOM! both cards above 90% usage.

To sum it up, perfect usage on both cards in games is all but a dream currently.

Thanks for your reply. I'm no stranger to CF (other rig is 2x 7990) and am aware of scaling issue's. It doesn't explain why I have a dramatic performance drop if I over clock the card's even by 0.1% in games but not in benchmark. I discovered Teamspeak 3 causes the same thing in Project Cars last night (had to uninstall TS3 and Nvidia driver's and reinstall the driver's) and playing GTA 5 non steam (from cd.keys.com - uses Rockstar server) also does the same if someone messages me via Steam messenger. I'm guessing it must be an overlay issue. Last year I spent months not being able to play one single new AAA game on Origin without it playing at 3fps with one 7990. Finally I figured out that I needed to turn off Origin overlay. I doesn't explain how other's (YouTube review channels) with lesser 970's in sli manage 10-15 fps more. I should be getting roughly what a 980Ti gets easily not 10-15 fps less.

Also, what is "inspector" and by "profile", I'm not exactly sure what you mean?