Getting less fps in Skyrim after enabling sli

anon1239

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Jun 29, 2014
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Hi guys,

Didn't notice until recently, but when I tested the performance with skyrim using two gtx 980's i found that the fps was significantly lower than when using just a single gpu. I reset skyrim to its vanilla state, and I found that the performance remained no different. The only possible solution to this issue was that I am using an sli bridge meant for 3 cards, but I heard that this setup is perfectly viable. I also tested these two cards on the heaven benchmark and the performance was doubled when using two cards instead of one.

If anyone could help me with this issue I would much appreciate it! Thanks :)
 
Well this is caveat of multigpu. Probably there were cpu bottleneck somewhere. In multi gpu setup when cpu become the bottleneck worse thing it could lead to negative scaling. Did you aim for 120/144 fps with the game? Or satisfied with 60fps? If using 3way bridge could solve your problem then might as well use that.
 

anon1239

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Apparently Skyrim isn't well optimized for SLI as you noted, so in attempt to enable the feature, performance was not increased. In addition, I have researched the topic and found that other people had similar problems when their fps was not capped at 60 frames. Changing this setting has allowed the game to run much smoother and consistently, too. Hope this solution helps anyone with the same problem :)
 

matsamas

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Aug 20, 2013
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Well thats not a solution.You bought those cards for a reason right? like having the right to run games on ultra,with all the eye candy stuff on. If i were you i would be pissed off....
 

anon1239

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You have a valid point. No, it's not the best of solutions, but its probably the only answer I'm probably going to get. You see, I learned that since Skyrim was made back in 2011, during that time, Bethesda's game engine software wasn't designed for games to be played at over 60 frames because they weren't expecting hardware to be powerful enough for that. That standard has obviously changed over the recent years. Yes, I'm not getting all that I asked for, but hey its enough for me. Skyrim is only one of the many games that I play, and for it to run at 60 frames is fine with me. If people can make mods or whatnot to bypass this issue then I would be more than happy. But seeing as this hasn't happened yet, I'm fine with the performance that it can run at now, given the circumstances. Other games like Crysis 3 and Dragon Age Inquisitions run at well over 100 frames and to see this performance in my other games makes me feel good enough. But back to Skyrim. The ENB that I'm using (Seasons of Skyrim) and the addition of 90 mods, runs at the same performance as Vanilla when capped. Personally, the added performance that isn't visible when just playing vanilla is unnecessary to me. I only really care about at least 50-60 frames in a game that looks so aesthetically pleasing as is.

To sum up my thoughts:
Yes, while it may be nice to have over 60 frames for the hardware that I have, I would rather overshoot the budget and end up with extra performance that I can't use, versus going for a lower budget and not having the consistency of 60 fps. This issue is only for Skyrim, and I get well over 100 fps for other games that I play on ultra settings.