GTA V terrible with SLI? Was okay a few weeks ago.

[Edward Wokhands]

So, as the title suggests, a few weeks ago when I first went SLI (2x 970) I tried GTA V with SLI. Having previous experience with a single GTX I know where the more demanding parts are (countryside evening with headlights on) so I checked it out with the 2 cards.

I got a solid 60 fps at 1080 and the VRAM still wasn't full so I upped the resolution to 1440 and was getting maybe 57-60 and a few drops to 50-55. I was really happy with it and carried on playing for a few weeks.

So recently I started the game up and performance is just terrible. With the same settings I'm getting 19 fps max. I'm having to lower all the settings to what they were with a single card and it's still dropping to 55. When I monitor performance both cards are fully utilized, in fact I think something weird is going on because even in some pretty barren areas both cards are stuck at 99% performance and the framerate is still 19.

I did a few tests with multiple settings and anything above MSAA x2 just destroys these 2 cards. No other game is doing this, I can play The Witcher 3 at 1440 at a solid 60 with everything on max. That's what I'd expect from 2 x 970s.

So, am I expecting too much from these cards or does it sound like there's a problem? I haven't changed anything on my system although I did get last week's new drivers but most people seem to think that getting new drivers should make things better.

Anyone else got a similar setup and the game? What are your experiences? Any advice? It's really frustrating. I'm gonna go test it out with a single card and see what happens.

Thanks.

 

[Arronleeds]

loads of people have recently been getting issues with sli and crossfire, its more than likely to do with the last update, if you have taken sli off and tried each card individually then that tell you its the game.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Yeah, I tried a single card just now and performance was much more stable even at lower framerates. Is there any way we can get older drivers? Maybe rollback? I can't find anything obvious in GeForce Experience.

I'm glad it isn't just me (I know selfish 😛). We know that it's something that can be fixed at least.

I haven't noticed issues in any other game as far as I can tell. I knew I shouldn't have got that last driver.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Got some more (very strange) info on this issue. When I set MSAA to x4 my performance improves. When it's set to off or x2 the game gets very stuttery and slow. What the hell is going on? x8 brings everything to a halt but for some reason x4 makes things better. Changing TXAA can either improve things or make them worse it just seems random.

I'm starting to regret gaming for PC. It seems that a minority of games give me a problem or have some ridiculous issue. No matter how much hardware I stuff in there or how powerful it is there just seems to be performance issues. I hope NVIDIA or Rockstar are aware of this because I don't seem to be the only one experiencing this.

 

[Arronleeds]

its the game, you can roll back drivers by simplying downloading ddu, http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

open it, tick the delete amd/nvidia folder box and click clean and shutdown, then download the drivers you want and install them.

its not the drivers though i dont think but the game update.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. If it was the drivers then other games would be impacted too. Then again don't specific games get SLI profiles? I thought that maybe the GTA profile might have changed. Unless some extra graphical upgrades have been added to GTA? That would explain it.

Thanks a lot for that rollback link, it'll come in very handy. I'll try uninstalling back to The Witcher 3 driver.

 

[Arronleeds]

Most games get an sli profile, it's just that some don't work very well, farcry 3 apparently has terrible sli support.

As far as I'm aware gta hasn't had any graphics settings added, not seen any changes in the settings but update might have screwed with something like the vram usage.
Ps you're very welcome.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Yeah, Project Cars works just as well with SLI as it does without. That surprised me.

It's just that I had a lot of time with a single card and GTA then got the 2nd one and the performance was insane. I was so impressed because I wasn't expecting THAT big a leap. I even remember thinking that going over 7gb (2 x 3.5gb) vram wasn't having any effect on framerate. I was playing at 1440 with EVERYTHING on ultra, MSAA was on 8. I was shocked at how smooth it was because a few days before I was getting a few warnings to not go SLI so it stuck out to me how wrong they were. ("Were" now being the operative word. Ugh.) With a single card I was getting 30fps in the desert, 50 in countryside and 60 in the city.

Maybe the game updated not long ago? Something has definitely changed whether it's on my system or happening to everyone I don't know. I'd need to see what other people with the same GPUs use for their settings so I know what to expect. Maybe, I don't know, that first week was a fluke? Maybe something went "wrong" and the game started running better? -_- Now maybe things are back to normal.

It's just weird because it doesn't LOOK that demanding, but it is. At the moment I'm playing at 1440 with ALL AA off, with draw distance on half, shadows off. I've switched a few other settings down to medium like tessellation and reflections. Still, I'm not getting solid 60fps. I even tested at 1080 and only get 60 when I'm facing close to a wall or look at the floor or something. Surely that isn't right? 2 970s and I'm pretty much down to medium settings? I was playing The Witcher 3 earlier and I accidentally run defrag in the background and a download manager was running. TW3 was running fine, just loading a little slow but 60fps fine. Anyway, I'm rambling on, my conclusion is that it has to be the game right?

Would a change in the game itself cause SLI to stop working properly I wonder? It's just bothering me because I really have a GTA craving. 😛

Anyway, thanks for your help, I'll try changing drivers tomorrow. In the meantime if anyone else is having problems please let me know so I know it's not something to do with my system or game.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

I just uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled the older ones and it's made no difference to performance. The game seems stable overall but for some reason has flipped. Now performance is worse in the city than countryside. In a specific area, not sure what you'd call it? The strip maybe? The performance goes down to 40-50 fps and gets stuttery. Monitoring the GPU usage it turns out that only 40% of both GPUs are used. For some reason the game isn't using all the power of the cards.

I just think the SLI drivers are terrible. There are some people on reddit reporting the same issues even with 2 x 980! And someone with a 980 Ti is getting 40-50 fps. The drivers seriously need updating. Seeing 40% usage while getting 40fps is frustrating.

Just thought I'd let people know, if anyone is having these issues don't bother messing with drivers because it doesn't make any difference. I tried the GTA V driver, The Witcher 3 driver and just reinstalled the latest one since nothing changed.

 

[Arronleeds]

yeah its the game mate, they must have messed about with something in the last update, give it time and they might fix the issue again.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Yeah, I hope they do fix it or revert to the previous versions. I actually saw someone with 2 TITANS having the same issue, very similar framerate!

 

[Joel Stilwell]

(2) Titan X's here in SLI. I am experiencing the exact same issues. This is what is really weird. Tonight I did some benchmarking to test GPU usage during gaming.

TITAN X SLI: 1440p MAXED 2x MSAA
When standing still (doesn't matter where) both GPU's are at 95-99% usage. Getting 105-130 fps
Jump in a car and start driving. Both GPU usage percentages drop to 45-50%. Terrible shuddering, getting 40-70 fps. All over the place, TERRIBLE performance.

SINGLE TITAN X SLI: 1440p MAXED 2x MSAA
Constant GPU usage between 90-99%. Standing still 75-85 fps. Driving between 65-70 fps. Much smoother gaming experience.

Running with a i7-4770k & 16GB RAM on z97 board. CPU cores are operating at between 60-70% usage during both tests. My entire system is watercooled. Under max load GPU's run top at 54c, CPU tops at 60c.

Not sure whats going on, but this game is crap with Titan X SLI. The second card is completely usless; UNLESS YOUR STANDING STILL IN GAME? WHY IS THAT??

 

[uglyduckling81]

That's why I won't be dicking around with SLI ever again. It causes too many problems and inconsistencies. I can't wait for my 290x to arrive so I can start playing games without stuttering and better performance than my aging 570's.

 

[Joel Stilwell]

QUICK UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST:

I read somewhere on a forum that when scaling with SLI, you should change your MSAA setting to x8 and this will fix the issue. Ridiculous right?>

After going back and running the same SLI test with MSAA changed to x8; I am getting between 80-99% GPU Usage ALL THE TIME!!

The only problem is, i'm running at 1440p and dont need anywhere near that much AA. I want to run this game at 1440p 120hz MAXED out w/o AA or very little AA. Thats why i invested so much money on (2) TITAN X's and a 144hz 1440p Monitor.

WEIRD.


FYI - w/ TITAN X SLI & MSAA x8 im getting a constant 65-85 fps w/ NO SHUDDERING. Very smooth game play. ERRR, I want more than 65 fps driving

 

[Edward Wokhands]

(2) Titan X's here in SLI. I am experiencing the exact same issues. This is what is really weird. Tonight I did some benchmarking to test GPU usage during gaming.

TITAN X SLI: 1440p MAXED 2x MSAA
When standing still (doesn't matter where) both GPU's are at 95-99% usage. Getting 105-130 fps
Jump in a car and start driving. Both GPU usage percentages drop to 45-50%. Terrible shuddering, getting 40-70 fps. All over the place, TERRIBLE performance.

SINGLE TITAN X SLI: 1440p MAXED 2x MSAA
Constant GPU usage between 90-99%. Standing still 75-85 fps. Driving between 65-70 fps. Much smoother gaming experience.

Running with a i7-4770k & 16GB RAM on z97 board. CPU cores are operating at between 60-70% usage during both tests. My entire system is watercooled. Under max load GPU's run top at 54c, CPU tops at 60c.

Not sure whats going on, but this game is crap with Titan X SLI. The second card is completely usless; UNLESS YOUR STANDING STILL IN GAME? WHY IS THAT??

Thanks for the info. That's EXACTLY my experience too. This is absolutely ridiculous. The GPU usage is a mess. I was sitting on the strip or whatever it's called (the long road with the tour bus and stars on the ground) and every time I started driving GPU usage dropped to 30 or 40% and framerate dropped. When I drove into the countryside which is more demanding because of the grass the GPU usage shot up but the framerate got better and was just randomly dropping.

It's basically the EXACT same issue across all cards. Even AMD users are having this problem which leads me to believe Rockstar have messed something up in an update, or maybe it's the drivers AND the game? I don't know.

How was your performance when the game first released?

 

[Edward Wokhands]

That's why I won't be dicking around with SLI ever again. It causes too many problems and inconsistencies. I can't wait for my 290x to arrive so I can start playing games without stuttering and better performance than my aging 570's.

This isn't SLI though, it's happening with single cards. My performance wasn't too bad with a single 970 when the game first released, then when I went SLI my performance was amazing. I stopped playing for a while, the drivers updated and so did the game (I think) and performance is terrible. I've seen people with single 980Tis with the same problem and people with the card you're getting with the same problem. I think it's the game but Rockstar aren't commenting on it. There's a post on the Rockstar site with around 700 replies, almost every reply is someone with the same problem.

There are people with single 660Tis, AMD users, everyone. I just hope they fix it soon because this is absolutely absurd. Performance is great everywhere else in other games.

Oh by the way when I disable SLI the issue is still there whether I totally disable it or I tell NVIDIA control panel to only use one card it's all the same.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

QUICK UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST:

I read somewhere on a forum that when scaling with SLI, you should change your MSAA setting to x8 and this will fix the issue. Ridiculous right?>

After going back and running the same SLI test with MSAA changed to x8; I am getting between 80-99% GPU Usage ALL THE TIME!!

The only problem is, i'm running at 1440p and dont need anywhere near that much AA. I want to run this game at 1440p 120hz MAXED out w/o AA or very little AA. Thats why i invested so much money on (2) TITAN X's and a 144hz 1440p Monitor.

WEIRD.


FYI - w/ TITAN X SLI & MSAA x8 im getting a constant 65-85 fps w/ NO SHUDDERING. Very smooth game play. ERRR, I want more than 65 fps driving

Yeah, that's right! I forgot to mention that! When I was using 2x MSAA my performance was around 19fps, when I changed to 4 it improved but still was just under 60. I don't mind playing with 60. When I changed to 8 performance stayed the same as 4!!!

I'm at 1440 too and don't need it. It's really annoying and is ruining the game. I'm sick of giving developers money who start going silent when issues arise.

I've noticed something else that's REALLY weird, not sure if you know what it is? Say I start up in 1080 with MSAA x4 my performance will be garbage, around 19 fps. So I increase the resolution to 1440, increase MSAA to 8 so performance gets even worse. THEN I decrease back to 1080 and MSAA x4 and performance improves back to around 50-60fps with horrid stuttering and drops of course. THEN when I increase to MSAA x8 performance stays the same! It's like I'm having to TRICK THE CRAPPING GAME INTO PERFORMING BETTER! I'm resorting to using reverse psychology on a piece of software! Then I can increase it to 1440 and performance stays okay. It's such a mess.

Me: "Hey... run at 1080..."
Game: "I can't do that, sorry..."
Me: "I'll make you run at 1440 and MSAA x8 then! That'll show you!"
Game: "OKAY!!! OKAY!!! I'll do 1080 for you."

What the hell is going on? These issues just happen randomly, I'm in the graphic settings more than I am the game. And again, this isn't just SLI, I had to do the exact same thing with the single card. I've tried uninstalling and putting it on faster drives thinking it was a streaming issue due to the driving but it changes nothing.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

Looks like the game has just been updated today. A new option "frame scaling mode" has been added to advanced features. People are saying it's enabled downsampling. Nothing has changed regarding performance though. In fact things feel a little worse than before. What the hell are Rockstar doing to this game? How can it not work on cards as common as ours?

I just started the game up and got some MAJOR pop in. It's terrible. When the camera zooms out to change character? The whole map was blank and started popping in in sections. This is ridiculous.

 

[Edward Wokhands]

@Joel Stilwell: Hey, I think I found SORT of a solution but you need 2 monitors at least, if not then I'm not sure.

So, since I went SLI every time I mirror the monitors so the TV and main monitor are identical I get a warning saying it will stop SLI from performing well. I decided that since GTA is running terribly I might as well just see what happens. The result is that I have solid 60 fps with 4x MSAA, TXAA, ultra everything and extended draw distance on max and all high res shadows etc turned on. I have no idea why the hell this would happen since you're supposed to have a "focus" on one screen in particular, but it's working for me at least. I tried changing back to a single screen since there was an update yesterday and all the performance issues came back. I changed back to mirrored and performance went back up. It's perfect. A few drops here and there but overall it's solid 60fps everywhere (apart from that one road I had issues with earlier but it's not dropping to 40 anymore, it's like 54 which is fine for me.)

I'm playing at 1080 now because when the screens are mirrored it won't let me set the resolution to 1440 but the way this is performing I imagine it would be fine if I could. I just wish I could... if anyone knows how to do that then let me know.

Anyway if this is working fine for me with 2 x 970s I'm sure it'll work for you with Titans. Unless you've already tried it and it didn't help in which case disregard.