GTX680s: Low FPS

[halfblazed]

I am currently running two EVGA GTX 680 SuperClocked cards in SLI with a Dell U2711 2560x1440 monitor.

The cards perform amazingly in every game play except for Darksiders 2.

Darksiders 2 should not be straining these cards as the graphics are nowhere near most of the games I play.

Generally I can play Battlefield 3 on Ultra and I average around 90FPS but I never drop frames and the game remains constantly smooth.

In Darksiders 2 it frequently dips down to 40FPS and there are frame drops that are very noticeable and irritating considering my hardware.

I have the most current drivers (Dec17) and I've tried running the game with SLI disabled but I get even worse results. I've also tried both lowering and raising the OC on my video cards as well as running them stock speed.

Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[bigshootr8]

When he did the review the video review he did one in 1080p and one in 1440p and when he did the review in 1440p frames dropped by 15-20 frames. And the frames were already low.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbGhz01JL24&list=UU_SN80_V2GymyCWM2oTYTeg&index=4


start at 17:02 and listen to what he says and read what the vram usage is no tricked out mods nothing.

 

[bystander]

When he did the review the video review he did one in 1080p and one in 1440p and when he did the review in 1440p frames dropped by 15-20 frames. And the frames were already low.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbGhz01JL24&list=UU_SN80_V2GymyCWM2oTYTeg&index=4


start at 17:02 and listen to what he says and read what the vram usage is no tricked out mods nothing.

And as you see, he used the Extreme AA preset, which is SSAA and FXAA mixed together, which is a downgrade from using just SSAA and uses more VRAM. SSAA has never been a playable AA version, except when used on 5 year old games. The last game it was usable on, for me anyways, was Dragon Age Origins. It also did not show whether it was the VRAM as the problem, or just the intense nature of SSAA + FXAA (mostly the SSAA I'm sure). Not all games that use all your VRAM need all your VRAM to produce good FPS.

So to recap, he did use a ridiculous AA level, and even the 3GB card could not produce playable results, and as long as you turn off the SSAA and FXAA mix, the game is playable on cards as low as a 580 with 1.5GB of VRAM.

So, no 2GB is not a problem.

 

[bigshootr8]

Maybe but surely you would expect with a sli system of 2 680's surely it could handle extreme AA+AF.

 

[bystander]

Maybe but surely you would expect with a sli system of 2 680's surely it could handle extreme AA+AF.

SSAA was taken out of Nvidia's control panel several years ago, because it just is not a worth while AA type. Same for ATI, though a couple years ago, the re-instroduced it. Look at the Witcher 2 and it's Ubersampling, it is not reasonably playable on 7970 CF or 680 SLI. SSAA is the same thing. It's there for those who want to toy with it, but unless the game is of no challenge what so ever, it is not worth the hit. I can play the Witcher 2 with Ubersampling, but I get dips into the 30's. I take it off, and the lowest FPS I get is in the 60's.

It is just not worth using. It's like using 8x AA or 16x AA. You'd be hard pressed to see a difference, yet the FPS will drop in half to use those levels of AA. 4x AA is the sweet spot, anything else is only worth using when you can still get 90+ FPS with it on (I use a 120hz monitor).

Note: Nvidia has SSAA for transparent textures only. In this limited use, it works great, and is really a good compromise between MSAA and SSAA. It is similar to AMD's adaptive MSAA, only it works more often.