Looking for GTX 780ti SLI information

[qkndirty]

All,
I'm currently running Google Earth pro in situations that contain large volumes of models. The workstation specs are below
2 XEON E5-2687W 8C LGA2011
SUPERMICRO-X9DAI 743TQ-1200B-SQ
128GB of KINGSTON --16GB 1333MHZ DDR3 DIMM ECC DR
GEFORCE GTX 580
4 x WESTERN DIGITAL-2TB RE4 GP SATA INTELLIP

When running through the site (with models animated with time) we are getting FPS of under 10. I swapped the card for a GTX780ti superclocked factory, and now am getting FPS of between 24 and 30. The FPS are not fast enough to export video without stuttering.
With the 780ti below are the Google Earth Calls
12FPS (will all models in view)
15,543 Draw Calls
680,000 Triangles
905,000 Vertices
419 Textures
Using 800 VRAM



So, on the my questions.
The motherboard on this machine will not accept SLI as there is not enough room on the card/around the card, so SLI is not an option. Therefore I am planning on building a workstation that would handle the above loads with high FPS. Below are the build specs I am considering
I7-4930k
Cooler master Glacer 240l
Asus Rampage IV Extreme EATX LGA2011
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB DDR3-2400
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB
2x WD Caviar Black
2x GTX780ti
NZXT Phantom 630 Full tower case
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1000w
ASUS BW blueray dvd/cd writer

Should I expect higher FPS with this build compared to the workstation? And if so...and estimates as to my increased FPS. I don't want to drop the coin on this if it will not perform significantly better.
Anybody with any experience with this type of endeavor. Any comments as to what components may work better that with my goals in mind? Thank you for all your help.
Chris

 

[Mousemonkey]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

 

[qkndirty]

Well, I don't know what Google Earth's requirements are, but let me see.

BTW, you do have a commercial license for Google Earth right? The free version can't be used for commercial purpose. Anyways....

* Since, your testing with a new video card showed that a faster card gave you more FPS, it is pretty good to assume that maybe SLI will result in even better performance.

* Also, do you know how to check how much VRAM is being used? It might be good to make sure you are not using up all your VRAM. If you have an MSI card, you can use MSI Afterburner. Other brands might offer their own software utilities. Basically, you want to find out if you need to get a card with more VRAM or not.

* Do you have any idea if Google Earth requires double precision floating point calculations. Based on what you told me, I seriously doubt it does need that. But if it did, then getting and AMD card would be the obvious choice since Nvidia deliberately crippled double precision floating point on their gaming cards so that it is very slow.

I have a license for Google Earth pro, the outputs are for internal purposes only. VRAM used is only around 800MB, no double precision used in GE, so the workstation cards are not needed.

 

[qkndirty]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

 

[Mousemonkey]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

If I enable the SLi indicators they do not show up when GE is running and the secondary card shows minimal activity, less than 10%.

 

[Mousemonkey]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

I'm running SLi'd 660Ti's and there is no difference in GE's performance with SLi enabled or disabled.

 

[qkndirty]

I have a license for Google Earth pro, the outputs are for internal purposes only. VRAM used is only around 800MB, no double precision used in GE, so the workstation cards are not needed

Do you have a friend with an SLI setup that can test Google Earth with and without SLI? It would probably be a good idea to see if SLI works like Mousemonkey brought up. Basically, just see if SLI will increase the FPS for him... then it should probably increase the FPS for you. (It would be such a shame if you can't use SLI to get some extra performance. 🙁 )

Also, have you thought about use Shadowplay for the video recording to reduce framerate loss caused by recording video?

I just checked out Shadowplay....pretty cool setup, free too! I can't even get the system to get up over 30fps, so recording right now is not an option. Once I can get the frames up, GE offers quite a few export options, stills, tagged in order (.jpg format), mp4, avi, etc. Recording from tour offers higher resolution video and doesn't seem to bog the system down as much.

 

[qkndirty]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

If I enable the SLi indicators they do not show up when GE is running and the secondary card shows minimal activity, less than 10%.

Are you referring to the SLI indicator in the top left portion of the screen? On my MX18 in Google Earth the SLI indicators shows up SLI 8x AA

 

[Mousemonkey]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

Oh good, so you have an SLI setup. Maybe you can test it out yourself.

Basically, what I was trying to find out was. Find an area where you get around 20 FPS without SLI (basically anything less than 30FPS)... then turn on SLI and see if the numbers double. (Why less than 30FPS? so you don't hit the framerate cap)

If you are able to see a FPS jump with SLI on, then I guess it's safe to get an SLI setup. Otherwise, if they stay exactly the same, I guess SLI won't work and you would just waste your money. 🙁

With a single card I get 60fps max and with SLi enabled I get 60fps max, no difference.

 

[gumbykid]

You're trying to use a gaming card for professional uses. A workstation card should perform better in that sense. The drivers for workstation cards tend to allow more to be processed at the same time, and for much longer, but not as fast. Think of it as a semi-truck, compared to a Ferrari (gaming card). You need more bandwidth over speed.

I don't know a ton about it, but definitely look into workstation cards.

Edit: Just saw your post about 800mb. I'll change this when I get to it to something more helpful.

------------------------------

Okay, so there are some people that run GE using SLI, however I can't estimate the FPS difference. There is an article though that will help you speed up GE to see if your GPU really is the issue.
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/09/how_to_speed_up_google_earth.html

The main fix would be to try running it in different modes; DirectX and OpenGL (and have the most updated ones too).

What is your GPU load when using GE?

 

[Mousemonkey]

With a single card I get 60fps max and with SLi enabled I get 60fps max, no difference.

But what I'm saying is that does not tell us if SLI works for Google Earth or not. The program is supposedly capped at 60FPS, so if you already are hitting 60FPS, then nothing you do will make it go faster: not a faster card, not SLI, nothing.

However, qkndirty has much lower FPS (way below 60), so we need to find out if SLI works to see if it will raise his FPS closer to 60.

qkndirty is using a laptop I'm on a proper PC. 😉

 

[Mousemonkey]

I'll give it another go a bit later when I can run it in full screen mode.

 

[qkndirty]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

Oh good, so you have an SLI setup. Maybe you can test it out yourself.

Basically, what I was trying to find out was. Find an area where you get around 20 FPS without SLI (basically anything less than 30FPS)... then turn on SLI and see if the numbers double. (Why less than 30FPS? so you don't hit the framerate cap)

If you are able to see a FPS jump with SLI on, then I guess it's safe to get an SLI setup. Otherwise, if they stay exactly the same, I guess SLI won't work and you would just waste your money. 🙁

I have to restart the system to apply the non SLI settings, so comparing the same frame is pretty tough. I went back to factory global settings for GE and ran a tour in both SLI mode and non SLI mode.
SLI mode 19FPS
Non SLI mode 17FPS
Is that even an appreciable difference?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Just tried it in full screen mode and the SLi indicator does not show and the second card still shows no usage on the GPU according to Afterburners hardware monitor.

 

[Mousemonkey]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

Oh good, so you have an SLI setup. Maybe you can test it out yourself.

Basically, what I was trying to find out was. Find an area where you get around 20 FPS without SLI (basically anything less than 30FPS)... then turn on SLI and see if the numbers double. (Why less than 30FPS? so you don't hit the framerate cap)

If you are able to see a FPS jump with SLI on, then I guess it's safe to get an SLI setup. Otherwise, if they stay exactly the same, I guess SLI won't work and you would just waste your money. 🙁

I have to restart the system to apply the non SLI settings, so comparing the same frame is pretty tough. I went back to factory global settings for GE and ran a tour in both SLI mode and non SLI mode.
SLI mode 19FPS
Non SLI mode 17FPS
Is that even an appreciable difference?

No, if you ran the same tour five times you would get about the same variance if you were only running in none SLi mode I reckon.

 

[qkndirty]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

Thank you for the comparison, what card are you running? If you enable all the 3d buildings in downtown Los Angeles, and fly around, what kind of FPS are you getting. The large volume of models in downtown LA are pretty taxing on the GPU.
I think GE caps at the monitor refresh rate, as 60 is the max we get with all models turned off.
I don't think GE allows Vsync, as it is greyed out when in the GE application settings ( NVidia control panel)
My laptop has two 460m's in sli, but the cards are so outdated/weak I see no difference in SLI or none SLI. The stuttering brings tears to my eyes it's so bad. As soon as I start tweaking the AA settings, FPS drops to lower than 5. Floating transmission lines tax the AA settings, so I would like to go 8x or above if possible to keep things sharp and crisp.

I'm running SLi'd 660Ti's and there is no difference in GE's performance with SLi enabled or disabled.

What FPS ranges were you getting? Were they under 30 FPS to rule out hitting the framerate cap?

15-30FPS, I dream about hitting framerate caps in GE

 

[Mousemonkey]

For GE SLi is pointless, sorry.

 

[qkndirty]

Just tried it in full screen mode and the SLi indicator does not show and the second card still shows no usage on the GPU according to Afterburners hardware monitor.

I'm getting about 43% out of GPU 1
and 19% out of GPU 2 in GE

 

[qkndirty]

For GE SLi is pointless, sorry.

Well, I guess that puts that one to rest, thank you all for looking into this.
Does anyone have any idea if a single Titan Black might be a better fit than the single 780ti in using google earth?

 

[Mousemonkey]

Maybe you should opt for a single 7990 6GB card. It seems to still outperform most the others in a lot of benchmarks (outperforms the 780 Ti, R9 290X, and GTX 690). It's definitely not as good as two 780Ti in SLI....

Being a dual GPU card it won't be any better than a single 7970 in GE.

 

[qkndirty]

The free version of GE doesn't run any better on my rig if SLi is enabled.

* Is GE frame rate capped to match the refresh rate of the monitor?
* Have you compared the FPS with vsync off (if possible)? Does it get exactly the same FPS with and without SLI? If so what FPS?

If I enable the SLi indicators they do not show up when GE is running and the secondary card shows minimal activity, less than 10%.

Could you check and see if you get better FPS with alternating frames, and are both GPU's running at the same MHz? I get better FPS with alternating frames, but GPU #2 is running between 200 and 800MHz whereas GPU #1 is running at the full 800MHz. Something seems odd.