SLI GTX 1080s Not Being Fully Utilized.

[OcifferAction]

I have two EVGA GTX 1080 FTW graphics cards all at stock settings. For some reason in games I don't typically see full GPU utilization. For example in Mass Effect: Andromeda I see one card use 90-95% utilization and another with around 50-60%. My frame rates usually hover around 60-70 while playing in 3440x1440 resolution. I'm curious if there is anything in my setup that's bottle necking or preventing one of my cards from being fully utilized. I want to say that maybe 750w of power isn't enough, but I want to make sure before making the jump to a 1000w power supply.

I have the most up to date drivers (NVIDIA 378.92), Windows version and BIOS as of the writing of this post. I've seen some YouTubers getting well above 60 FPS at 4k resolution with near 98% utilization on both of their 1080s. I've provided a few details to help.

Setup:

EVGA 750w Platinum PSU
Asrock Z270 Extreme4 Mobo
Intel 7700k @ 4.6GHz
DeepCool Captain 240mm AIO
16Gb G.Skill TridenZ DDR4 @ 3200MHz
Samsung 850 Evo 1Tb SSD (game on this drive)
Generic 500Gb HDD (game nor OS on this drive)
Kingston 120Gb SSD (OS Windows 10 Pro on this drive)
8 Fans w/ External Fan controller
NZXT Hue+ Extended strip
2 EVGA GTX 1080 FTW cards at their retail clocks
Asrock HB bridge that came with Mobo
Phanteks Enthoo Luxe LED case

SLI Settings in NVIDIA Control Panel for ME: Andromeda:

CUDA - GPUs - All
DSR - Factors - Off
Maximum pre-rendered frames - Use the 3d application setting
Monitor Technology - Fixed Refresh
Mulit-display/mixed-GPU acceleration - Single display performance mode
Power management mode - Prefer maximum performace
Preferred refresh rate (Acer X34) - Highest available
SLI rendering mode - Force alternate frame rendering 1 (wont change to NVIDIA recommended, only other SLI option is Force alternate frame rendering 2 which gives me around 25 FPS)
Threaded optimization - Auto
Triple buffering - Off
Vertical sync - Off

There typically seems to be no difference in FPS between having GSYNC on or off for me in this game. I also play the game in Borderless Windowed mode to utilize my secondary 4k monitor for other small tasks. I've also attempted playing Battlefield 1, which has great SLI utilization, and I still achieve 80% on one card and 60% on another with avg FPS of around 85.

Just to reiterate, all drivers and updates are current, GSYNC and VSync are off, GPUs and CPU are not throttling thermally (all typically stay around 60-70 C), RAM never gets over 60%, CPU never gets over 60%. All games are on Ultra settings, which two 1080s should be able to handle no problem if proper utilization is achieved. Also both cards work identically when used by themselves in non-SLI.

I am fairly new to SLI and PC building in general so any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried researching this for hours, but no post has been helpful.

 

[Justiceinacan]

SLI doesn't double your power and your performance in some games WILL vary based on how well they were made to work with it. I don't know mass effect in question but I'd assume it's just another game that SLI works "okayish" with.

 

[OcifferAction]

SLI doesn't double your power and your performance in some games WILL vary based on how well they were made to work with it. I don't know mass effect in question but I'd assume it's just another game that SLI works "okayish" with.

I would agree with you and figured that was true for most of the games I've played when I first started my SLI build, but I've since noticed some YouTubers achieving 90%+ utilization in Andromeda at 4K. Not sure if they've messed around a lot in NVIDIA inspector to achieve this however. Also just unsure if something in my system would be bottle necking my performance as well.

 

[SgtScream]

It also depends on the game's SLI optimization. Most games tend to have poor SLI optimization. If you run a bench marking program specifically designed to stress your hardware, is your GPU load fully utilized? If so, i'd say it's not a power issue, more so a graphical setting in the game that needs tweaking or the lacking of SLI optimization.

 

[OcifferAction]

It also depends on the game's SLI optimization. Most games tend to have poor SLI optimization. If you run a bench marking program specifically designed to stress your hardware, is your GPU load fully utilized? If so, i'd say it's not a power issue, more so a graphical setting in the game that needs tweaking or the lacking of SLI optimization.

Thanks for the reply. In Unigine Heaven I'm seeing both of my GPUs usually utilize between 50-80% (70% avg) with a low average framerate.

 

[SgtScream]

If you run your games and unigine using a second monitor to monitor gpu-z, what does it say the percapreason is on the monitoring tab?

 

[OcifferAction]

I just played around in NVIDIA Control Panel and noticed that GSYNC was globally turned on and Vertical sync was set to use 3D application setting. Even though in Unigine Heaven Vsync is turned off it still seemed to be limiting it. I turned Vsync off globally through NVIDIA Control Panel and it appears as though I'm getting 90-99% utilization in Unigine Heaven now. I didn't notice any difference between having GSYNC on or off. Seems like that was my fault when running my original Unigine Heaven tests.

Tried playing Mass Effect Andromeda again with this to see if changing the settings globally rather than in the program setting tab of NVIDIA Control Panel would make a difference, but alas it did not. Still getting same utilization. This does seem to be a setting and optimization problem within games. I guess a good question would be can users get better SLI GPU optimization with their game through playing with the settings, i.e. on NVIDIA Inspector, or is it all on the developers?