Switching SLI on and off?

[Helltech]

Is it safe to just turn off SLI when playing some games? This is my first setup with SLI and I have to say I'm very unhappy with it, I'm lagging much more in some games with SLI then when I was just running a single 260, and the games that utilize SLI I don't see an increase in performance, plus the stuff runs HOT, I can't wait till the 300's came out so I can ditch SLI, thought I'd be much more pleased with it. Anyway, if i want to play the games that lag with SLI can I just turn it off and then turn it back on when I switch games? Is that safe or what?

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Yes. When I had a dual 9800GTX rig, I turned Sli on to play graphically intensive games such as Crysis, Oblivion, Farcry 2, etc

When I'm playing old games such as Starcraft or Total Annihilation, I turn off SLi since it doesn't run properly and causes weird artifacting...

 

[hundredislandsboy]

It is safe. I've built one SLI rig and it was/is also my last. I'm convinced the only value in SLI is in the top range resolution and only for the latest games that feature 16XQ AA, etc... I get more eye candy out of it being impressed with "the looks of it." Rather than getting eye candy in my games, instead I get tears from crying at the microstutter, LOL.

 

[Helltech]

Haha thanks guys. Yea, but like when I was playing Protoype with one 260 its FLAWLESS, but with 2 its soo choppy and everything loads so low, I figured being a newer game it wouldn't matter, maybe its the engine its built with. I have to say this is probably my last SLI rig too, its nice to brag about and looks cool, but the perforamance increase I get with Crysis and Far Cry is litterally not noticable.

 

[prelude2250]

Have you guys played around with the SLI performance modes? I have 2 GTX 260's and have to say that I've noticed pretty good scaling. I have found that alternate frame 1 or 2 work the best or just the default nvidia recommended setting. Also Have u guys tried using the nvidia control panel to choose ur 3d options instead of the applications? I have run many different benchmarks and have used fraps to watch frame rate differences and SLI def makes a noticeable diff. My 3dmark vantage score was about 35-45%higher. I'll admit at some point your just going to be wasting money and be basically only noticing what you have by running benchmarks.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Crysis and COD4 in my experience has great scaling.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Have you guys played around with the SLI performance modes? I have 2 GTX 260's and have to say that I've noticed pretty good scaling. I have found that alternate frame 1 or 2 work the best or just the default nvidia recommended setting. Also Have u guys tried using the nvidia control panel to choose ur 3d options instead of the applications? I have run many different benchmarks and have used fraps to watch frame rate differences and SLI def makes a noticeable diff. My 3dmark vantage score was about 35-45%higher. I'll admit at some point your just going to be wasting money and be basically only noticing what you have by running benchmarks.

You are absolutely coorect and I agree with everything you are saying. The thing is, after about a month, I stopped "playing" the Futuremark benchmarks and other benchmarks and tried to reap my investment in the SLI rig with Crysis and FC2, CoD4, C&C series... some games you can see the obvious performance but more games seemed to be the same if not worst, ie Age of Empires. I don't have plans on ever building another SLI rig unless I'm gonna move to a 30" monitor and there are games that can't be enjoyed with a single GTX 275.

 

[efeat]

You are absolutely coorect and I agree with everything you are saying. The thing is, after about a month, I stopped "playing" the Futuremark benchmarks and other benchmarks and tried to reap my investment in the SLI rig with Crysis and FC2, CoD4, C&C series... some games you can see the obvious performance but more games seemed to be the same if not worst, ie Age of Empires. I don't have plans on ever building another SLI rig unless I'm gonna move to a 30" monitor and there are games that can't be enjoyed with a single GTX 275.

I experienced a ~70% increase in framerates in Crysis from adding a second 8800 GT (jumped from 31 to 54 fps at the same settings)

At one point I had a problem similar to yours, in that enabling sli only made things worse, like one card was 'misfiring'. I used RivaTuner to reset my game profiles to default and that worked like a charm, why don't you give that a shot?

 

[Helltech]

Ahh yea.. I figured out what I did wrong. I reset all those nvidia settings back to default and nothing lags now, I guess I shouldn't have changed that 😉 So thanks prelude for giving me the idea, lol.