TRI-SLI Scaling

N

Nunz

snowflake
Staff member
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Help me out here. Demo, can you post some benches and let me know how my scaling is?

Going to upload things as I bench them. Running TRI-680s @ 1200/3350, with the 311.35 Quadro beta's with modded INF. My scaling seems poor..

Valley Benchmark
GTX680TRISLIValley0core-250mem.jpg


3DMark 11 Performance
GTX680TRISLI0core-250mem.jpg


3DMark Extreme
GTX680TRISLIExtreme3DMark0core-250mem.jpg


Metro 2033. 1920x1080, Everything maxed, 4xAA, DOF ON, PhysX ON
GTX680TRISLIMetro20330core-250mem.jpg
 
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What's your valley score with 2 cards?

I get 121 fps with 3 GPU's and ~85 with 2, so thats ~85% out of the 3rd card, which is pretty decent scaling. You dont look too far off, but I suspect you are starting to hit CPU limitations.

You are going to have a difficult time getting decent scaling at 1080p with a 1366 chip in all your games.



And try this, set ArmA3 to 3840x2160 rendering resolution in its options, and look at fps difference between 2 and 3 GPU's. That games scales perfectly when GPU limited.
 
Yeah probably venturing into CPU limited territory, thats only ~45% (19fps) from the 3rd GPU, where as I'm seeing ~85% (36fps).

You would see better scaling with either more CPU speed, or a higher resolution to put more load on the GPU's and remove CPU bottleneck.
 
The weird part is, I'm getting 90-99% usage out of all three cards in Valley. Some parts are at 60-70% but I'm not sure if that's limitation or just the benchmark..
Putting the chip to 4.4Ghz with no HT to test Valley real quick, I usually run it at 4.3Ghz with HT on.

Alright, ran it at 4.4Ghz, and I got 105.0 FPS.
Not much of an improvement for 100Mhz, so I'm not sure it's CPU Limited..
 
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It is CPU limited man, you have 3 680's at 1080p, with a 1366 CPU.

You are not going to see much improvement from 100mhz.. I wouldnt even expect 1 or 2 fps from that...
 
I'm not even sure this third card is worth keeping to be honest.
I have them running nice and cool now. Valley looped 3-4 times and the second card only hit 73c. Not bad at all. Something like 70/73/66
 
Its only worth it if you use uber settings with that CPU at 1080p man.

Like I said, try ArmA3 with 200% rendering resolution, you should see near perfect scaling. Basically due to resolution and CPU, you arent going to gain a whole lot, but rather it will allow you to use far higher iq settings without losing performance.

And yeah temps are managable with reference coolers, shouldn't be much of an issue unless one has poor airflow.
 
I added a fan to the front that is pushing air in between and that helped a lot, plus I closed up the side of the case and the big 200mm is blowing air at them now as well (HAF-X).

I'm going to play with it for the week and make my decision. It looks pretty sick having three GPUs in the rig and monitoring in my Logitech LCD, though :p

I do think the third card will come in handy for Metro 2033: Last Light, but I'm not sure it's worth it just for one game. Does 3D Vision scale with TRI, or is that only 2 card SLI?
 
Theres a heap of games the 3rd GPU should come in handy, even at 1080p with that CPU. You should enable 4xtrSSAA globally too imo, if you haven't already (leave AA at app controlled + transparency at 4xtrSSAA. Then it should work in any game you use MSAA in).

And no unfortunetely in 3D it only uses dual SLI with the 3rd for PhysX. Even then it can be a little flakey and actually reduce performance so I manually set the middle card to PhysX when using 3D. Reason for the middle card is because it reduces temps of the other two, though it doesnt really matter.
 
Fair enough, but I think you havent really tried to make them scale though. Just thrown it in and expect to see 100% scaling, when it doesnt work like that.

You have to play demanding games and use settings that promote scaling, which granted is made harder with a 1366 CPU at 1080p, but its not too hard to get your moneys worth out of them.
 
It's not that I am disappointed with the scaling. Mostly, it would take adding extra IQ options and stuff that I don't find necessary.

I was happy with my 680s in SLI, TRI is great but I don't see anything worth having three cards for, for the way I game.
 
Thats fair enough. At 1080p there was only 1 game I bought the 3rd 680 for, BF3 at 120hz, and for that I also needed a 2700k at 5.1 to get good scaling and achieve 120+fps.

I play everything else in 1440p where scaling is much easier to achieve. Shogun2, Crysis 3, ArmA3, Metro and many others couldn't run at full settings + 60fps vsync without the 3rd GPU.
 
I am going to screw around with some games and see what I can get.
The e-peen feels so good..

so good...

My pops picked up 2 GTX Titans.. rig is a ****ing monster. He's on par with my 3 cards, but he also has a 3770K at 4.6Ghz.


LOL, just ran ArmA3 with the 200% option and I'm only getting 25-30% usage out of all 3 cards in the Helicopter showcase. I'm getting 24FPS, with 8xAA and everything absolutely floored GPU wise.
Amusing :p
 
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Haha, mega CPU bottleneck. Try the infantry showcase where you are not CPU limited, you should see perfect scaling.

Also, keep in mind more GPU's increases CPU overhead too, so 3 GPU's actually reduces performance by a few % in CPU limited scenarios.

And yeah, Titan SLI should be roughly equal to 3-way 680's (when GPU limited of course)
 
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Nunz, my friend it's time to put that 970 to rest, grab yourself. A nice 3570 pr 3770, delid it and hit 5GHz :D, you haven't seen TRI-SLI shine till you have it backed by a 4.8GHz+ CPU running PCIE 3.

But I have some very bad news. Yesterday I went and picked up some rounded SATA cables and a SATA Y splitter. Reason I haven't posted pics or a short review of the Temjin TJ11 is I ran into issues where I couldn't mount the SSD's where I wanted.... That's the least of the problems with the build. Corsair and Silverstone gave me bad info and the H110 will not work. I've since been using the ol' H70.... Woke up this morning to continue the reload I started yesterday and pffffft I have now lost all USB functionality including the front USB ports on the TJ11. Neither the USB3 expansion nor the USB 2 expansion will function. Reset bios defaults and still nothing. I've pulled the CMOS battery and will leave it out till I get home tonight... Was hoping that the board would hold out till Haswell but that doesn't look like the case. Decision time the I guess, New motherboard or new processor and motherboard. Really didn't want to upgrade this soon...
 
Haswell doesn't look like much of an improvement. You'll be just fine picking up a 3770K imo.
Metro 2033 maxed out w/ DOF on and 4xMSAA.. 90FPS.. so gorgeous.
 
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