Rroff
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Posts
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Joined
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Just keep an eye on the video memory specs - in this case it looks fine with GDDR5 - but some makers have a bad habit of putting in a nice core like the 58x0 ones but saving a few pence by putting in slow 128bit DDR3 instead crippling performance.
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GTX260 SLI - 197.45 drivers on Windows 7 64bit... So far absolutely no problems and aslong as I use triple buffering when VSync is on (I usually play without VSync) completely smooth.
I generally run 130% world/character detail, shadow maps, high quality for environment/reflections and water and medium/performance/bilateral AO with 4x AA and 1680x1050 and thats perfectly smooth and playable most of the time. If I'm on an 8 player team in one of the more chaotic missions I will turn down the ultra settings/AO each 1 more notch tho but keep shadow maps on. -
GTX295 is 2x GTX275 cores slammed together and downclocked a bit, still faster than 2x stock GTX260 tho. SLI currently is not enabled in city of heroes anyhow. (Tho I'm forcing it on with varied benefits).
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Make sure your using tripple buffering if your using vsync - try playing without vsync also if your using vsync to see if problem goes away.
Make sure your not forcing SLI mode on (GTX295 being an SLI setup an all) as forced SLI + City of Heroes on default settings will result in slowdown and or flickering graphics.
Use GPU-z to make sure the PCI-e slot your 295 is in, is infact running at atleast PCI-e 1.x 16x speed or PCI-e 2.0 8x - anything lower will cause slowdown with the GTX295 as it has an internal PCI-e splitter.
SLI mode should be enabled on the 295 - you can enable it in the nVidia control panel - this won't make any difference to COH performance unless you play with unsupported tweaks to try and brute force SLI, but it will make sure your card is functioning properly.
For reference - I'm playing with an overclocked GTX260 SLI setup that is essentially similiar performance to the GTX295 and at 1680x1050 I get around ~45fps in outdoor scenes with long view distance, ~70fps in scenes with medium view distance and ~180fps while doing missions solo inside using all settings maxed with 4x AA and Ambient Occlusion set to performance/medium bilateral settings. If I'm missioning with a decent sized team I turn AO down another notch and the ultra settings down 1 notch (except leaving shadows on shadow maps) so I get around 55fps constantly in missions for smoother team play. -
I've tested on 1680x1050 and 2048x1152 and seen similiar scaling.
It seems a bit varied tho - most of my initial testing was around atlas and steel canyon, jumped in fault line yesterday and minimum gains were barely 10% and average closer to 30%. Also found flicker on the contact avatars and on certain objects so will have to tweak some more tho they aren't major issues.
Hopefully nvidia will release support in newer drivers tho as the gains then would potentially be much better.
EDIT: From a little more testing it seems that -slifbos 2 in conjuction with forcing SLI increases the rendering performance of 2D elements but reduces performance of purely 3D rendering so its a bit of a mixed benefit. Aslong as the first 4 SLI flags are disabled SLI will give a performance gain and the main flickering goes away - all the other flags seem pretty much as good as each other with certain combinations giving better performance in some areas of the game and others in other areas, some of the extra flags can also give fullscreen flickering. So far no combination of flags can remove the flickering on contact avatars and vehicle windows - looks like something only the developer or nVidia can fix. -
Quote:I tried -slifbos 2 - it made no difference, I can't see how it would unless it fools the drivers into thinking its another game as COH is hard set to single GPU rendering in the nVidia profile.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
There is also a totally unsupported command that you can put at the end of the shortcut to CoH to enable SLI.
Using ultra quality settings (everything maxed except ambient occlusion which is on medium bilateral) I get a pretty decent boost from the 2nd card, in (solo) indoor missions I go from ~108 to 199fps. In outdoor scenes with low to medium amounts to render I get from ~68 to ~110fps. Unfortunatly tho in the places where you could really do with all the scaling you could get i.e. 8 player team doing TF or long view distance over the city the increase isn't as impressive, typically ~38 to 45fps tho it all helps.Quote:Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Did a bit of testing with this during beta.
Now you CAN force AFR in the drivers.
Realistically, and yes, you get a performance bump from it.
Most of the activity is STILL confined to the primary video card. The SLI link gets very very little activity traveling across it.
In short, it DOES utilize SLI, but it doesn't do it very well. -
I've not kept up with this forum in a bit so sorry if I'm going over old ground - but I remember that city of heros "doesn't work with SLI" and the latest profile even has it set to single GPU... but... if your up for editing your nvapps.xml then:
Code:seems to work for me fine on win 7 64bit with a GTX260 SLI setup, with a minimum fps boost of ~15% and average increase of 60% with none of the flickering, slowdown/input lag or other problems. These settings so far appear to be the most optimal with the best blend of performance and compatibility but there may be other better settings. This is on the 197.45 drivers.<PROFILE Label="City of Heroes"> <APPLICATION Label="CityOfHeroes.exe"/> <PROPERTY Label="multichip_rendering_mode" Value="0x00000005" Default="0x00000004"/> <PROPERTY Label="multichip_ogl_options" Value="0x05800000" Default="0x0000FFFF"/> </PROFILE>
EDIT: With a bit more testing it seems that these settings cause flicker on the windows of the moving vehicle models and agent avatars in the contacts window, not major problems tho.