It's Possible SLI Support Already Works! (On Test at least, haven't tested Live yet).

When Nvidia's latest drivers released a couple of days ago, I noticed it had a listing for "SLI Support for City of Heroes: Going Rogue" I thought it was pretty cool that it was already in, even though CoH wouldn't support it until i19. My primary gaming machine runs a single Nvidia GTX 470 card, and with everything maxed out, ( except World Detail around 124% AA at 8x, and Ambient Occlusion at "High Quality") I get around 42-44FPS staring at a particular building on test in Imperial City right now.

Switching to my backup machine which is a weaker processor and older board, but running a pair of SLI'd GTS 250 1GB Cards I forced Nvidia's profile for CoH into "Single GPU" and ran with the exact same settings as my 470, and got about 15-19fps. I then switched over to "Nivida Recommended" (which, as an FYI forces Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) 2).

Logging back in I now get 38-40fps with those same settings. A four year old machine just got nearly equal to a 6 month old machine, they're now within 3-5fps of one another.

Caveats:

1) This was a quick test under a single instance.

2) Both Machines are running the newest NVidia drivers.

3) Both have the exact same settings and logged into the exact same character looking at th same spot, with the same res. (1920x1200 on a 24" Dell monitor).

4) Primary is connected via DVI, secondary via D-Sub (so I could tab back and forth between them.

5) No combat was tested (yet) nor did I test on Live (yet) both were tested on test.

6)Both machines run Windows 7 64-Bit.

7)I also checked by activating the "SLI Visual Indicator" from the Nvidia control panel, and it properly appears and "oscillates up and down" filling the bar fully vertically, indicating full SLI use.

8) I didn't notice any weird flickering or artifacting (which used to be present during an attempt to force SLI on CoH previously).

9) I didn't pick praetoria for any particular reason except that I'd been playing the character there already today testing the Halloween Event. No tests have been done yet on H or V side.

10) As I said it's just a quick "I wonder if...?" test, to satisfy my curiosity, but all indications point to the fact that SLI works currently. Would be even more awesome if it got even BETTER when i19 launches.


Whee! Thanks Devs!

Its definitely working on live. About a month ago Nvidia released beta drivers that re-enabled SLI for COh, and the WHQL version of the drivers released the other day now mention it in the release notes. I've been using these drivers since they were released and they're most definitely working properly.

Unless I have a setting wrong or something, the performance gain from SLI wasn't worth the wait. With your settings my fps in Praetoria is about 11, and I'm running dual 470s in SLI. I get 15-20 fps with Ambient Occlusion turned off. SLI is working with both cards around 50% load. The fps difference with SLI on/off is 1-2.

I'm running an i7 930 cpu with 6GB memory. The nvidia drivers are new with default settings. My driver profile for CoH has the SLI mode set to AFR2. Both cards show load, but it's only half. I can run newer games at maxed driver/game settings, but this one chokes. I've followed some of the guides on here for CoH settings and settings for the nvidia driver, but so far I haven't found the cause.

I reset all nvidia settings to default, changed to single display performance, and closed all programs. I ran CoH, enabled all advanced settings, set...

8x AA
16x Anisotropic
VSync Enabled
Distance 124%
Ambient Occlusion to Strong w/Color Bleed, High Quality, Trilinear
Particle count 50000

Every other setting is as high as possible, and I get a max fps of 22. I still only have a load of around 60% per card. I have played around with three other computers with different generation cards (8800gt, 9800gt, gtx280) and processors, and none of them come close to the OP's frame rate. The game is playable once I turn a few things down, but it seems like I'm not getting the performance I should.

It's lower than the OP so I didn't list it, 1680x1050.

Don't use High Quality in the Ambient Resolution AO settings. That halves your FPS right there. Use Quality instead. Or, just disable Advanced AO settings and use the Ultra preset.

The OP is using the High Quality preset, so if you want an apples to apples comparison, use that.

Yeah, using the advanced AO settings is normally asking for performance to be bad...I'm using "High Quality" in the standard AO slider, but could PROBABLY get away with Ultra, I just don't find the sacrifice of FPS worth the visual increase above the HQ mark. Ironically I think there's a marker between HQ and Ultra, and the one just above HQ but before Ultra has "worse" FPS hit on my system (by 2-3) than the Ultra marker.

I appreciate the colour bleeding effect seen in the Ultra setting. It gives the occlusion shadows appropriate colours, such as brown rather than gray to match the surface, while minimising the AO effect for surfaces under direct sunlight. This mirrors real life surprisingly well for a post-process effect, and it's an innovation I have not seen in other AO shaders in other games.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try using the basic AO slider and post back a bit later with my fps. Hopefully it will run at a setting that doesn't have that outline between objects and shading.

I agree that the color bleed effect looks a lot better. Without it I had AO set to slight, trying to get rid of the dingy gray shading.

It is running better after using the AO slider and not the advanced AO settings. I was checking out some of the presets while moving around Imperial City. With the HQ setting my frame rate hops around quite a bit from 33 to 45 or so. The average isn't great but much better than before. Setting AO to SHQ drops my fps to a pretty steady 30-33fps. The Ultra setting gives me 30-40fps. Overall it's playable set to HQ, short of an event with a lot of people.

An example of a low fps scene is standing in front of Nightstar and turning to the right. With AO set to HQ, my frame rate is 35-37. Places like this seem good for testing since they are the toughest to render, but the fps difference after changing most settings is hardly noticeable. I only gain 2-3 fps by turning AO, FSAA, and Anisotropic off while looking at the same scene. Basically, move around the zone after making a change.

I just wanted to add that I had world/character detail turned down to 100%.

If you have pretty old cards AND low frame rates SLI will likely help. It just seems like a waste of money since CoX uses newer hardware poorly. Modern CPUs go into power save mode from lack of load while playing. My old, old PC with a single 7800gt gets basically identical fps to my new SLI rig with the same new settings. I understand it's an older game and would be more forgiving had they not overhauled the graphics without working on performance and efficiency to support it.

I have the game running right now, and my load is less than 20% on my CPU with it throttled in power savings mode. The memory use is barely over 2.5GB. The problem isn't the hardware or load anyway. That's the point. If it isn't stressing the computer and still dips to 30fps (sometimes less) solid in certain areas, it must be the game. My average is about 10fps better with the new rig over my 7800gt PC. I'll give you that much, but I still lag down to the same fps in the same places. I can't say it's good to play on this street in Imperial city but not that one because I lag over there. I also get basically zero gain running in SLI. If I don't get a constant improvement that tells me that I don't get much for my money by running CoX in SLI.

I should add that I have all 22" monitors due to limited space. So I run everything at their native 1680x1050, the resolution posted previously.

That's pretty much what I said. There is no load. My question is, with an untaxed system, why would hitting 30fps and below be acceptable? I don't think there really is an answer, other than there are often problems playing old games on new hardware.