SLI RIG slow performance

[raffis15]

I recently built my new machine, but till this day I haven’t seen great performance from it, can any one help with what may be wrong, as I have tried everything as per tweak guides and other instructions. First of all I will provide my computer specs

CPU = AMD 64 X2 +4400
MOB = Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe with the latest firmware and Chipset drivers updated 17/11/05
Memory = Corsair 1024MB ( 2 x 512 ) TwinX 3200C2
Hard drives = 2 x 250GB SATA Raid0
Video = 2 x XFX 7800GTX OC (490MHz) SLI
Sound = Creative 2zs Audigy
Speakers = Logitech 5500 THX
Monitor = DELL 2405FPW Widescreen
OS = Windows XP Pro Service pack 2
NVIDIA Drivers = 81.94

So their it is , I went all out , and I also thought I would get what I paid for , well at the moment the machine runs fine in the OS etc , but gaming SUX why I have no idea , please Note that when I built this machine I had the older version of the drivers for everything .
BF2 I love this game but when I play it at full resolution something like 1600 X??? with everything turned on , plus video card hardware settings like AA 16xSLI , AF off and everything else off , this machine runs like **** slow frame rate , plus I also have carried out #@mark 2005 and only get 8600 points ?? I don’t understand SLI has been turned on in the video settings and as per tweak guides; BF2 has the latest patch as well.

Symptoms :
Slow frame rate at high resolution
Tearing depends if I have Vsync on or not
GPU temp never goes above 60C , this is odd ?? Case cooling ok , but I would suspect playing for more then a hour to reach +70C >


I would like to know if someone with my specs what settings they have on, as at the moment I’m stuffed and don’t know what to do?

Please help.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Sounds like you didn't enable SLI on the mainboard. 8600 is exactly what a single GTX should score. Have you double checked everything in the BOIS. Not really familliar whith the ins and outs of that board, but on many boards there is a jumper you have to set to use SLI.

[Gunny Highway]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Have you tried setting AA and AF to Application Controlled/Preference in your nvidia display settings?? And then let BF2 set the AA and AF settings in its options.

[raffis15]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Yes SLI is enabled in the BIOS and also enabled in the NVIDIA control panel .
I will try turning AA and AF to application control , some people are saying at that resolution you don't need AA or AF ? so i might turn off AA and AF and turn everything else on and see how it goes.

[Gunny Highway]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Yes SLI is enabled in the BIOS and also enabled in the NVIDIA control panel .
I will try turning AA and AF to application control , some people are saying at that resolution you don't need AA or AF ? so i might turn off AA and AF and turn everything else on and see how it goes.

Yea the higher the resolution the lower AA needs to be, because jagged edges aren't that noticable, like they are at lower resolution like 1024x768.

I run Bf2 at 1600x1200 but unlike other games I've notice that with AA entirely off, I can tell the difference, so in the case of BF2 I use 2xAA even at that high resolution.

If you take a look in the 3dmark thread iin hardware forum:

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?p=330414#post330414

You'll see ppl with just one GTX scoring 8000+ so it looks a little odd.

[raffis15]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Ok Guys , it looks like AMD's Dual core CPU's have issues with games, here are some information on how to's pathces ( when will it ever end ) , until games do not take advantage of Dual core CPU's it looks like we have to run processor affinity and select which core we want to run the games on , this fix's most problems also you require AMD dual core drivers to be installed on windows XP etc and also Microst has a pathc for Dual core CPUs , CRAPPPPPPPPPP i spent 6 F$#$# grand on my rig and i have to patch it up to run proper games.

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=60070
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

Good luck people

[Gunny Highway]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Ok Guys , it looks like AMD's Dual core CPU's have issues with games, here are some information on how to's pathces ( when will it ever end ) , until games do not take advantage of Dual core CPU's it looks like we have to run processor affinity and select which core we want to run the games on , this fix's most problems also you require AMD dual core drivers to be installed on windows XP etc and also Microst has a pathc for Dual core CPUs , CRAPPPPPPPPPP i spent 6 F$#$# grand on my rig and i have to patch it up to run proper games.

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=60070
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

Good luck people

You can take a look in the other thread on 1st page right now that also explains how to fix this:

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41039

Take a look in my post in there, before you attempt to use imagecfg.

[DrunkenPirate]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Moved to Hardware

[Blue Geezer]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

i have almost the exact same system except i have the premium version of that mobo and 2 gig (2*1 gig) of pc3200 twinx corsair ram and dual core 4800+

i hit 12140 odd on 3dmark05 with those drivers. it really sounds like you dont have SLI enabled tbh.... also have you put the ram in the correct slots for dual channel? i believe ram, space, ram, space on the slots is how it has to be otherwise performance WILL suffer.

are you sure you have SLI done properly with the clip installed with the bracket installed holding the clip in? on the graphics section have the gpu load display enabled that will bring up a green bar that will show you the load placed on each card. using this you can see if its done properly.

[cyborg_ninja-117]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

i got 8Xs AA for 1280x1024, have u contacted ur seller? maybe the hardware may have some problems while ur installing it

[openheimer]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Ok so I tried that processor, I found even with bios upgrades etc that I was disappointed. So I did a lot of research on how a dual core relates to sli. I found that performance bottle necks for current games in a x2 cpu. I feel its because although dual cores can support multi aplications effectively, single high demand processes like games do not load balance across both cores.

[imported_Grudge]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Get 2 gigs of ram to achieve optimal performance. I got a ATI x850xt pe video card and my performance hardly improved over my 9800 pro, so I sold the x850xt on ebay and went back to the 9800. BF2 is a memory heavy game and your comp needs 2 gigs to load up all the extra graphics that running high resolution specs brings up.

G

[imported_Wreck]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Get 2 gigs of ram to achieve optimal performance. I got a ATI x850xt pe video card and my performance hardly improved over my 9800 pro, so I sold the x850xt on ebay and went back to the 9800. BF2 is a memory heavy game and your comp needs 2 gigs to load up all the extra graphics that running high resolution specs brings up.

G

Thats what I was about to suggest. You have SLI on high settings and only 1Gb of ram. No way you can run on high res with AA, and AF, and not have 2Gb.

Also the patching isn't that complicated. Here is an example of how I did it.

Download Prioaff: http://www.valhallalegends.com/adron...ff/prioaff.zip
Unzip and put the folder somewhere it can stay.
Input this code in your desktop icon target box that needs to be run on one core.

Example:

"D:\Downloaded files\prioaff\prioaff.exe" 1 10 "C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1

There are 4 parts to this shortcut target line:
1) location of prioaff.exe
2) priority as follows:
Code:

0 - Low
1 - Normal
2 - High
3 - RealTime

3) Processor affinity in binary as follows:
Code:

1 - Task Manager CPU 0
10 - Task Manager CPU 1
100 - Task Manager CPU 2
1000 - Task Manager CPU 3
11 - Task Manager CPU's 0 and 1
101 - Task Manager CPU's 0 and 2 etc...

4) path to executable

[raffis15]

Re: SLI RIG slow performance

Thanks for that info , Yes Ram is in the correct slot and also SLI enabled,
I actually got it working last night properly , 3DMark 2005 , carried out a test run and i got 12003 points , this was after all the patches , which included the reg hack for the windows patch , updated AMD X2 drivers for windows XP , but it still think my CPU is the bottleneck , the XFX 7800GTX are the overclocked version which have 490 CPU clock and 1.3GHZ memory , and this is in SLI mode , this should be hitting the high 13000 > ,
I overclocked the GPU to 515MHZ and 1.33GHZ and the temperature didn't even hit 70C so what this is telling me is that the data path from the processor to the Video cards are strained because of the CPU and no matter how much you overclock your Video you will not see any performance increase because of this bottleneck. ( i was playing BF2 with the overclocked spec , 3d mark was not applied ) , so unless games are not designed to work with dual core CPUs this will always hinder the performance of those machines with dual core CPUs.