So lately, I am running a 2x GTX 760 SLI'd build in my PC. Problem is, I'm not getting the FPS that I thought I would. For some reason, some games that I run "hiccup" every 10-20 seconds while I'm playing. This "hiccup" is a period of 4-5 seconds where the FPS drops from 60+ to 10-15. Literally slows the whole game down. I have experienced this heavily in H1Z1 and CS:GO. I've been to a ton of websites, trying to find help on this issue. Any help from you guys would be greatly appreciated, as I'm starting to go bald due to the fact that I stream these games and hate that I can't provide the best experience for my viewers. My CPU is a FX-9370 Eight Core Processor as well.
You said in another thread you had a GTX 980 on the back burner? Honestly... come on, man. That card will run circles around two outdated mid-range cards with SLI penalty. While using less power. Just swap it. Get it done. As for microstutter in SLI setups I can't say much about it. If you want I can sing a song or two about microstutter, bluescreens and plain freezes with AMD Crossfire. GTA V is the most recent game that has been giving me nothing but problems with Crossfire and no problems at all without Crossfire. Most good games (i.e. not Call of Derpy, Battlefield, ...) don't support Crossfire and SLI anyway. I invested a lot into two 290X cards and water cooling for them (tons of radiators...) to get all kinds of problems out of it. The drivers suck. Now the secondary card, which also has a ton of coil whine, is disabled and everything is running smoothly again. Plus the radiator fans are down to 600rpm and my electricity bill is going to drop again. If I could choose again I would go for a single GTX 980. The card you have on the shelf.
Always try to always go for a single card. SLI / Crossfire might be an idea if you play in 4k resolution, but otherwise a single powerful card because of less issues.
Xfire and Sli do cause driver issues. And of course you have the vram issue (you dont add vram if you have 2x2GB cards you still have 2GB of vram) What you have sounds like a bottleneck (an over used term unfortunately) do you get it playing when not broadcasting?
I Feel you chris, I've actually got 2 980's SLI right now, and for some games I have to just cringe and disable SLI. I do get the microstutter, which annoys the hell out of me. I was raised on hunting and I think that might have a lot to do with it, but I can tell the difference between 55 and 60 FPS, and it's not the difference that bothers me, it's when I hit an area with a lot to compute and it drops down to 55 or something. I notice that minor slow-down and it really, really gets under my skin. At the time when I bought a 980, they were brand new, I got it a few days after their commercial release. I feel like on their own, they are strong, but the fact that there is such a clusterfuck these days in terms of dual-card ( or god forbid tri, or quad set-up ) performance that most developers decide to overlook in order to have a shorter release date. Although I love my 980's and I can run GTA V on max everything at 60, when I'm going 90 MPH through the city it drops to 55 or sometimes around 48 or so, and that's just enough to mess up my reaction timing and I crash into a car. So I kinda feel what you're sayin, I kinda wish I just plunked down cash on one solid, top-of-the-line card instead. Edit: Beloved I wish that was a point more people realized. My 980's are 4gb but that doesn't mean I've got 8gb now, it means I split/alternate between two cards that both have 4gb. It doesn't stack, necessarily.
I gave it a shot, I think it might've made a bit of difference, thanks for the heads up I also toyed around with some settings and realized I can get constant 60 with everything on max and MSAA on 8 as long as I turn extended distance in advanced options down to only like 3 or 4 notches. After testing everything else, this was the only thing that was constantly cutting at least 5 frames. I also don't notice much of a difference with it lower, honestly.
Sorry, I have it in the backburner, as in I need to purchase it. I'm tempted to just literally turn off the SLI and stick with one 760 until I get the new video card. Seems like such a waste but it's starting to piss me off very much.
Thank you for all your help guys. I really appreciate it. I hate that it affected my play of Skyrim today for my stream. Super pissed about that. Made it laggy. I'm going with a single card build from now on.
Most games seems to be pretty buggy with SLI, and I've come to the conclusion that there's not really any point in having multiple cards, unless you already have the top-of-the-line and wish to experiment with getting a little bit more out of it. I have dual cards in both my computers (and when they were bought, they were pretty much top-of-the-line), but most of the time I have SLI deactivated. There is some exceptions however. Star Citizen for example, demands a lot, so every little extra frame per second is worth the SLI bugs you sometimes encounter. And Lord of the Rings Online wont start at all for me unless SLI is activated. But for most other things I keep SLI off.
I agree SLI is impractical right now, DX12 might change that. (not holding my breath though) Ive had the same issue with games not working if sli is different from when it was installed. re downloading some times works, still cant get catzilla to run Im guessing it ha config files hidden somewhere
