Low Gpu usage with 980 SLI

[PinnIver]

Hi Guys!

 

So I recently upgraded my rig from one 980 to SLI, mainly for 144 hz gaming in battlefield 4. The one I originally had was a Gigabyte G1 gaming edition, and the new one I bought was a asus stryx edition, mainly because that was the only card easily available at the time.

 

The rest of my rig is a intel i5 4960K, msi gaming 5 z97, and 8 gigs of hyperX fury ram.

 

As I said in the title, the problem is that when I run sli, both cards usage drop in usage, to about 30 - 40 percent. The result is that I get around the same performance as with one card. I'm really confused as to why, since other benchmarks with 980 sli show a great increase in performance, to around an average of 140 fps, with some variation, depending on the testing rig. Any ideas as to what is happening?

[Godlygamer23]

Reinstall your drivers.

[Lotus]

Do you have Vsync on?

[salecar3]

could be a bottleneck if cpu is at stock or lack of PCIe lanes

[Tedster]

could be a bottleneck if cpu is at stock or lack of PCIe lanes

Bottleneck with the 4690K? No. And there's plenty bandwidth to go round there.

[das affe]

no the cpu will do this no prob and lanes wont be a problem either. its software for sure

[Godlygamer23]

could be a bottleneck if cpu is at stock or lack of PCIe lanes

There is no bottleneck. The 4670K can handle that. And no, the PCIe lanes are not bottlenecking. Both slots deliver 16GB/s bidirectionally. (8GB in each direction per slot) Plenty of bandwidth.

[Chiobe]

You can try and look here for answers:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2955064785598270465/

But all in all BF4 is one of the most worst scaling modern games what it comes to Multi-GPU setups.

[PinnIver]

You can try and look here for answers:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2955064785598270465/

I've looked at that thread actually. What I don't get is how some people say that bf4 scales very badly, yet all benchmarks I've seen shows great increases in performance.

[PinnIver]

Reinstall your drivers.

 

no the cpu will do this no prob and lanes wont be a problem either. its software for sure

Tried reinstalling everything related to graphics now, both the drivers and geforce experience, just in case. The problem persists.

[PinnIver]

Do you have Vsync on?

V-sync is disabled both in game, and in the nvidia control panel.

[Lotus]

What framerates are you getting, and what is your monitor's refresh rate?

[PinnIver]

What framerates are you getting, and what is your monitor's refresh rate?

I'm getting around 70 - 100 depending on the map and what is happening. The refresh rate is set to 144 Hz.

[Lotus]

Is it also set to that in windows? Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Monitor

 

Do you have any other programs that interact with your GPU, like different overclocking utilities that might interact with one another poorly? Otherwise, what the others guys have already said seems to be the most likely. Bad drivers.

[PinnIver]

Is it also set to that in windows? Screen Resolution -> Advanced Settings -> Monitor

 

Do you have any other programs that interact with your GPU, like different overclocking utilities that might interact with one another poorly? Otherwise, what the others guys have already said seems to be the most likely. Bad drivers.

It is set to 144 Hz in windows as well. I had msi afterburner installed, but I did not overclock, I just used it to monitor the usage on the gpus. I tried uninstalling it now, but no success. What I don't understand is how it could be the drivers, when I've tried reinstalling them multiple times. Could it be possible that the specific driver version nvidia offers now through experience is broken in regards to sli?

[das affe]

I honestly have no fucking clue how to help you i am so sorry and thats not only because i am slightly drunk after coming back from a birthday What i would do is to flash the bios of the mainboard and change the pci-e slots (maybe just put the upper card where the lower card is now and vice versa  (who knows it may work, because computers are black magic wizardry and nobody knows to this day how they actually work)

[sgloux3470]

It is set to 144 Hz in windows as well. I had msi afterburner installed, but I did not overclock, I just used it to monitor the usage on the gpus. I tried uninstalling it now, but no success. What I don't understand is how it could be the drivers, when I've tried reinstalling them multiple times. Could it be possible that the specific driver version nvidia offers now through experience is broken in regards to sli?

 

Are you doing a proper uninstall with display driver uninstaller?

Does SLI work properly in other games?  Tomb Raider is a good one to test with.

If you increase the resolution scale in graphical settings, does your GPU usage increase at all?

Are you cards using boost clock rates ingame?  

What's your power supply? 

[roberrrtz]

go in to nvidia control panel and make sure that sli is enabled and power management is set to maximum performance

[PinnIver]

Are you doing a proper uninstall with display driver uninstaller?

Does SLI work properly in other games?  Tomb Raider is a good one to test with.

If you increase the resolution scale in graphical settings, does your GPU usage increase at all?

Are you cards using boost clock rates ingame?  

What's your power supply? 

Sorry for the late answer, I had to do some testing before I could get back to you.

 

My psu is a corsair rm 750, I do not know about boost clock rates.

 

Sli apperently works, I tried in tomb raider as you suggested, and both were working at around 97 - 98 percent, which gave good results. 

 

When I tried to up the resolution scale, the usage on both cards jumped greatly, from about 40 percent each to above 90, which is a very good sign! The only problem is that I want to game at a high framerate rather than at a improved resolution, and if I decrease the resolution scale to 100 percent again, the usage on both cards jumps down again to around 40.

[sgloux3470]

Sorry for the late answer, I had to do some testing before I could get back to you.

 

My psu is a corsair rm 750, I do not know about boost clock rates.

 

Sli apperently works, I tried in tomb raider as you suggested, and both were working at around 97 - 98 percent, which gave good results. 

 

When I tried to up the resolution scale, the usage on both cards jumped greatly, from about 40 percent each to above 90, which is a very good sign! The only problem is that I want to game at a high framerate rather than at a improved resolution, and if I decrease the resolution scale to 100 percent again, the usage on both cards jumps down again to around 40.

 

Boost clock rates are present on all Nvidia GPU's.  Essentially, if there's thermal headroom then the cards will clock themselves higher than their base clock.

 

I was initially worried it was bottlenecking due to insufficient poower, but 750W is more than enough for SLI 980's and since you see full usage in Tomb Raider and increased usage with more demand, I think it's pretty clear you're CPU limited  My guess is that because the i5 only has 4 threads, in a multithreaded game like battlefield 4 it isn't enough to power the 980 SLI at such insane framerates.  Most of the test benches that show huge gains that I can find are running i7's, which have extra threads that can be utilized by the game.  

 

 

However, even an i7 won't push these cards to 99%.  You'll be in the 120-150 FPS range though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWAgfPEqaVc#t=118

 

This is largely why I ditched my 144 FPS monitor for a 4K one.  High end CPU's aren't capable of consistently pushing much more than 110-120 FPS regardless of GPU horsepower.  Using SLI 980's for 1080p isn't going to push 144 FPS  in most games, even if it theoretically should be able to.

 

inb4 Intel defense force tells me I'm wrong.  SLI scaling in bf4 for 980's is around 150% over the single 980.  This is because of the CPU limiting the cards.   

[PinnIver]

Boost clock rates are present on all Nvidia GPU's.  Essentially, if there's thermal headroom then the cards will clock themselves higher than their base clock.

 

I was initially worried it was bottlenecking due to insufficient poower, but 750W is more than enough for SLI 980's and since you see full usage in Tomb Raider and increased usage with more demand, I think it's pretty clear you're CPU limited  My guess is that because the i5 only has 4 threads, in a multithreaded game like battlefield 4 it isn't enough to power the 980 SLI at such insane framerates.  Most of the test benches that show huge gains that I can find are running i7's, which have extra threads that can be utilized by the game.  

 

 

However, even an i7 won't push these cards to 99%.  You'll be in the 120-150 FPS range though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWAgfPEqaVc#t=118

 

This is largely why I ditched my 144 FPS monitor for a 4K one.  High end CPU's aren't capable of consistently pushing much more than 110-120 FPS regardless of GPU horsepower.  Using SLI 980's for 1080p isn't going to push 144 FPS  in most games, even if it theoretically should be able to.

 

inb4 Intel defense force tells me I'm wrong.  SLI scaling in bf4 for 980's is around 150% over the single 980.  This is because of the CPU limiting the cards.   

Damn that is a shame... I think you're right though. Overclocking my 4690k to about 4.6 GHz results in increased usage to up to circa 60 - 70 percent, so it seems you're right on the money that it is a cpu bottleneck. Such a shame, especially considering before buying the second card, I researched if there could be a bottleneck, and I found no reason to suspect it. 

[PinnIver]

Damn that is a shame... I think you're right though. Overclocking my 4690k to about 4.6 GHz results in increased usage to up to circa 60 - 70 percent, so it seems you're right on the money that it is a cpu bottleneck. Such a shame, especially considering before buying the second card, I researched if there could be a bottleneck, and I found no reason to suspect it. 

Another question really fast. Since I want to actually use my new cards, do you reckon an i7 4790k will be a good fit?

[PinnIver]

Boost clock rates are present on all Nvidia GPU's.  Essentially, if there's thermal headroom then the cards will clock themselves higher than their base clock.

 

I was initially worried it was bottlenecking due to insufficient poower, but 750W is more than enough for SLI 980's and since you see full usage in Tomb Raider and increased usage with more demand, I think it's pretty clear you're CPU limited  My guess is that because the i5 only has 4 threads, in a multithreaded game like battlefield 4 it isn't enough to power the 980 SLI at such insane framerates.  Most of the test benches that show huge gains that I can find are running i7's, which have extra threads that can be utilized by the game.  

 

 

However, even an i7 won't push these cards to 99%.  You'll be in the 120-150 FPS range though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWAgfPEqaVc#t=118

 

This is largely why I ditched my 144 FPS monitor for a 4K one.  High end CPU's aren't capable of consistently pushing much more than 110-120 FPS regardless of GPU horsepower.  Using SLI 980's for 1080p isn't going to push 144 FPS  in most games, even if it theoretically should be able to.

 

inb4 Intel defense force tells me I'm wrong.  SLI scaling in bf4 for 980's is around 150% over the single 980.  This is because of the CPU limiting the cards.   

Another question really fast. Since I want to actually use my new cards, do you reckon an i7 4790k will be a good fit?

[sgloux3470]

Another question really fast. Since I want to actually use my new cards, do you reckon an i7 4790k will be a good fit?

 

It might alleviate the bottleneck, or atleast give you a relatively constant 140 FPS.  I don't think you'll see full 100% usage in everything though.

[Decorus]

With my setup I'm getting 120-150 fps @1080p in BF4 so it's probably the cpu as have been mentioned.