Low Ice Storm score with 980Ti SLI

[Matrix Leader]

Hi guys,

I have had this problem ever since I got my ORIGIN PC Millennium Desktop.

Initially when I tested, it was with the old drivers 353.30 so I thought maybe because these cards are new so the drivers aren't optimized yet, but now after a few driver revisions, even currently running drivers 355.80 Hotfix which are supposed to fix the memory leak for SLI setups didn't help.

On my ALIENWARE 18 LAPTOP, I get around 154K in Ice Storm using the old 350.12 drivers. So naturally with this desktop Dual 980 Ti GPUs, the score should be much higher right?

GeForce GTX 780M SLI (350.12) [W8]

 

But I only get 121K

here are the results of Ice Storm:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367115?

All other scores are fine where they should be, Example:

Cloudgate: 39K = http://www.3dmark.com/cg/2970300

Skydiver:46K = http://www.3dmark.com/sd/3278643

Firestrike: 22k = http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5710373

It's just Ice Storm that's getting horrible results.

Is this a bug in Ice Storm or what?

Both GPUs are running @ 16x PCIe speeds

GPUs are at stock speed. CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz and here are my specs:

ASUS X-99 Deluxe Motherboard | Corsair AX1500i PSU | Intel Core i7 5930K @ 4.5GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB 2400MHz RAM | 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti SLI 6GB GDDR5 RAM | SanDisk Extreme PRO 240GB SSD + 2x SanDisk Extreme PRO 960GB SSD + WD Caviar Black 4TB 7200 RPM HDD + WD Red 6TB 5400 RPM HDD | ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q 27" G-SYNC Monitor | Corsair Vengeance K70 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard | Logitech G502 PROTEUS CORE Tunable Gaming Mouse

[Castdeath97]

Do games play fine as they should in a 980ti SLI? 

If yes why bother, those benchmark results are a bragging right at best.

[Matrix Leader]

Do games play fine as they should in a 980ti SLI? 

If yes why bother, those benchmark results are a bragging right at best.

They do just fine

 

I switched the power mode from Adaptive to Maximum Performance in the nVIDIA Control Panel and the score went up to 125K, that's a 4K improvement but still nowhere near my Alienware 18 with Dual 780M GPUs which gets 150K and no where near the 4K Gaming PCs:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367624?

Please help, I'm at loss here. BTW this happens in both Windows 10 and 7

 

I know the games play fine, and all other benchmarks are fine as well, but this is just bothering me why at the end when 3DMark shows you a graphical display of your score compared to other PCs, my score is near the laptop score and is wya below the 4K Gaming PC Scores so there must be something wrong here.

[Castdeath97]

They do just fine

 

I switched the power mode from Adaptive to Maximum Performance in the nVIDIA Control Panel and the score went up to 125K, that's a 4K improvement but still nowhere near my Alienware 18 with Dual 780M GPUs which gets 150K and no where near the 4K Gaming PCs:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367624?

Please help, I'm at loss here. BTW this happens in both Windows 10 and 7

 

I know the games play fine, and all other benchmarks are fine as well, but this is just bothering me why at the end when 3DMark shows you a graphical display of your score compared to other PCs, my score is near the laptop score and is wya below the 4K Gaming PC Scores so there must be something wrong here.

Probably something wrong from 3Dmark side, I wouldn't care to be honest. 

[Matrix Leader]

Probably something wrong from 3Dmark side, I wouldn't care to be honest. 

Wow! With SLI Disabled! The score went up to 200K

See: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367760?

Now I'll run 2 full benchmarks, not only Ice Storm, one with SLI Enabled and another with SLI Disabled for you to have a look.

 

[Castdeath97]

Wow! With SLI Disabled! The score went up to 200K

See: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367760?

Now I'll run 2 full benchmarks, not only Ice Storm, one with SLI Enabled and another with SLI Disabled for you to have a look.

I'm guessing that 3Dmark has issues with the SLI profile.

[Matrix Leader]

I'm guessing that 3Dmark has issues with the SLI profile.

Here you go, the other results show a good improvement with SLI Enabled, with SLI Disabled, Ice Storm goes way higher. You are telling me this is more CPU intensive but to me this looks like a glitch in Ice Storm as this isn't the case with my 780M SLI GPUs, only on the 980 Ti and if you google "low ice storm score 980 Ti you will notice many are having the same issue.

GeForce GTX 980 Ti (355.80) [W10] = http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367974?

GeForce GTX 980 Ti SLI x2 (355.80) [W10] = http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8368208?

What can you say about these scores?

[Castdeath97]

Here you go, the other results show a good improvement with SLI Enabled, with SLI Disabled, Ice Storm goes way higher. You are telling me this is more CPU intensive but to me this looks like a glitch in Ice Storm as this isn't the case with my 780M SLI GPUs, only on the 980 Ti and if you google "low ice storm score 980 Ti you will notice many are having the same issue.

GeForce GTX 980 Ti (355.80) [W10] = http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8367974?

GeForce GTX 980 Ti SLI x2 (355.80) [W10] = http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/8368208?

What can you say about these scores?

I'm too confused now honestly.

[Matrix Leader]

I'm too confused now honestly.

After going through a lot of troubleshooting with Futuremark employees, they finally told me to ignore the test because this test is not meant for a high end system like mine and they were like:

 

you should instead run just the test that is relevant for your hardware.

- Ice Storm for tablets and very low end laptops

- Cloud Gate for laptops without DX11 support and for very old desktops

- Sky Diver for laptops with DX11 support and low end desktop systems

- Fire Strike for Gaming laptops and desktops

- Fire Strike Extreme for multi-GPU gaming desktops

- Fire Strike Ultra for testing 4K gaming performance (very high end desktops)

 

No I understand that, but still doesn't explain why my Alienware 18 laptop beats my high end desktop and why when I finish the test the results show that I am way below the score of a 4K Gaming rig. All other benchmarks are fine, this Ice Storm doesn't play nice with SLI setups on the 980 Ti I'm not the only one reporting this and they don't wanna admit or fix their buggy benchmark.