eclipseaudio4

correct your GPU's are not working very hard. I just looked at your specs and 2 280's will murder most games out right now. Heck my 2 8800GTS 512's get 96.6 avg in RE5 @ 1080p (1920x1080)
If you were able to OC your CPU more now you would see an improvement. Turn everything all the way up and see if the bar goes bigger.

__________________

The Official MSI 790FX-GD70 Owners Thread

AMD 790FX+SLI

Blue Moon Rising Work log Easy 4.2
5000+ X2 @ 3.6 on Asus M2N32 workstation Pro

youra6

unfortunately 3.3 Ghz is the highest I can overclock without it being unstable.

I increased the CPU/NB frequency to 2400 and changed my RAM timings

eclipseaudio4

That being the case I would grab an AM3 PII the new stepping will be out shortly.

__________________

The Official MSI 790FX-GD70 Owners Thread

AMD 790FX+SLI

Blue Moon Rising Work log Easy 4.2
5000+ X2 @ 3.6 on Asus M2N32 workstation Pro

youra6

do you think it could be a faulty mobo? I tried each GPU card in both slots and they seemed to work well separately, so i guess thats not it. The PSU seems fine as well, and all drivers are up to date.

The best PII is the 955/965, and its not very expensive. However, are you saying that AMD is releasing a newer chip?

youra6

any suggestions?

I hate to bump posts but I need some help desparately

brettjv

I already gave you my suggestions, and you keep avoiding my simple question concerning whether or not you turned off phys-x in both places in BMAA.

If you did not, then I can tell you from extensive testing that having phys-x on in BMAA with a two-card SLI setup definitely *CAN* take you OUT of SLI mode. You need a third card to be sure that you stay in SLI running phys-x in that game. Maybe some people have magically had better luck than I have and don't have this problem, but I'm telling you ... *I* do, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one.

And as I said before, Borderlands could *easily* not have SLI support yet, it just came out. Having a tiny SLI bar just means SLI isn't working ... usually, it's just not supported (yet). And having a small SLI bar (like in your BL screenie) does NOT mean that your cpu is underpowered, I promise you that.

So... what other games are you having issues with? And if so, how do you know you're having issues? What are the signs of the problem(s) in each one?

Do you at least get a longer SLI bar in something like Crysis or 3dMark06, situations where we absolutely KNOW SLI is supported, and that don't use phys-x?

On edit: just so you know, there's a definite learning curve with SLI, and there are unexpected hassles involved. ESPECIALLY when you combine phys-x into the equation. Determining whether or not SLI is actually working on a given game/bench is often not so simple, and that's just for starters.

However, you are lucky enough to have 280's, and it so happens that there is a very simple way to detect whether SLI is really working or not: Install Rivatuner (you may have to force the driver version ... you can google this matter) and fire up the graphing function. You should find on the graphs a measurement for the GPU core voltage (or VRM voltage, or something along those lines, I forget exactly), one for each core. Usually they're near the bottom of the set of graphs, by default.

Once you've found them, you can run a game you believe is having issues, with the graphs running in the background. After you play for a bit, go back and check the voltage for each core on the graphs. If you find there is a marked difference between the two (usually this means the voltage increases on only one core, and stays the same on the other), this tells you that SLI is not working on the game (or bench, whatever you were testing). It's the most sure-fire way of figuring this out, trust me on that.

Having a significant difference in temps on each core (also visible on the RT graphs) is also a indication of SLI not working ... but this method is not as accurate as watching the voltages ... which is only possible on cards with the Volterra VRM's like the 65nm 200 series cards (like you've got) and the dual-pcb 295.

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3dMark06: 26,490
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=11655839

youra6

I told you I already have disabled physx, please go back and reread my posts.

I found out on my EVGA precision that the 2nd card is not working while im playing BMAA. Thats fine with me because BMAA doesnt support SLI ATM.

When I try other games, Precision clearly tells me that both cards have reached full clock speeds. Is this a good indication of whether or not SLI is working?

I will try 3dmark vantage. I dont have crysis so I cant test that game out. Rivatuner is also a viable option

Thanks for your help

youra6

edit: look post below accidental doublepost

youra6

Ok... my score was roughly the same as with one card. strangely, the ONLY difference was my canyon flight FPS. Other than that, every test was the same.

And only during canyon flight did my SLI bar reach long lengths

I'll post up a SS of it


Edit: I'm not sure if I did this right but I added the voltages in rivatuner. They seem to be in conjunction with each other. I was using 3dmark06 (test was Return to Proxycon)

Attached Thumbnails

   

brettjv

If the only score that goes up 1 card vs 2 cards in 3dMark06 is Canyon Flight (and that one does go up significantly) it is sign that SLI is working, but that you're suffering from CPU bottlenecking on the other tests. This is very common and doesn't mean you'll be cpu-bottlenecked all the time, it's just that 06 is quite old, and runs at a low resolution with no AA, etc ... in others words it's the exact scenario where you can expect to see this sort of bottlenecking.

Remember, when 3dMark06 came out, a lot of people were still rocking their 9800 Pro's and FX5900's, and if they were lucky, they had brand spanking new nvidia 6000 series cards. I mean, that thing is OLD at this point ... it wasn't designed to test GTX280's in SLI.

If you check my link in my sig, you'll see that my score on cpu test 2 is 3.66fps, whereas yours is around 2. If you calculate the ratio between our two scores on that test, you'll find that it very closely matches the ratio between our respective overall scores. This is not a coincidence. It's because 06 is basically much more of a cpu test than anything else at this point, esp. when you are talking about 2 high-end gfx cards running in SLI.

Interestingly enough, though, the 3dMark03 test is actually significantly less cpu-bottlenecked than the 06 test is. They did a pretty good job of making those tests not use much cpu power, because even though they'll run at like 500-1000fps they still show some decent scaling based on the amount of GPU power you have.

Btw, Crysis has a demo, and there is also a free downloadable benchmark for Stalker Clear Sky. If you want to see SLI working for sure, either of those should do the trick

And now that you mention it, Vantage for sure you should see your sli bar very full for most of the two graphics tests. If you don't then something's wrong. If you do, then you can be sure that whatever is going on is not related to your hardware, that SLI works in general, etc.

Both cards clocking up is a decent sign that SLI is working but it's by no means 100%. Those voltage shots from RT are EXACTLY what I was talking about. Good job That screenie right there shows SLI working for sure. That's what you want to be looking at ... whenever you're wondering.

And for the fourth time, my question about BMAA was did you turn phys-x off BOTH IN GAME AND IN THE NV CONTROL PANEL? You keep saying I that you have it disabled, but this doesn't answer my specific question. And SLI does work in BMAA if you have the newest nvidia drivers ... but you either have to completely disable phys-x (both places), or you have a third card for phys-x, in order for it to work.

__________________
3dMark06: 26,490
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=11655839