Hey all,
I am fairly confused as to what is going on with my rig. Maybe I am simply overestimating the effects of SLI. First thing is first, I am running Vista 64 on 158.45 drivers, which are the ones that support the 8 series in SLI. Since buying my rig two weeks ago, I have run benchmarks after benchmarks in order to make it perform to its optimal stable levels.
At stock (CPU/GPU/RAM) my rig was able to push out roughly 9500 points in 3dMark06 in SLI mode. In non-SLI mode it would drop down to about 8500. This to me indicated that my CPU/RAM was bottlenecking the cards.
My next step was to overclock the CPU/RAM. I am now sitting on a 3.15ghz cpu and RAM running at 933mhz ([email protected]) - 3:4 frequency ratio. This made a huge improvement in benchmark scores. In SLI mode I am now getting 12000 points, however in non-SLI mode I am getting 11000 points. From the looks of it now I am thinking something is wrong with my SLI setup.
Should I only be seeing 1000 points difference? Whether in XP or Vista. Or should I be seeing higher gains then this? Please, if you have any benchmarks of your own, please share, ie: your non-SLI vs SLI benchmarks. Please indicate your OS as well =).
Note that both my PCIe buses are x16, I have the SLI Bridge securely attached to the two cards. Also, I have run the "SLI Visual Indicators" and they appear to be synched -- ie I see both bars growing in similar ratio under 3dMark06/Counter Strike Source.
My guesses based on this information, I think my problem may be:
1. I might be losing sleep over nothing
2. Vista/Nvidia's SLI drivers just aren't there yet
3. 3DMark06 doesn't bench the 8 series SLI setup very accurately
4. My CPU is still bottlenecking my setup
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I am fairly confused as to what is going on with my rig. Maybe I am simply overestimating the effects of SLI. First thing is first, I am running Vista 64 on 158.45 drivers, which are the ones that support the 8 series in SLI. Since buying my rig two weeks ago, I have run benchmarks after benchmarks in order to make it perform to its optimal stable levels.
At stock (CPU/GPU/RAM) my rig was able to push out roughly 9500 points in 3dMark06 in SLI mode. In non-SLI mode it would drop down to about 8500. This to me indicated that my CPU/RAM was bottlenecking the cards.
My next step was to overclock the CPU/RAM. I am now sitting on a 3.15ghz cpu and RAM running at 933mhz ([email protected]) - 3:4 frequency ratio. This made a huge improvement in benchmark scores. In SLI mode I am now getting 12000 points, however in non-SLI mode I am getting 11000 points. From the looks of it now I am thinking something is wrong with my SLI setup.
Should I only be seeing 1000 points difference? Whether in XP or Vista. Or should I be seeing higher gains then this? Please, if you have any benchmarks of your own, please share, ie: your non-SLI vs SLI benchmarks. Please indicate your OS as well =).
Note that both my PCIe buses are x16, I have the SLI Bridge securely attached to the two cards. Also, I have run the "SLI Visual Indicators" and they appear to be synched -- ie I see both bars growing in similar ratio under 3dMark06/Counter Strike Source.
My guesses based on this information, I think my problem may be:
1. I might be losing sleep over nothing
2. Vista/Nvidia's SLI drivers just aren't there yet
3. 3DMark06 doesn't bench the 8 series SLI setup very accurately
4. My CPU is still bottlenecking my setup
Any help would be greatly appreciated.