Twin 7900 Gt Ko W/ Sli + Vista

[jwhyrock]

Here are two threads I posted on relative to this so if this is considered a dup thread I apologize. Below is much more detail than I included in the others.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=137242
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=150977

I was running DDO on a solid machine with XP. I was/am using 2 7900 GT KOs in SLI and had no problems (at least that I was aware of) with that set up. I was also running (and forgive my 1/2 n00bishness on hardware) an AMD 2.0ghz 3800? CPU with 2gb of average RAM. Game ran pretty smoothly with near 60fps at least some of the time, but could still see clipping or enough to make the game not one smooth fluid experience. I had a direct side by side comparison with my friend for our 2 person LAN party hehe and he had 4gb or 6gb RAM a slightly better cpu on vista but with a middle of the road ATI card w/ dx10 (i realize ddo is not dx10 but just as a reference to the type of card in general terms as I don't know which one exactly).

He told me that an ATI card vs an Nvidia card regardless of both using dx9 will appear differently and that could be what I was seeing. His game seemed to flow and feel like one fluid motion and much more natural than mine. At the very least with full settings (he did not use full settings) my experience was good, but not perfect. His game just appeared nicer and fluid but it could just be the grass being greener etc.

At the very least I figured I could lock in a solid constant 60fps with a new cpu/ram. I got 3.0ghz 512kb l2 cache AMD 5800? and 4 more gb of ram for a total of 6. I also put vista on. When I got on DDO the game was much slower and was running on average at 30fps or less pretty constant. I played with my Nvidia settings doing manual settings in the control panel, and application controlled, and finally even using the nvidia DDO profile. I went from really bad to pretty much stable but much worse than my previous xp setup with less powerful hardware. I have read in forums that SLI with ddo suxx0rz and people suggest just using one card (disabling SLI). I did and the fps did go up and felt like a more natural fluctuation but much less than previously.

I still am in the midst of re-organizing everything and right now testing my ram and depending on the next few days of different tests with my old ram and new ram I may find that the new stuff is bad. I don't know yet. The computer has been stable for the most part, but installations have been egregiously slow and again the game wasn't up to par. I don't know enough yet to know that ddo can't handle SLI in vista, but from reading various forums that seems to be the case if not all the time a lot of the time. I ran a memtest yesterday and came up with multiple errors on 1 test and a few on another. That was with all my ram installed. I ran my last test with just the new stuff and again came up with some instability. Tonight I will test my old ram in the same slots and if that comes out squeaky clean then it seems likely the new ram is bad. How that would pertain/relate directly to ddo I am not sure. Too many variables at the moment.

After this long drawn out explanation I am wondering if anyone is running twin 7900s in SLI and getting a solid 60fps, smooth gameplay with max graphics. I will post more as I get things more stable. I am not one to throw in the towel and I am just getting started on figuring this out. Any ideas or results from other setups/configurations relative to my own are welcome.

Preamus Shadowmist/Khyber

[Strakeln]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but I'm running two 8800GT's in SLI and loving it.

As I understand it, it's not the framerate that causes the user to notice clippy-ness... it's a change in the framerate (so if you were at 30fps all the time, you'd have a better experience than if you were hopping back and forth between 30 and 60 all the time). While not a solution to your problem, perhaps manually limiting the framerate would help ease the issue until you can find the root cause?

[jwhyrock]

I agree and I have always set the rate at 60fps, although it sounds like you might be suggesting I set it at a lower rate? I was pretty high (not that kind of high hehe) but it did dip some of the time and kind of what sparked my whole upgrade deal. It is noticeable when the fps changes and that is very likely what it is as you suggested.

Aside from your cards are you running with max settings and solid 60fps? Or if not how are you set up? Also what monitor are you using as that is helpful as well. I am using a new Samsung widescreen 226BW (I think) and it's 22 inc. So my resolution is 1680x1050. Fantastic monitor regardless of bad reviews based on different panel types. Trick is in the calibration.

[jwhyrock]

Well after fooling with settings a bit more and reinstalling things are a bit more tolerable, but after talking to friends with worse set ups/better set ups it seems pretty universal that everyone has frame rates well beyond 60 as did I on XP, but I also use every single setting on max. I was able to do that on XP and just take a bit of performance hit which caused that minor fluctuation I mentioned. Now I do see a more fluid feel to it which may be the memory, but the frame rates aren't great. They're ok like I say, but do dip below 60 in busy situations around 40-60. With a different set up wouldn't be bad, but there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to handle the settings and get the stable 60fps at the very least. Frustrating as hell. Seems to be a DDO issue well that and Vista. Quirky + Quirky does not equal Normal.

I appreciate you posting about the 2x 8800s. I am wondering if I am the only old school n00b running a pair of 7900s. Still good cards and in DDO no dx10 yet. At this point though I'm itching for an video card upgrade, but can't afford it. Any further suggestions, insight or set up descriptions are welcome.

[Strakeln]

Lost this thread for a couple days, didn't notice your responses til now.

First off, you're not the only "old school n00b" - I just purchased this rig a few months ago, up until then I'd been riding on a 7 year old rig with 64MB of video memory

As far as my settings, I have almost everything cranked out except anti-aliasing, which I have disabled. I run on a huge monitor (30", 2560x1600), and even the twin 8800GT's sputter a bit trying to apply AA to over 4 million pixels.

As far as the frame rate: I peak at around 67, and typically hover around 50-60. Some odd things in the game make it drop significantly... an example is looking at the bar in the Ever Full Flagon (no idea why... that little flame in the oven???? Other flames don't make the frame rate drop like that).

A while ago, I posted a thread asking why I couldn't get the insane frame rates that I hear people mention on the forums. One promising suggestion was to disable Vsync (an option in the advanced graphics section - in game: ctrl-o). It didn't do anything for me, even seemed to somewhat degrade performance.

[jwhyrock]

Well I am having significant all around performance issues with regard to how "everything" runs in vista not just DDO (and my other games suffer too). Installs, load times, even stability to an extent. all drivers are current etc. I haven't tried doing the settings like you have. that might help, but at this point due to all the extenuating factors i'm a bit perturbed. i am going to have someone else check my ram on their machine and take a look at how we can get it running the way it should be. I am going to try to dual boot with xp 64 since it's pretty widely accepted that xp runs faster than vista and beyond the obvious memory thing. If it were just memory it would be a non-issue. even after vista sucks up 30% memory I still have significantly more than I used to. I should have at least one month free on DDO thanks to a referral but the option isn't "working" in my account. an accident i'm sure. my subscription ends in about a week or two and I cancelled. if they can't give me the free month they promised they can kiss me goodbye. I emailed them about it. it's on them at this point. i'm not interested in playing anything unless i get my system stabilized. i've seen vista run fine on machines with only 2gb ram and a slower cpu. like i said my older vid cards in sli really performed, in fact more so in many cases with a newer single card. Not as fast as your twin 8800s obviously, but i was running near peak performance with anti-aliasing in game to max. not sure if that was some kind of fluke but it ran. we'll see. thank you again for your input. as usual keep me posted if you don't mind on your thoughts/experiences.

And anyone else with experience on this issue or thoughts post away. I'm frustrated and doing what i can.

[jwhyrock]

Ok I've been busy. I dumped Vista 64 since it just sucked for me, and I know there are people who have had nothing but blue skies and rainbows with it, but I got crapped on with sleet storm and grease and I had no FOM.

My initial concern was utilizing my 6gb RAM which is why I made the switch from XP in the first place. I really thought the game should be running faster with the max settings ie 60fps flat no fluctuation (aside from server lag, ping whatever).

I installed XP 64 and surprisingly for all the problems I have heard people having it came together pretty nicely. That brings me to the gameplay. I think I seem to be in the same boat as I was with Vista with gameplay. I seem to be running slower with the same settings as under standard XP. Unless I am confused and don't remember correctly, but I don't think so. Same setup with my twin 7900 GT KOs.

I mentioned this in another thread, but if you say you are doing 100% fine with whatever OS you're using, please indicate what settings you are using in game and also what settings you are using under Nvidia Control Panel or whatever applicable control panel you are using.

Suggestions are welcome. I am putting a lot of time into this and I just don't seem to be having success. I suppose it could be some kind of hardware problem, but it just doesn't appear to be.