Technical Question: SH3 and SLI.

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

Greetings!

I played SH3 on my old 6800U, and everything worked perfectly, but after switching to a 7800GTX SLI System, the game is kinda sluggish. It's no big deal, but it looks like 30fps, maybe less in the harbour area, and reducing FSAA doesn't seem to affect that.

I created a SLI profile using nHancer and enabled AFR rendering, which works without crashes or anomalies. Still, the game doesn't get the big performance boost i expected.

Doom3: 1600x1200, 4x FSAA, TAA enabled, 16xAF = no prob!
HL2: 1280x1024, 8xS FSAA, TAA enabled, 16xAF = no prob!

Does anybody know compatibility bits that i should set with nHancer for SH3 to work properly in SLI mode? Should i use SFR?

System Specs / Config:
==
ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 Intel Edition SLI)
P4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz (the old one, Gallatin Core..)
1024MB DDR-II/733 2-2-2-6-8
2 x XFX GF7800GTX/OC
Antec True 550W (yes, it's sufficient)
WinXP SP2
FW 77.77
DX9.0c

Thanks! Maybe somebody has got some SH3 + SLI experience..

[tycho102]

Your processor.

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

Old processor: P4EE 3.2GHz/FSB800, S478, Gallatin Core
New processor: P4EE 3.46GHz/FSB1066, S775, Gallatin Core

I got almost the same processor in the new system, just a little bit more core clock and FSB... Shouldn't be the cause?

One more thing: Played 1.3 on the old system, but 1.4b on the new one.

[tycho102]

In this game, one processor cannot handle everything. You have way, way, way too much graphics power for that system. On top of that, Silent Hunter 3 isn't "multithreaded". It can't use more than one processor for it's game engine, so there is no way you can use those cards.

I'm saying your processor is slow. I have a 6800 Ultra, and a 2ghz AM64, and I'm getting the same framerates that you are (low 30's in port during the day). You'd see significant gains all the way up to a 4.2ghz processor. The physics, the graphics, and the sounds, as well as the (limited :rotfl: ) AI, just take too much computational power.

On the other hand, if you upgrade to a dual-core processor in the future, games like Half-Life 2 will really shine with those cards (HL2 is multithreaded).

[GrandAdmiralThrawn]

Half-Life 2 does already shine on those cards, and the 3.46GHz Gallatin EE is faster (in Games, not in Multimedia as i have to admit) than the 3.73GHz Prescott EE.

Hell, at LEAST it shouldn't be SLOWER than on the old system? (Which it is, unfortunately) ;)

Old System: 3.2GHz P4EE + Single AGP 6800U + DDR-I 2-2-2-5.
New System: 3.46GHz P4EE + 7800GTX PCI-E SLI + DDR-II 2-2-2-6.

The new System isn't on par. It's ridiculously fast in HL2 and D3 etc, but Silent Hunter III is slower than before... :doh: I guess it has something to do with a SLI bug.. No ideas? :(

[Duli]

Why did you even buy this new system???

[Tonyt]

Short answer: because he can. It must be nice to have that much extra $$$ every month.

If you haven't yet done so look into the latest drivers, 78.03 is official but there are others. Check 3dGuru.com. I think there was something about improved capability for making user-created profiles for SLI. I would doubt that SH3 ranks up there with Half-life2, FarCry, etc. At least as far as NVidia is concerned.

GL & GH