SH4 and SLI?

[panzer 49th]

Does SH4 support SLI? I am going to get a new pc and am trying to decide between 1 or 2 video cards and was wondering will SH4 utilize 2 video cards?

[Rockin Robbins]

I started out with a dual EVGA 7600GT SLI system that I thought was great. Then the consequences of an obscure Asain industrial espionage case started the electrolytic caps exploding in one of the two cards. I unplugged it, shutting off SLI and prepared to suffer through non-SLI doldrums.

Then I noticed that my frame rates were very little different! While I was waiting for the RMA on my first card I heard a sound from my case like somebody snapped a whip on steroids right beside my ear. Yup, the other card. So now I'm in the middle of the RMA process for card #2. I've been Rubini's nHancer settings for the one card I have and have frame rates up to 38 on bridge or external camera looking at the sub, higher than I had with SLI.

My guess is that Silent Hunter 4 treats SLI just like Crossfire and just doesn't play ball, but with only one card right now I can't research that. And with nHancer I can turn on SLI support no matter what the game says. So I'm curious what the result will be. I'll be asking Rubini lots of questions when the time comes.

In the meantime, I'd recommend getting one good card vs two second tier cards in SLI. Although SLI has saved my cookies by always keeping me in business while waiting for RMA on the card that was bad, it's very expensive insurance. The 7600's can be bought for under $90 now, so they're not terrible. But soon the 8800GT will sell for not much more than $200 and give more than double the performance of two 7600's in the best of circumstances. Even at $250, I don't think I could justify SLI with lesser cards. You could always SLI that one later provided your motherboard supports it and if we can demonstrate that SH4 will use it.

[Fincuan]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

My guess is that Silent Hunter 4 treats SLI just like Crossfire and just doesn't play ball, but with only one card right now I can't research that.

I don't know about SLI, but my observations definitely support you on the Crossfire part. No noticeable effect even after trying all kinds of tricks and tweaks. Something Crossfire users could try, that works at least with Armed Assault, is renaming sh4.exe to fear.exe and thus forcing Crossfire to be used. Also make sure that Catalyst AI is set to at least "Standard". It's not a clean way and can result in weird gfx glitches sometimes, but almost doubles my FPS in Arma. NVidia users can naturally get the same effect with nHancer.

Running two Radeon X1950 Pros

[panzer 49th]

well actually i was planning on getting 2 x 8800 GT but if one will work that will bring the price down.

[jdkbph]

And now for something completely different....

Started out with an E6600 o/c'ed to 3.3ghz and a single 8800gts @ 620/1000 running the game at 1600x1050 with all the bells and whistles turned up and LOD turned all the way down (ie, most demanding settings imaginable).

Was getting 50 to 65 fps on the bridge depending on sea state, and maybe 5 fps less across the board using the < > views and circling around the sub on the surface.

SLI'ed in a second 8800gts - REDUCED the clocks back to stock (576/850) - and now, with identical conditions (I was loading and reloading the same save game to do this test), I'm getting 90 - 110 fps on the bridge and about 5 fps less using the < > views to circle around the sub on the surface.

You tell me if it's worth it!

Silent Hunter IV: Customized Profile (nHancer)

AA: 4x (set globally, because of the porked drivers)
AF: 8x
VSync: Off
SLI: AFR [0x02000001]
MipMap:Tri

Note the [0x02000001]... that's the #25 compatibility flag - makes all the difference for me.

Also, note the CPU speed and the resolution. If the CPU is causing a significant bottleneck, SLI does practically nothing... nor does it do much at lower resolutions (eg 1024x or 1280x).

JD

[M. Sarsfield]

I have a 7600 GT from EVGA. I hope it doesn't fry. It's behaved itself for 4 months, so far. I was wondering if a second one would make a difference, since I have an SLI board. Rockin Robbins, let me know what you find out.

Right now I get 30 fps if not a whole lot is going on in the 3D views. If there is heavy weather/rough seas, sometimes the huge waves will temporarily drop her to 20 fps.

I'm running a dual 3.0 GHz AMD processor (Athlon 64 X2 6000+) and 2 GB of RAM. So, I doubt that my board and CPU are causing the bottle neck. I have the video card juiced up a little from the optimizer running for 20 minutes and I have most of the recommended graphics settings for the game, except for AA Transparency. It's set at Supersampling, because the nVidia control panel freezes up when I switch it to Multisampling.

[capt_frank]

Originally Posted by jdkbph

Note the [0x02000001]... that's the #25 compatibility flag - makes all the difference for me.

I'm running two 7900GS's in SLI and I too use AFR with the #25 flag. I'm getting great frames (IMHO) on my system.

I also made some improvements, like upgrading Nhancer from 2.2.2 to 2.3.2 and utilized some of Rubini's ideas...See Here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128517. Although I didn't see a significant frame rate increase, I didn't lose frames either. Upgrading to the new Nhancer program was the largest "push" for me.

And I'm saving my lunch money for two of those 8800 GTX 768mb beasts...