SLI Compatibility

[Moonwalker]

Hello all,

I will make simple and fast here.

Is the game SLI compatible? If yes, how efficient is it?

Currently I'm owning a high-end PC configuration with a single EVGA nVidia Geforce GTX 780 Ti, thinking of fixing a twin!

Appreciate your feedback, please!

[Syx]

I play on dual GTX660s and while there is a minimal difference in fps in instances and sparsely populated areas, I see an improvement of about 6-12 fps in heavily populated areas when in SLI than when in single gpu mode. Now, with two 780 Ti cards, you will probably see no difference in FFXIV. The game is heavily CPU bound and is still only using the DX9 API. There *might* be a bump in fps with the switch to the DX11 API, but it will be negligible on such high-end graphics hardware. FFXIV should not be your reason for buying a second 780 Ti.

[Tsukki]

I'm in agrreement with Syx, I'm using Dual 680's and the performance is basically just the same as a single GPU solution.

[Jackel]

Hello all,

I will make simple and fast here.

Is the game SLI compatible? If yes, how efficient is it?

Currently I'm owning a high-end PC configuration with a single EVGA nVidia Geforce GTX 780 Ti, thinking of fixing a twin!

Appreciate your feedback, please!

Performance scaling will almost certainly be dependent on the resolution you're running at as well. I run a single 680 (2gb launch) and average 60-85 in all the areas where I need performance to matter. This is stable at 1920x1080. Adding a secondary 780Ti would see minimal gains at this resolution even on max settings but if you're running a higher resolution you'll almost certainly benefit from the extra power and added Vram.

[Syx]

Performance scaling will almost certainly be dependent on the resolution you're running at as well. I run a single 680 (2gb launch) and average 60-85 in all the areas where I need performance to matter. This is stable at 1920x1080. Adding a secondary 780Ti would see minimal gains at this resolution even on max settings but if you're running a higher resolution you'll almost certainly benefit from the extra power and added Vram.

Unfortunately, the VRAM for both cards isn't pooled like when extra RAM is added to mobo, the VRAM in an SLI configuration works in parallel. So the assets to be rendered are sent to the respective card, which then only utilizes the VRAM available on board to store data. The GPUs cannot access data stored in VRAM on a different physical card. It's a damn shame. The benefit is that less VRAM it utilized, which means more room in VRAM to store computational data for graphical effects like supersampling, ambient occlusion, tessellation and more buffered frames.

[Moonwalker]

Ok here is an official reply and clarification from nVidia:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer care.

This is Shoaib, assisting you with the query you have.

I understand from your email that you would like to know if FINAL FANTASY is compatible with NVIDIA SLI.

Thank you very much for your interest in our product line. Please click on the below link and find the SLI recommended games.

http://www.game-debate.com/news/?new...ported%20Games

Unfortunately FINAL FANTASY XIV is not compatible with the SLI as per the above link. I would suggest to check with the game developer if the game supports SLI.

SLI performance:

The amount of performance improvement will depend on the application and its ability to scale. Several of today's hottest games see a full 2x increase in performance when using SLI technology with two graphics cards. 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology enables up to 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU. In general, applications running at higher resolutions with higher image quality settings will benefit most.

I look forward for your reply to assist you better.

Regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care

[Jackel]

Unfortunately, the VRAM for both cards isn't pooled like when extra RAM is added to mobo, the VRAM in an SLI configuration works in parallel. So the assets to be rendered are sent to the respective card, which then only utilizes the VRAM available on board to store data. The GPUs cannot access data stored in VRAM on a different physical card. It's a damn shame. The benefit is that less VRAM it utilized, which means more room in VRAM to store computational data for graphical effects like supersampling, ambient occlusion, tessellation and more buffered frames.

Hmm, I apologize for giving the impression I was trying to make it sound like VRAM was a combined number - I re-read what I wrote and I'm not sure where the communication breakdown was though to be honest.

The point I was making was that my launch 680 (see 2 gig reference) exceeds expectations at a standard 1920x1080 resolution. The OP is most likely using a 3gig variant of the 780ti and thus unless they're playing at a resolution exceeding 1080 they probably won't see a performance increase specific to FFXIV. Other software titles may benefit or even when the DX11 client comes out with new potential features - but as it stands right now a single high end card within the last couple of years is more than enough to get by on max settings based on popular resolutions.


As to what "Shoaib" is referring to I'm not sure. My wife plays on my old i7-930 rig sporting 2x GTX 460 (1gig) cards and the client clearly takes advantage of the extra card. Even the original 1.x client when duped using the old crysis profile worked. The SLI scaling isn't 100% but it's enough to take her machine from a 34fps average to just a hair under 60.

[Syx]

Despite Nvidia's declaration that FFXIV does not utilize SLI, I can guarantee that both of my cards are utilized when the game is running. I use MSI Afterburner's OSD for the Logitech G15 keyboard. In fullscreen mode both GPUs and each core of my CPU have utilization stats streamed to my G15's LCD display and all resources show activity. The cards hover around 70-90% and the CPU is around 80% for core 0 and 40-50% for cores 1-3.

Unfortunately, SLI does not help with stuttering in largely populated areas. It's a bottleneck caused by the CPU. The only relief would be a hardware API like Mantle (or DX12) being leveraged by FFXIV's Crystal Tools graphics engine to push draw calls and HUGE batches straight to the GPU instead of through the CPU.