FPS drop and low GPU usage (sli)

[BKPiazza]

Hey guys...running 2 680s sli and monitoring using afterburner. My fps is all over the place from 120 to 60 to 28 and it doesn't even seem to be related to whats happening onscreen. I also notice these dips coincide with big dips in gpu usage....often just when running through the wilds.

Anyone else getting dips like this? Any solutions or ideas?

Thanks!

[PsychicKoala]

Probably SLI related, try turning it off.

[Aiyza]

Crossfire issue with me =/ Same exact thing happening. When I turn crossfire off though, my fps is 15-25...=/

[TessaJalloh]

this is a known issue, at the moment the game cannot utilise crossfire/SLI. you'll have to disable one of your GFX cards.

[Bensmack]

Like others have said here, the game is not utilizing xfire/SLI properly. I have 2x680's and have the same exact problem when running SLI. Nvidia's last two beta drivers technically enable sli support for the game but it's certainly not optimized, far from it. I hope ati and nvidia get on the ball with some optimized drivers soon...running maxed at 1440p can be a load for a single gpu setup.

[SkyyMan]

i have two 680 in sli mode and enabled through nvidia control panel and this game is running well with SLI. could be better but i know that SE is still working on dual GPUs.

to note it only drops to about 33 frames when it gets crowded in city and towns.

[Edeien]

i am using 2x 770´s and i have the same issue, but the fps does not drop, but the game slows down and then speeds up like normal, very annoying. also, its not optimal for me to play with only one gpu using 3 screens with 5040x1050 resolution, please fix this

[jimm0thy]

I'm running 2x 7770ghz in crossfire with the latest beta drivers and crossfire has been working since beta phase 3.
I don't really see any explainable dips in fps and pretty normal gpu usage, also using afterburner to monitor usage / fps.
According to the official site for the latest benchmark tool SLI is supported with the 320.49 and above drivers, while officially crossfire is still not supported.

[flikQ]

After doing a few tests on my system with and without SLi, running 2 770's that SLi is not currently supported (or at least isn't running) in the actual released client. It is however supported and running well in the Character Benchmark.

Test Results:

System:
Haswell 4770k 3.5GHZ OCed to 4.6ghz, water cooled at 20-30 degrees C
16gb Corsair Vengence Memory at 1886MHZ
Game installed on 250gb Samsung SSD
2 x Palit 770 GTX GPU's running 326.80 drivers.
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Main Client (FPS is average) and running at 1440p Max Settings
1 GPU Installed: 78 FPS & 45 FPS during busy FATE's
2 GPU Installed, SLi Disabled: 79 FPS & 43 FPS during busy FATE's
2 GPU Installed, SLi Enabled: 76 FPS & 47 FPS during busy FATE's (both GPU's only displaying 48-58% usage each suggesting SLi isn't working)

Conclusion: All pretty much the same. The difference is normal and suggests that the same amount of GPU power is being used by the game.

Character Benchmark (run at 1080p Max Settings)
1 GPU Installed: 12022
2 GPU Installed, SLi Disabled: 12097
2 GPU Installed, SLi Enabled: 18912

Conclusion: SLi is indeed supported by the benchmark with 80-100% GPU usage when SLi is enabled.

I hope this helps answer the question at least with SLi on the 7 series GPU's, obviously I cannot draw any conclusions in relation to Crossfire.

[Elcien]

Crossfire performance is pretty much exactly how you describe for Sli, although I have personally found that the frame rate drops are more severe than a single card by around 5fps. For example, at busy Atherytes it drops to around 33 fps for me on a single card (Radeon HD 7870 1100hz edition running maximum settings at 1080p), but floats around 27-28 with crossfire enabled. When the fps is high, its very high, however like you I rarely see both cards running at more than 60% utilisation.

I have also experienced behaviour similar to a 'memory leak' with crossfire enabled - the performance gets worse over time until the game is restarted. This may be the game not correctly recognising the ram as the benchmark shows me as having 4gb, yet with how crossfire works only the total ram of 1 card (2gb) should actually be considered.

Right now it just appears to be poor driver optimisation at fault as fps does not appear to be directly related to what is going on on-screen. Additionally, I have found that changing display resolution has no bearing on the framerate which is odd - almost bottleneck behaviour, but running an i5 ivy o/c at 4.4ghz that's very unlikely.

Fingers crossed we see improvements from both Nvidia and Ati over the next few weeks - as Square Enix have been discussing patching in dx11 and 4x resolutions, they are going to need good drivers as there isn't a card on the market that wouldn't weep under the strain.