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How well does GW 2 work with SLI?
Aragoni
Member UncommonPosts: 384
A local hardware store is selling out everything they got at 50% the original price, meaning I'll start spending cash to prepare my computer for this awesome game. Now, I was thinking of buying another 560Ti and run them in SLI but I am unsure on how well GW 2 utilizes SLI (want to max the graphics). Anyone knows?
current specifications: Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (http://www.techspot.com/review/345-amd-phenom2-x6-1100t/)
Case: NZXT H2 Midi Tower (http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/classic_series/h2)
Graphics: ASUS GeForce GTX 650 1GB (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti_Direct_Cu_II/1.html)
Memory: www.onyougo.es/pqi-ddr3-1066-2gb-cl7-7-7-20_iph3w2918702.jpg (Weird Japanese memory that according to him cannot be purchased from around here) 8gb.
PSU: I don't remember the exact name but it has 600W
Edit: will play the game in 1920x1080
Comments
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I think as far as we know at the moment GW2 does not support SLI, and your single 560ti will be fine to run in it at max settings. If you were thinking of upgrading something I would look at an SSD if you dont already have one. There are load times when you go between zones that it will help with. Everything else you have looks great
Many videos that had people talking about poor frame rates were also saying they had ATI cards. Dont know if that was just a bad sample, but the few who were complaining were claiming they had ati. Could just be a driver issue.
the ATI cards "which I have a 6850 were not doing that well, versus nvidia cards people were getting 30+ fps and the game would run fine unless they were in WvW and there were a crapton of people on the screen. Anet is turning down the particle effects so it wont be as bad at launch and also the game isnt optimized yet so it will be alot smoother. We will see what changed on the first Beta Weekend
Unless you have either a very recent 990X or 990FX motherboard or a really old cheap junk motherboard with an Nvidia chipset, your motherboard does not support SLI. Even if you have an 890FX motherboard that supports CrossFire (and from a hardware perspective, supports SLI pretty well), Nvidia will artificially disable SLI through their video drivers, just to spite you for buying a nice motherboard with a modern AMD chipset rather than an ancient one with an Nvidia chipset.
If you don't like that, then don't buy Nvidia products. Incidentally, they've basically been forced to stop doing that on more recent motherboards, which is why the 990X and 990FX chipsets support SLI and 890FX doesn't, even though 890FX is the same thing as 990FX.
Yeah interesting in that, this was also the case with TOR and even AOC if I recall correctly. ATI bad choice for early MMO adopters?
Never owned an ATI myself, do they have a lack in driver updates, or a smaller list of optimized games?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For starters, ATI no longer exists. They got bought out by AMD sometime around 2006. AMD still used the ATI brand name for a while, but dropped that as well the generation before the current one. They still use the Radeon brand name, but now it's AMD Radeon.
As to the substance of the question, AMD releases monthly driver updates for their video cards, and their drivers are, on average, about as good as Nvidia's--assuming you keep them updated, which a lot of people don't. You can point to quite a few cases where AMD drivers didn't play nicely with a game in beta, but you can do the same for Nvidia drivers. The important thing is that both sides will fix the bugs that are found in their drivers--sometimes even before a game launches--which is notably not true of Intel.
This is unfortunately not entirely true. AMD is actually pretty terrible with driver updates and is just as likely to break games as they are to fix them.
There was this game that came out called RAGE. AMD gave ID Software the video driver the would bring out with the game and Id Software developed around it. When launch day came AMD put out a completely different video driver and screwed over Id Software.
Instead of fixing the bugs in their drivers they relesed a driver that basically only worked for RAGE.
Skyrim was working flawlessly in its Dx11 glory with most Radeon video cards. Then AMD put out an update that broke the game and made it almost unplayable.
This is still to be fixed.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
I have an sli rig and would like to know the answer to that as well! Didn't really see anything affirmative in any of the OPs answers. I have 2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460. It runs Skyrim awesomely but there aren't a hundred players trying to smash a door down either.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I am wondering the same. I don't have one now, but i do have a gtx 460 and have budgeted an upgrade to my system to get another card if GW2 supports iSLI. Would hate to go through the pains of upgrading the MB if it doesn't really matter (or doesnt matter al lthat much)
Thanks for the info on the sale, I wasn't aware of that at all, I don't really follow much info from the tech world heh. I just follow reviews for the best bang for the buck.
I've seen a lot of this type of complaint in regard to ATI (AMD cards), which is why I've never purchased one. I wasn't sure if it's typically user error (lack of updating) or shoddy products with a lack of support.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Well of course AMD is going to make changes to their drivers. Nvidia does that, too. I'm strongly skeptical that AMD has ever released a driver that only worked for RAGE. They might have done a custom code path for RAGE, as both AMD and Nvidia try to optimize things for particular game engines, but that won't break any other games.
As for Skyrim in DirectX 11, here's a web site testing exactly that:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu_geforce_gtx_680_video_card_review/6
62.8 frames per second at a 2560x1600 monitor resolution with 8x AA, FXAA, 16x AF, and all in-game settings on Ultra. That's as of the Catalyst 12.3 beta, and sure looks like it's working fine to me. Catalyst 12.3 is the latest drivers, unless you count the 12.4 beta.
From the tests there, Skyrim is more favorable to Nvidia than most games. But that's a long, long way from being unplayable on AMD cards.
Yes, there are serious problems with AMD drivers now and then. But the same is true of Nvidia. For example:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-196.75-drivers-over-heating,9802.html
Run the StarCraft 2 beta on Nvidia 196.75 drivers, end up with a dead video card. Oops. Recent AMD cards are immune to that sort of problem due to PowerTune, too.
Fanboys, FUD, and possibly viral marketers paid by Nvidia now and then. When you offer better performance for the same price tag, you talk about performance per dollar. When you offer better performance in a given power envelope, you talk about performance per watt. When you offer a better feature set, you talk about your unique features. And when you don't have any real advantages, you spread FUD about drivers.
Which is why Nvidia marketing has been reduced to that plus hoping they can convince someone to care about PhysX or CUDA for a while now. Nvidia has usually (but not always) been competitive at the high end in recent years, but only occasionally had anything at all under $200 worth considering for the past 2 1/2 years. That should change within a few months, though, as Kepler is a nice architecture, unlike the Fermi disaster. Now Nvidia just needs to get their new cards out and in stock.
I've personally used AMD/ATI cards continuously for the last 5+ years, and the only driver issues I've run into are a mouse cursor corruption bug in Champions Online (which has since been fixed) and the card not clocking down as far as reviews said at idle. Nvidia's Fermi cards have a much worse case of the latter than AMD's cards. And Nvidia drivers also had a cursor corruption bug in Champions Online, which I'd assume has since been fixed, but I don't know.
Still kinda wondering what this has to do with the OPs question. I was curious to the sli question also if you could shed some light here it would be greatly appreciated!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I have a variety of cards in systems in my house. Some just do perform better on different games. I can't understand fanboying computer hardware. AMD, Intel, Nivida, ATI, give me what works the best for a situation. My main computer has an NVIDIA because it was the better performing for the price at the time according to Tomshardware.
For the original poster, the answer is probably, "it doesn't matter if the game supports it, because your motherboard doesn't."
For you, whether or not the game supports SLI now, it probably will eventually. GW2 is a very heavily anticipated game, so it's the sort of game for which AMD and Nvidia will put a lot of work into making sure that their drivers work right.
That still leaves open the question of whether it matters. If you can max settings with one card, does it matter if you can use SLI or not?
Ive seen videos of people playing GW2 with 3 monitors, now my understanding of tech is not that high but im assuming that you need some kind of Sli support for it, specially since the video i saw said the specs of the comp included two gtx 480
It's an Nvidia game
Nvidia highlights the game
Games is built in with Nvidia 3D support and at conventions 3D is demostration with Nvidia set up
Obviously will be optimized for Nvidia cards and AMD but it shows NVidia guys have been to Seattle
Honestly, the only people that really know the answer to this question can not answer it. Sadly, you are just going to have to wait and see.
Nope. I never understood why people want to even bother with SLI/Crossfire when the two camps come out with a card 6-8 months later that either competes with the two or blows it out of the water, for a cheaper price. I have an HD6970 overclocked a bit and it runs everything I throw at it on max settings @1920x1200. Now, I COULD buy another one and run two, but the price:performance boost just doesn't justify the cost imo, not counting the issues that arise from running dual cards in certain games.
GW2 does not support any forms of dual card setup including SLI - you will have to disable one of your cards.
A single 560ti will NOT run GW2 at max settings especially during WVWVW - sorry you are wrong. (plenty of evidence)
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
have they said that they wont have support for it or is it just your best guess? Because if we can have sli support for korean mmos, I find it highly unlikely that nvidia wont bring out drivers and such. frankly more worried about them badly optimizing the game like blizzard did with wow and bioscum did with swtor.
All Radeon HD 5000 series and later cards can do at least three monitors in Eyefinity off of a single card if the card has the appropriate monitor ports on it. Nvidia only gained the ability to do that with the GeForce GTX 680, but presumably other Kepler cards will be able to do so, too.
GW2 Triple Monitor Support:
Nvidia Video Interview
Alienware Hummer GW2 Video Aug 2011 (set up is ATI Eyefinity)
PAX East 2011 GW2 Triple Monior Nvidia set up video
To have these in play in 3 monitor support for Nvidia there would of have to have been SLI inside at the time of the making of them.
Either way all the convention PC's are Nvidia, to have had the 3D profile support added already I would suspect the game to play better on Nvidia hardware itself.
Even the dev's agree below (doesn't seem like SLI won't be in)
In regards to this added aesthetic, Johanson said, "We think the 3D setup is a pretty awesome way to play Guild Wars 2." He added, "We have a lot of huge boss battles, these giant bosses, and when you get them on this 3D screen and they look like they're coming straight towards you, it is really fantastic. People absolutely go bananas over it in 3D."
In regards to recommending hardware to play Guild Wars 2, Johanson said, "We love all the stuff NVIDIA does. They make fantastic products. That's an area people should be looking at for the type of hardware they should be working with on their machine."
You might want to present that evidence to us.