Second Life and nVidia SLI
I didn't see much info on this from my own Googling, so as a public service I want to post some information about Second Life and SLI.
With the drivers that are current as of this post date, there is no SLI profile for Second Life. That means even if you have an SLI system, Second Life will run in single CPU mode. That means one of your graphics cards sits unused while you play Second Life.
My gaming rig has dual 7900 GTX cards. I can't stand the thought of a $600 graphics card sitting unused, so I decided to test the various SLI rendering modes myself. Your mileage may vary, but I hope this gives you a jumping point in setting up a profile for Second Life on your SLI system.
First, it may be handy to read nVidia's guide on creating an SLI profile. You'll notice there are basically 4 SLI options: Single-GPU (SLI off, in essence), Split Frame, Alternate Frame 1 and Alternate Frame 2. Split Frame produced bizarre rendering problems for me and Alternate Frame 1 lowered the framerate and causes severe flicker of all 2D interface elements. That left me very concerned as to the possible success of Alternate Frame 2.
Luckily, AFR2 does the trick. There's no rendering artifacts or flicker. I've always believed Second Life was very CPU bound so I didn't expect great framerate boosts from SLI, but my max framerate has doubled, and my average and minimum framerates have nearly doubled. That means I can walk onto a busy sim, with all the eye-candy on at 1600x1200 and still stay at a steady 30 frames per second.
I love SLI.
With the drivers that are current as of this post date, there is no SLI profile for Second Life. That means even if you have an SLI system, Second Life will run in single CPU mode. That means one of your graphics cards sits unused while you play Second Life.
My gaming rig has dual 7900 GTX cards. I can't stand the thought of a $600 graphics card sitting unused, so I decided to test the various SLI rendering modes myself. Your mileage may vary, but I hope this gives you a jumping point in setting up a profile for Second Life on your SLI system.
First, it may be handy to read nVidia's guide on creating an SLI profile. You'll notice there are basically 4 SLI options: Single-GPU (SLI off, in essence), Split Frame, Alternate Frame 1 and Alternate Frame 2. Split Frame produced bizarre rendering problems for me and Alternate Frame 1 lowered the framerate and causes severe flicker of all 2D interface elements. That left me very concerned as to the possible success of Alternate Frame 2.
Luckily, AFR2 does the trick. There's no rendering artifacts or flicker. I've always believed Second Life was very CPU bound so I didn't expect great framerate boosts from SLI, but my max framerate has doubled, and my average and minimum framerates have nearly doubled. That means I can walk onto a busy sim, with all the eye-candy on at 1600x1200 and still stay at a steady 30 frames per second.
I love SLI.
posted by Mike McHargue @ 10:14:00 AM
4 Comments:
At 11:10 AM ,
Anonymous said...
Hi Mike -- I can't thank you enough for posting your experience using SLI with SecondLife. It was a huge help for me. Thanks! :)
Alleycat
At 10:16 AM ,
Matt Heyse said...
Thanks Mike,
I also found NOTHING on second life graphics performance on the net (other than limiting it).
So it you say that SLI AF2 nets you roughly 2x performance. If so, then SL is, in terms of SLI-ness, a lot like Oblivion, which DOES have a lot of posted info/stats.
THG lists your card in SLI mode at your resolution (no AA) at 22.9 FPS.
As part of a university SL project I need to build a machine for a Prof to run SL but as I don't yet play it myself, I have no Idea what to use, and Linden Research's posted Min/Recommended specs are laugh able.
I would like to run SL at the profs full resolution (1920x1200) at roughly her Refresh rate 60hz. So going on your experience, and THG's stats, I would need the Equiv of 45.8FPs in Oblivion. At you resolution 1600x1200 not even the mighty 8800 Ultra can pull that off by itself. So SLI is a must.
At your resolution (OB@45.8FPs ~= SL@60FPs) I guess were looking at twin 8800 GTS or twin HD2900-XT
To get that up to Her Res we need to step up to the now Second-Best card available, twin 8800 GTX
But thats really expensive @ $254 a card (BFG OC 786MB).
Like you, I have read so many places about SL being CPU bound. As you didn't seem to have that problem, can you post your CPU, FSB, and Ram(size)
At 1:17 AM ,
SL: Beelzebub Demontrond said...
this topic is outdated a bit .. at least the responses .. so I thank you for suggesting I can get SLI .. now as for more practical cards to do this with .. the 8800GTS 512 was just released this week .. 359.99 two of these will crush the 8800 GTX . I have the 8800 GTS 320 and am getting roughly 15 fps in crowded sims full settings 1900X1200 .. same sim further out from people jumps to 40 and I have seen as high as 55. Now the new cards .. crush the 320... annd beat GTX in several exersises. SLI those annd SL will be golden. I will have one tomorrow and another in a week or so. will update frame rates once they are running in SLI
At 2:19 PM ,
Eidur said...
This post may be outdated but atm it's the *only* reliable resource about running a SL client in SLI mode.
So here's my contribution:
I am running the Windlight client which stresses graphics pretty much. Today, following this post I enabled (forced) SLI AF2 with my series 8800 cards. Everything's running much better and smoother even at "ultra" settings. I will make some tries and then post FPS results for "high" and "ultra" settings on this post and here
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