NVidia SLI Tricks

Question

I am optimizing the DirectX graphics application to take advantage of nVidia SLI technology. I am currently studying some of the techniques mentioned on their Best Practices webpage, but wanted to know what advice or experience you have with this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is not an answer to your question, rather a comment on the SLI.

I understand that SLI is really a cost-effective tool for gaining performance when you buy two cards at once, which few actually do. Many people buy a motherboard and an SLI card, thinking that this will give them a better upgrade path on the road, but the reality is that by the time you get to this point it will be cheaper to buy a new, faster card than it should duplicate that which you already have to get SLI.

Just a thought before pouring too much energy into it. If you have a requirement to support SLI, then this is what you need to do. But personally, I would prefer that the optimization be aimed at implementation without SLI.

Answer 2

The only thing SLI can do, as two non-SLIed graphics can't do, is Nvidia Surround.

In some games, this allows you to play the game at 1080x (3x1920). Thus, you can play the game on three monitors, as if it were one.

The downside that I found for SLI is

A) It limits the number of monitors that you can run at a time. Example: I have two geforce 560 gtx ti. If you are not using SLI, I can run 4 independent monitors. With SLI, I can only use 2 or 3 monitors in Surround.

B) When you start 3 monitors in Surround, it treats them as one large monitor, if you use the Window Dock left and right, the window will occupy 1.5 monitors. This is not only annoying, but also makes this feature almost useless.

Right now, what I'm doing is turning on SLI when I am about to start my game, and when I am not playing, I have set the value "Activate all displays" in the Nvidia control panel. Although you can't switch back and forth with applications like Chrome open. Therefore, before starting the game, I must close everything ... Work for a better solution.