Do you usually start windows with SLI mode on?

I'm especially asking those with xp and dual 7950 gtx

or do you only enable sli mode when you want to game (and then disable it the rest of the time)?

 

I'm pretty sure you'll save some battery life by keeping it off when you don't need it.

 

This might be true, but I strongly doubt most users run SLI laptops at full-performance settings without AC-power.

 

turning off sli does not turn off the actually card. it is still runnig as usual and eating up power just the same. the difference is that it is in idle mode 100% of the time.

 

The only time it makes sense to have SLi enabled is when gaiming or doing some other graphics intensive task that requires lots of rendering. If you are simply running a desktop application then there is no reason for SLI since there is no benefit received from having it enabled. Therefore, there is no need to keep it on all of the time or to boot up with it enabled.

 

When you unplug the battery you only use 1 7950GTX automatically I'm pretty sure so enabling / disabling SLi is pointless in that case. I'm not 100% sure but on my M9750 the battery life seems the same with it on and off.

 

unless you are having issues with sli enabled, then disabling it is pointless as it will only be active under 3d applications which are in it's management profiles. you will not get more battery life with it disabled because as i said before the card is still getting power to it. just check it's temperatures with gpu-z and you will see it is still idle'ing away.

you must physically take out the card to get better battery life.

 

@Argh - How much do you think the battery life will increase if you remove it?

 

don't know as i never tried it, although i did remove one gpu before. i noticed overal system temps were much cooler and the system was quieter in general.

i would guess 15-20 minutes more battery life.

 

I see no reason to run SLI unless there is a significant improvement in game performance by doing so. Some games don't benefit from SLI, others do. My reasoning for this is that the second video card shares the same heat pipe and fan as the CPU so that the combination of heat from both components simply raises the overall system temperature that much more during gaming than when running with a single card. It is simple enough to turn the SLI mode on when needed anyway.

 

loggie you do not seem to know what you are talking about. i guess you do not have an sli system?

turning sli off and on requires a system reboot so it is not convenient to do this. just keep sli enabeld and it will only go active when an application is launched in full screen mode. that application must be in the profile of the sli driver, like a game, crysis.exe for example. sli will not activate when the application is run in window mode, it must be in full screen mode.

manually disabling sli (called single gpu mode) is not necessary unless you are experiencing some problems in sli mode. sli will simply auto-activate once it detects an application being launched otherwise it will simply keep the 2nd card idle, in general.

 

Umm I don't have to reboot when I turn SLi on and off.

 

yeah i didn't require a reboot when i had the m9750 & alienware drivers as well. depends on driver's. sager's drivers require it so far.

 

thanks for all your help guys. I only really need to know about SLI with the m9750 which is what Stone and Loggie have so their replies seam the most relevant. Arghh, I think you have a different system, thus accounting for the discrepancy in the above posts, because I don't have to reboot to enable sli either.

I'm not really concerned with the battery life. I was just wondering if it would be worth running the system most of the time in non-sli mode and then simply engaging sli when needed. This may be a better option than running the sysyem in sli mode all the time because it would reduce the likelyhood of sli problems on boot or at any other time.

Do you think the system is more stable in non-sli vs sli mode when performing routine tasks. It looks to me as if both gpus render the noirmal desktop if sli is engaged, judging by the sequence of events immediately following the enabling of sli mode. Also video playback of 1080p is noticably smoother after sli is enabled, suggesting sli does offer performance benefits outside of set game profiles. what do you think?

 

Let me be clear. I was not referring to SLI having any extra drain or heat in most desktop applications. In my experience the second graphics card kicks in when gaming full screen as was stated. It is just as easy for me to switch in and out of Sli using NVidia control panel as it is to go in and set profiles for individual games. I prefer to run most of my games without SLi since I don't see any significant improvement in frame rates with SLi enabled and I don't generate the extra heat while gaming (I don't care about battery drain).
There may be some games that benefit from SLi and then again it is a simple matter to simply switch it on for those games. It is not necessary to reboot the OS to enable/disable SLI on a m9750.