M9750 SLI - PM Me if you see improvements into your Games...

I've been very busy at work lately and discovered I don't play games on my laptop as much as I originally believed I would. As such, I've been questioning my purchase as a 'poor fit' for me and I'm trying to justify this purchase by playing more games on it. However, I've been having one hell of a time trying to get games working with SLI where I get some kind of noticeable improvement. I'm not talking about 3dMark06 or anything like that. No matter what I do or what drivers I try and use, I get NO benefit having SLI. Now to clear things up for people.. I have done the following:

Drivers: 174.74 and 175.63
OS: Windows XP Professional w/SP3
Ensured powermiser was disabled
Checked temperatures religiously - Both with nTune and RivaTuner - No Problems
Use Notebook Hardware Control (Check CPU temps) - No Problems
Checked for underclocking - No problems unless I run FurMark
V-Sync off

I've cycled through the SLI settings of Splilt Frame Rendering, AFR 1 and AFR 2 but I haven't noticed and performance boosts with SFR being the worst performer. I sometimes get BETTER framerate disabling SLI altogether. I'm not getting any kind of blinking or noticable artifacts of any kind. I'm simply lacking in performance. I've also checked temperatures with SLI on and off and have noticed the temperatures of both cards go up while using SLI as opposed to only 1 card getting hot while running in non-SLI.

Games I'm having trouble with that I'm hoping some of you have tried and got SLI working properly:

Bioshock
C&C3
Unreal Tournament 3
Assassin's Creed
Call of Duty 4
The Witcher
Mass Effect

Aside from C&C and The Witcher, non of the above games play at 1920x1200 resolution and can maintiain at least 30fps in a heavy/intensive area.

Technically, I should be able to run all these games at close to Max Settings at 1920x1200. I've searched through these forums over and over and over and have even posted questions, but I've gotten very few solid answers so far.

If your system is running these games beautifully, please quantify it by stating the resolution you play the game in, actual frame rates (average in a busy/intensive area), drivers, OS, and what settings needed to be disabled to get your game running 'smoothly'.

If, like me, you're having issues with SLI, please chime in as I feel like I'm the only one not experiencing any benifits with SLI.

Thanks in advance,
Grey

 

I only currently play two of the games you listed and they are UT3 and Assassin's Creed. I play both at 1920x1200. I have UT3 running on 4/5 as far as settings and I never drop below 40 fps. When I go to 5/5 I start to see drops below 30 fps so I just keep it at 4/5 and I really don't see much visual difference. Assassin's Creed I run settings all maxed and I have yet to dip below 35 fps in any part of the game.

I am running:

WinXP Pro SP3
174.74 Drivers all nvidia default settings
Powermizer disabled

I will reload Bioshock and COD4 and see where I have to run those to get playable fps.

 

do u have the latest drivers? u might want to play around with the settings till something works? FYI sli is still in its early stages, and ur not the only one having problems with it.

 

When I did run UT3 and CoD4 I was getting jumpy framerates in UT3 anywhere from like 15-70 and in CoD4 I was getting 22 FPS with SLI on max settings with no AA. This is at 1440x900 res btw. With the performance some people are getting out of single cards I'm assuming there is something wrong with one or both my video cards as I do not know what else it could be. Its being shipped back to the repair facility as we speak, and hopefully they will be able to figure out what the problem is so I can run these games like everyone else. If you are like me Grey, then all the drivers you downloaded or will download, will not make any difference.

 

@Agatius - You did not try any other drivers than the Alienware Beta drivers, which I still think could have been your issue.

@Grey - I have no idea why your laptop is acting like that. I would test UT3 for you but exams are in 2 days and I really do not have the time at all to do anything other than post this

 

I tried 4 other drivers besides the AW ones, but none of the 170+ XP SP3 drivers.

 

@Agatius - That could have been your problem then. Even on vista I experienced crappy performance with everything but the 174 + drivers.

 

Thanks for the replies thus far guys. I'll keep trying and maybe chart things out a little bit more clearly. I just hope I can solve this issue. If not.. I may have to RMA out the laptop which I don't want to do =(

I might have to purchase an interim laptop since I CAN"T be without one at this point in time.

 

1) download Nhancer since it improves performance in SLI
2) get the XG mobile 175.63 driver from http://tweakforce.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1851 since i can confirm it did wonders for me. , also check my screens i posted there for an idea about what kind of performance i'm getting with the driver

 

I have yet to get any noticeable performance improvement with SLI on my m9750. The only game in your list I have tried with and without SLI was BioShock and like you I had no improvement with SLI enabled. I know both of my gfx cards are operating normally and I get the same results regardless of the drivers I have used. Running Vists by the way.

The only thing that seems to benefit from SLI is my 3dMark score. I can only conclude that the games I am running are not written to take full advantage of SLI.

 

Loggie check my link will ya?

 

Brainer - I'm using the 175.63 drivers at the moment but I downloaded them from laptopvideo2go. I'm not sure what the difference would be other than the .inf... perhaps xfast made a more optimized .inf. No clue. As for nHancer. All I've noticed from nHancer is that it would allow me to better tweak my game profiles but they don't actually do anything by default (there's no modified file that gives better SLI settings than what Nvidia already provides). I hope someone can enlighten me on this if I'm mistaken.

I'll give it a shot anyways and see what's up.

I checked your link. Other than the screen shot which tells me your frame rate and resolution, could you please add game settings to it so I can do my best to duplicate your results?

Thanks,
Grey

 

XG has modded drivers. Optimized for performance, i'm a Beta tester there and i made sure they do best with SLI 7950GTX , also all settings in all the games are on maximum settings, COD4 with 4xaa

 

I've just downloaded them and will do some testing soon. I assume I download the 175.63 mobile drivers right?

 

Brainer - Regarding Call of Duty 4. Do you play it multiplayer when at 60fps or is that single player? Was there any kind of console tweaking you did or in nHancer?

 

@Grey - You download the 175.63 drivers, that is correct. The point of the drivers is to already be tweaked for the games so that you don't have to do it

 

what i did is install the XG 175.63 movile drivers, then installed nhancer and its done, also that screen is multiplayer not single

 

Okay.. I Need a sanity check for CoD 4 and I'm wondering if any of you can help me out. Near the very beginning of the single player game after the semi training mission, I took a screenshot while I was on the helicopter on my way to the ship. What framerates do you guys get at this scene? Am I being too picky?

Settings Pic




I reinstalled UT3 and I DID see a noticeable difference of about 2x speed increase having SLI on vs SLI off so SLI IS working for this laptop.. but I still don't see any noticeable improvement in COD4. Instead, I normally disable Shadows and Specular Map to give me REALLY smooth framerates. IF this game is choppy.. even just a little bit, I get lost.. I dunno why, but I seem to lose my bearings and it's really annoying. If you really do get better framerates with the above settings, please let me know. This is practically at the beginning of the game.

 

One more set. One with the Above settings.



With Specular and Shadows off...


You guys getting the same thing or no?

 

Assassins Creed

Settings


SLI Off


SLI ON - Shows some improvement


While playing this game.. I do get warning from Notebook Hardware Control that my CPU is over 85C... Anyone else have this problem?

Slightly off topic.. anyone else annoyed by how long it takes to get out of the damn game when you want to quit? Selecting a Profile just to quit the game is an extra two button waste of time. lol

 

I do have to say that these drivers, nhancer or the combination of the two really ARE better than the 175.63 drivers I was using from laptopvideo2go. Even Mass Effect now uses SLI and has a good working profile. Previously, that game was BARELY playable for me and I had to set the resolution really low (1200x800) to get reasonable framerate of 20+ fps.

Now this game gives me 25-60 fps at 1400x900 with Ultra High textures, motion blur, and film grain on.

 

yup, i told many people about XG drivers but. they dont believe till they see

 

BTW, in your sig, you state that your RAM is running at 667 mhz. I just checked mine using CPU-Z and it's only running at 333mhz. I only have 1 DIMM installed at the moment, but will it go up to 667 after I re-install my second DIMM? Is there some kind of utility out there that can change the speed at which my memory is running at?

 

dual channel, 333x2= 667

 

I'm going to reinstall my second DIMM then. I just read somewhere that someone was having performance issues having 4GB of ram when only 2.5 (with SLI) is recognized.

BTW, I'm still waiting on someone to prove to me that they're getting better frame rates in CoD4. Same map, same settings, single player, etc. I just don't see a difference in performance SLI or not.

A screenshot of the same scene is all I'm looking for ><

 

Yes, but when using nHancer, it gives you more control over what you can tweak beyond the profile settings that nvidia provides. I'm not very good at tweaking either. I just want it to work ><

For every driver update nvidia comes out with, they also add additional SLI profiles for games that were not available in the previous driver, but sometimes they don't do a very good job creating the profile, hence the reason to use nHancer and tweak until your heart's content.

 

thats actually true, you cant wait for a new driver to get a new SLI profile, there comes the usage of Nhancer

 

Bump.

Still Looking for someone who can fire up Call of Duty 4 and snap a screenshot using the settings I listed AND as close to the same frame I picutured (Beginning of game on helicopter out to ship). 25 frames per second still equals 1 card in my eyes for this particular game.

 

If you want to send me a copy I would be happy to do it

 

Do you have a steam account? PM me.

 

You guys think those xg drivers will work well for 8700 gt SLi?

 

Try them and let us know! =P Pretty much any driver out is better than the vanilla drivers from Alienware. So far 175.63 has proven to be an excellent performer thus far.

 

you'de better try it you wont be sorry

 

Yea. I'm at around 179FPS on the CS:S Stress test vs. around 169 with the 175.75