SLI conflict!

[stasher]

MSFS2004 has a conflict with SLI using NVidia drivers.
Has anyone else experienced this conflict which causes the pc to crash.

[W2DR]

You can check with nVidea, but the last I heard FS2004 was not
compatible with SLI. Something to do with the frame buffering. I've never heard of anyone getting SLI to work with this sim.

Doug

[cascadesss]

That's good to know. I was just about ready to build a top-end SLI system.

[psolk]

I thought there was a guy Randy who built an SLI system for FS and had it working no issues. My understanding though is that at this time, FS takes no advantage of the SLI setup. Who knows, we all said the AMD 64 chips weren't going to have an effect either and we were wrong about that. It is very tough to say unless we can find someone who has done it but my understanding is that it can be done but offers no benefits to FS.
-Paul
New System:
AMD 4000+ San Diego
Asus A8NSLI-Premium
2 gigs Corsair XMS CL2
XFX 7800 GTX 550/1325
Dual Maxtor 120 gig in Raid-0 (adding two more for Raid 0+1)
Dual Samsung 997 DF Monitors
SB Audigy 2 ZS

Old System:
AMD64 3400+
Asus K8VSE Deluxe
2 Gigs Kin

[em41038]

Using SLI in my system and flying FS9 has given me problems. The problems specifically are the screen hangs up and all movement stops and no inputs from keyboard or mouse are accepted, the only way to correct this is to power down and reboot.

It seems that some of my attempts to fly a flight plan have been successful and some are not, I have not determined exactly what in the plan has caused this, i.e. aircraft, scenery or whatever.

I have found something peculiar that happens when I use the DirectX diagnostic tool. The tool is accessed by going to Start > Run, type dxdiag > click okay. The tool will load as a popup window (note: wait for the progress bar in the lower left corner of the window to complete. Click on the display tab, under Device, your Video card name, Manufacturer, Chip type, Dac type, total memory, current display mode and Monitor make and model type is displayed. On the left center is the driver information.

The lower half of the widow displays the DirectX Features and allows the DirectDraw Acceleration and the Direct3D Acceleration to be tested.

With SLI multi-GPU enabled and the Antialiasing settings value in the video card’s Performance & Quality setting set at SLI16x, the displayed cube when testing Direct 3D Acceleration spins at a very high rate (RPM) to the point of not being able to read or distinguish anything on the cube in all three testing modes, i.e. Direct3D 7, 8 and 9 interfaces.

I have since disabled the SLI multi-GPU function and now I am able to fly without problems.

I would appreciate anyone’s experience and/or suggestions with the video card’s Performance & Quality settings either basic or advanced that would improve the overall quality and performance characteristics of FS9 (FS 2004).

Windows XP-SP2 Professional
ASUS “A8N-SLI Deluxe” NVIDIA nForce Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 2.8 GHz 1MB Cache 64 Bit Processor
Dual nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Video Cards
4GB PC3200 DDR RAM
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1
Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM 8MB Cache HD

Thanks

Ed

[psolk]

Hey Ed,
Quick Question for you...
Can you run two cards in non-sli as seperate cards? Obviously running dual monitors off the single 7800 hits the fps so I was wondering if you could run two cards and run seperate windows on each card if you disabled SLI? Sorry I can't help you but I am just trying to learn about SLI now...
Thanks in advance,
-Paul
New System:
AMD 4000+ San Diego
Asus A8NSLI-Premium
2 gigs Corsair XMS CL2
XFX 7800 GTX 550/1325
Dual Maxtor 120 gig in Raid-0 (adding two more for Raid 0+1)
Dual Samsung 997 DF Monitors
SB Audigy 2 ZS

Old System:
AMD64 3400+
Asus K8VSE Deluxe
2 Gigs Kin

[navav2004]

Hey Ed...Thank you for the Info...Wow what a REALLY NICE SYSTEM you have!! I'm just now building this 4000+ set-up myself...I've got most of it the way I want it...Still have Ram and a Liquid Cooling system to go...I'm copying psolk...he he...not really although it's turned out that way...

I had origionally thought I'd be building an SLI system...But since I'm only using this as an FS Rig...Now I'm thinking I will not do the SLI configuration...I really appreciate your comments...A couple of other comments I've heard along the way in other threads had me questioning weather or not to do SLI...I think this thread pretty much seals the deal...

I have another 3500+ system which I may get a second card for...I'm going to Explore the Tweeking/Overclocking bit with that one...I think I wanna go Liquid Cooling and SLI on that one...and have some fun trying to see if I can blow it up...he he...

Thanks again for the info!!

[djt]

I’ve been running FS2004 in SLI mode (using the FS9 profile in Nvidia’s 77.77 drivers) without any problems. So far from what I have seen you really have to crank up the resolution and AA and AF to see any real performance advantage of SLI in FS2004. I do like the 8xAA and 16xAA SLI option. I have been playing around with this in MSTS and it works very well, image quality is incredible.

Off that subject I was able to sell my Leadtek 7800GTX’s and replaced them with two EVGA e-GeForce 7800GTX KO’s clocked from the factory at 490MHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2494

These have to be the highest quality built cards I have owned to date. The heat sink design is very well done and they seem to run a lot cooler than the Leadtek cards.


Athlon64 FX-55/San Diego
Asus A8N SLI-Premium
Corsair TwinX 2048-3200C2
2x EVGA e-GeForce 7800GTX KO (SLI)
Audigy2 ZS Gamer Edition
2x WD 74Gb Raptor (RAID 0)
Plextor Premium
Plextor PX-716A
Enermax 600W/SLI
Silver Stone TJ03
Windows XP Pro/SP2

[cascadesss]

Well, I couldn't stand it any longer, so I ordered the following parts from Newegg....

Athlon64 FX-57/San Diego
Asus A8N SLI-Premium
Corsair TwinX 1024-3200C2
1 - XFS e-GeForce 7800GTX (OC)
Enermax 600W/SLI

I already have:

Windows XP Pro/SP2
2 - WD 74Gb Raptor (RAID 0)
Water-Cooling System

I'll run with the single 7800GTX for a while and may add the 2nd one later. Let's see how much faster this is than my old 4.1 GHz P4 system.

[navav2004]

SWEET...Your set...I can pretty much assure you will be amazed!! KEWL!!

[Wichita]

> You can check with nVidea, but the last I heard FS2004
>was not
>compatible with SLI. Something to do with the frame buffering.
>I've never heard of anyone getting SLI to work with this sim.
>
>Doug

Pretty easy to check on the Nvidia SLI site. MSCOF is NOT a SLI compatably sim,SLI won't do you a bit of good except for a lighter wallet and bragging rights.

My guess is this is one of the reasons MS decided to wait another year for a new FS release. Way,way to much going on in the tech/hardware scene. All of this is here now or soon to be:

SLI video cards with 16X and 18X AA
Dual core CPU's running at nearly 3 Gigs each
64 bit CPU's
64 bit OS

David