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Does Eve Online support SLI graphics card?
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Mercur Fighter
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2015-07-21 01:30:38 UTC  |  Edited by: Mercur Fighter
I have a Geforce GTX 970, and I am thinking about installing another one in SLI (mainly for other more graphic intensive games).

Does anyone know if Eve Online is optimized for SLI? Because some games that are not optimized for SLI actually perform worse when you have SLI installed.

If SLI makes Eve Online perform worse, then maybe I'll just install a single GTX 980 instead.

I mainly don't want hiccups. Sometimes dual GPU causes hiccups, even though the graphics cards are more than enough to run the game.
NovaCat13
Ember Interstellar Inc.
The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
#2 - 2015-07-21 01:51:26 UTC
Back in the day I ran with a SLI setup of 7900GS's, and it wasn't natively supported, I had to force it through the driver but it did work, but info from this decade is probably a bit more helpful...

Just say NO to Dailies
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#3 - 2015-07-21 02:05:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Tau Cabalander
Quote:
Does Eve Online support SLI graphics card?

Yes.

Note that in the modern Windows DirectX world, it doesn't matter what your hardware is, as long as it supports DirectX.

Eve uses DirectX 11, but also supports as old as DirectX 9 for XP users (who really should upgrade).

Trivia: CCP is often sponsored by Nvidia.

P.S. I use an EVGA GeForce GTX 690 which is a dual GPU card that uses SLI.
witchking42
Doomheim
#4 - 2015-07-21 06:38:59 UTC
I'm using two 970's SLI'd and have no issues here.

It helps with other games, but Eve uses about 10% of the processing power of a single card even on maxxed out settings!!

Set it to interval immediate and the FPS rushes off north of 400 fps - Lol

WK
Azraella
Into the Dark
#5 - 2015-07-21 13:54:25 UTC
Yep I confirm, I have two 980's SLI'd but I have to turn it off after a few hours because my eyes start to hurt and I get a headache.

This must confirm, it works :)
Samir Duran Xadi
Diversity Equity and Inclusion
#6 - 2015-07-21 16:16:48 UTC
It does but you wont use it as its not necessary. Better run full screen window so you can alt tab faster and SLI doesnt work unless its fullscreen mode.
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#7 - 2015-07-21 18:59:06 UTC
Samir Duran Xadi wrote:
It does but you wont use it as its not necessary. Better run full screen window so you can alt tab faster and SLI doesnt work unless its fullscreen mode.

Not true.

I have both monitors attached to the first GPU, and the second accelerates both via the SLI link. This is actually the recommended setup by Nvidia; SLI is disabled with a monitor on both cards. Basically, the first GPU controls a frame buffer that both GPUs write into, the second doing so via the SLI link.
Kyra Lee
Doomheim
#8 - 2015-07-21 20:27:40 UTC
Tau is mostly right in this case. NVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire will work in either windowed or fullscreen mode but the boost percentage will be much lower in windowed mode. From my own personal tests I showed about a 30-40% increase in gpu utilization in windowed mode and 80-90% utilization in fullscreen mode. Basically you will get more out of the second GPU if you run in fullscreen mode. I have tested this with multiple games and monitor setups throughout the years.

Looks like NVidia does indeed support EvE in SLI mode without any driver shenanigans.

Quote:
New in GeForce 332.21 Certified drivers

SLI Technology
Assetto Corsa - created profile
Eve Online - created DX11 profile
Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare - created profile
Thief - created profile


This thread on the NVidia forums has some decent info for you.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/629559/sli/definitive-answer-on-sli-and-borderless-fullscreen-windowed-/post/4562231/#4562231

Hope that helps!
KL
Myrrax
Apotheosis of Caledvwich
#9 - 2015-07-21 21:18:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Myrrax
Yes it does.

in addition, you can run it two ways.

Multi screen or One big screen.

I run 3 screens and usually run 3 clients (1 in each Screen) in SLI with one card handle all the PhysX stuff and the other everything else.

You can also run it so that 1 client is displayed across all 3 screens and it is quite beautiful. However this is NOT a display to pvp in due to the amount of space you have to cover to perform actions.
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#10 - 2015-07-21 22:23:08 UTC
Kyra Lee wrote:
Tau is mostly right in this case.

If only I was mostly right when picking lottery numbers...

Thanks for the additional info.

I think rendering is probably slower in windowed mode because of the overhead of rendering individual windows. Full-screen gets rid of all that junk. No need to deal with window clipping, overlap, figuring out what changed and what didn't, etc.
Samir Duran Xadi
Diversity Equity and Inclusion
#11 - 2015-07-21 22:46:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Samir Duran Xadi
Tau Cabalander wrote:
Samir Duran Xadi wrote:
It does but you wont use it as its not necessary. Better run full screen window so you can alt tab faster and SLI doesnt work unless its fullscreen mode.

Not true.

I have both monitors attached to the first GPU, and the second accelerates both via the SLI link. This is actually the recommended setup by Nvidia; SLI is disabled with a monitor on both cards. Basically, the first GPU controls a frame buffer that both GPUs write into, the second doing so via the SLI link.


You dont even know what you're talking about and what does that even have to do with what I said? Not true what?

Crossfire doesn't work on anything but fullscreen and it was the same case for SLI when I used to have it. There is this little thing called explorer.exe that interferes with any directx application when not running fullscreen. That is why the only way you can have multi gpu configurations work at windowed mode is through amd's mantle which is a whole different api. Don't try to talk smart about things you got no clue about.

No eve doesnt need a multi-gpu setup, no it wont work unless running eve at full screen, yes its great for other games. Now for multi monitor setups it's a whole different story and you can do some interesting stuff with sli/crossfire.
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#12 - 2015-07-22 06:18:51 UTC
SLI/Crossfire is not going to be worth it for EVE unless you're running at absurd resolutions or you want to run multiple clients fullscreen on different monitors or something. In big fleet battles and similarly complex environments your bottleneck is the CPU.