64 Bit Client / Nvidia SLI not working correctly?

NagualV

Hello All,

I monitor my hardware performance and have noticed that when using the 32 bit client, both of my gtx 980ti's workload is even.

When I switch to the 64 bit client, it is very UNeven, to where it seems the 2nd card is not being used much at all.

Is anyone else having this issue? I'm running the game maxed in 4K, if that helps at all.

phaneub17_ESO

If you're on Windows 10, check to see if it didn't default to your CPU (if say you have an i7) rather than your GPU; that seems to happen for some people.

profundidob16_ESO

Use afterburner to monitor if the SLI is actually working or the game stays on 1 card only. When tabbing out of the game into windows its normal that it falls back to 1 card but go into game for 20sec, then swap back and watch those past 20seconds. It should be clearly be even divided over both cards. If it isn't your SLI is not working.

ps: Also don't forget the noob check in case SLI isn't working: the new 64-bit executable doesn't have the same exact name as the 32-bit one so by default SLI will not activate on it until you go add the new exact executable name to the SLI profiles manually and set it to force alternate frame rendering or equivalent (to make sure the executable triggers SLI)

Niastissa

Have you tried going into the control panel and forcing SLI?

I'll have to check if my SLI is active next time I'm on and see if my SLI is active and if not report back on which setting works best to force it.

Ultravylence

I run a similar setup with 2x 970 in SLI for 4k res. I have found the best solution to get SLI, Gysnc and other technologies working with the new 64bit client is simply renaming ESO64.EXE to ESO.EXE and then the original to ESO32.EXE. The allows all normal ESO NVIDIA profiles to recognize the game as Elder Scrolls Online.

I then launch ESO.EXE directly without the Bethesda launcher. SLI, GSync and all other NVIDIA settings work great for me running 64bit.

I hope this helps.

nine9six

Ahh, I remember the days of SLI and my games giving me fits regarding it.

Best of luck OP!

NagualV

Thank you all for the replies. These are all suggestions I had not tried/thought about (not very tech savvy) I will try them all and come back with an update.

Eweroun

great you have 2 980ti's, but why would you use SLI, when one 980ti is enough to play the game all maxed out?
In my point of view it's just overkill two use them both...

(Even with my 660ti i can play everything smooth on maxed...)

cheers

nine9six

Eweroun wrote: »

great you have 2 980ti's, but why would you use SLI, when one 980ti is enough to play the game all maxed out?
In my point of view it's just overkill two use them both...

(Even with my 660ti i can play everything smooth on maxed...)

cheers

He's playing @ 4K Res.

NagualV

Eweroun wrote: »

great you have 2 980ti's, but why would you use SLI, when one 980ti is enough to play the game all maxed out?
In my point of view it's just overkill two use them both...

(Even with my 660ti i can play everything smooth on maxed...)

cheers

You're absolutely right. However, Its just one of those things that will bug me if not fixed.

Niastissa

Eweroun wrote: »

great you have 2 980ti's, but why would you use SLI, when one 980ti is enough to play the game all maxed out?
In my point of view it's just overkill two use them both...

(Even with my 660ti i can play everything smooth on maxed...)

cheers

1440P and above require a lot of graphical horse power. This person is using two 980 TI cards for 4K.

I know two GTX 970 in SLI do perfectly fine at max settings for 1080P and even do pretty decent on 1440P at max settings but it starts to struggle. I can't do 4K max settings and keep a stable frame rate of 60FPS or even above 30 FPS.

Maybe a GTX 1080 might be able to handle 4K at max settings 60 FPS but I don't think a single 980 TI is up to the task.

NagualV

nine9six wrote: »

Eweroun wrote: »

great you have 2 980ti's, but why would you use SLI, when one 980ti is enough to play the game all maxed out?
In my point of view it's just overkill two use them both...

(Even with my 660ti i can play everything smooth on maxed...)

cheers

He's playing @ 4K Res.

This too. The 980ti can handle it at 4k, but it gets hotter than it needs to. With sli, both cards run at nice Temps. And, I play other more graphic intensive games.

GreeKk

since the latest update i am having the same problem. Im running 2 GTX 970s and my bottom card is not under load. I wonder if they made the 64 bit client the default app that the launcher opens now instead of the 32bit??? Anyone know this?

hamgatan

Niastissa wrote: »

Maybe a GTX 1080 might be able to handle 4K at max settings 60 FPS but I don't think a single 980 TI is up to the task.

I'm doing 100fps outside of cyrodiil on max settings on my 1080, max draw distance etc at 1440p. I imagine I could probably do 60-70 at 4K..

peniku8

I'll join the discussion at this point and I always had the same behaviour on my laptop, which is running 650m SLI.
As you can imagine, one 650 @1080p is a bit weak and only produces about 20fps in ESO so the 64bit client is abolutely useless for me atm since it won't utilize the 2nd GPU. The problem was there with the 64bit release and the DB update didn't change anything. Guess they're still busy fixing the bugs affecting all 64bit players and will fix the SLI issue when the other major bugs are fixed (eventually..). My first priority bug fix is the broken animations now anyways, I rarely get a nice rotation, which is very annoying as I'm playing dps mainly

Paulington

I have SLI issues too.

I run two GTX 1080s in SLI and play ESO at 4K resolution with max settings and I average ~35 FPS according to CAM with both cards running when compared to The Witcher 3 I can average ~40-45 FPS with a single 1080, not both!

ESO CPU bottlenecks like crazy, my GPUs average around ~35% utilisation and refuse to go any higher because the CPU is overloaded, it's an i7-4930k @ 4.5GHz by the way, so no slouch CPU.

If you are getting low utilisation on one card, use NVIDIA Control Panel to force SLI and see if that resolves it. Otherwise I'd just chalk it up to the wonders of ESO and the poor optimisation this game suffers from. It just doesn't work as it should, SLI or not.

NagualV

Paulington wrote: »

I have SLI issues too.

I run two GTX 1080s in SLI and play ESO at 4K resolution with max settings and I average ~35 FPS according to CAM with both cards running when compared to The Witcher 3 I can average ~40-45 FPS with a single 1080, not both!

ESO CPU bottlenecks like crazy, my GPUs average around ~35% utilisation and refuse to go any higher because the CPU is overloaded, it's an i7-4930k @ 4.5GHz by the way, so no slouch CPU.

If you are getting low utilisation on one card, use NVIDIA Control Panel to force SLI and see if that resolves it. Otherwise I'd just chalk it up to the wonders of ESO and the poor optimisation this game suffers from. It just doesn't work as it should, SLI or not.

Great! Thanks for this as well. Will try when I get home later

Paulington

Ipomoea wrote: »

Paulington wrote: »

I have SLI issues too.

I run two GTX 1080s in SLI and play ESO at 4K resolution with max settings and I average ~35 FPS according to CAM with both cards running when compared to The Witcher 3 I can average ~40-45 FPS with a single 1080, not both!

ESO CPU bottlenecks like crazy, my GPUs average around ~35% utilisation and refuse to go any higher because the CPU is overloaded, it's an i7-4930k @ 4.5GHz by the way, so no slouch CPU.

If you are getting low utilisation on one card, use NVIDIA Control Panel to force SLI and see if that resolves it. Otherwise I'd just chalk it up to the wonders of ESO and the poor optimisation this game suffers from. It just doesn't work as it should, SLI or not.

Great! Thanks for this as well. Will try when I get home later

No problem! .

While ESO is running, use something like MSI Afterburner to log your CPU core usage + GPU utilisation (or just have them open on a second screen) and you will likely see that even though your FPS drops to ~20 or so, your GPUs remain terribly underutilised and one of your CPU cores will hit 100% (or hover around there). ESO has suffered from this poor single-thread performance issue for as long as I can remember, just like most MMOs, but ESO more than others.

It tries to shove it all through one core, and it just doesn't work.