SLI issues/concerns and stuttering (GTX 200, 8, and 9 Series)

[Vanzagar]

Would be nice to know how often people are getting stuttering in games with SLI and other issues or concerns they have with SLI. A few post lately have mentioned but not differentiated between how many, how often and what type of issues occur. I'm really on the fence of either going the lower cost SLI route or the much more expensive GTX280 route but have not used SLI before so have no concept of the scope of "headaches" involved or how bad the stuttering is. Any info you can offer to all of us who are not intimate with SLI and participating in the poll would be appreciated. Info such as:

Stuttering:
How often does the stuttering occur, is it once in a while, all the time? Is it really annoying or just a bit bothersome? Does it happen on very few games, most games or pretty much all games...

Problems/Issues:
All the talk of SLI headaches how does this manifest itself - do games crash often, sometimes or can’t get few/most games to run with SLI? Are there problems glitches or artifacts in the game or crashes or BSOD? Do driver updates tend to fix these issues or do you tend to just get frustrated and stop playing the game...

Hey thanks for sharing your SLI experience, this will definitely effect whether I get SLI now or if I will build my machine with SLI potential...

Thanks,

rh

[CaptNKILL]

I won't vote since my only experience with SLI was the 7950GX2, but SLI gave me a ton of problems with that thing. I don't remember stuttering exactly, but I remember a lot of my games having poor performance or irritating glitches because SLI didn't work right.

[spajdr]

I never noticed something like micro stuttering with SLI, or anything like that make me in the end annoyed.

[Eliminator]

i didnt really notice stuttering but ive noticed all games had this jerky/laggy feel to them when using SLI... not to mention that SLI did not always work properly and nvidia gave 7 series SLI users the boot when 8 series came out... i for one am never touching SLI ever again until its perfected

[Vanzagar]

Originally Posted by Eliminator

i didnt really notice stuttering but ive noticed all games had this jerky/laggy feel to them when using SLI...

Wouldn't that be stuttering, I would consider a jerky feeling as stuttering...

Also would be nice to hear about Crossfire experiences especially with the 4750 around the corner...

[jcrox]

The only time I've ever used SLI for any prolonged period of time was with 2 7800GTs and I had no issues to speak of. I've had 2 8800GTs running on this rig a couple of different times for short periods but, not long enough to really comment on overall gaming performance, and I didn't have any problems with that either.

I'm thinking part of the problem isn't SLI or nvidia chipsets but not enough bandwidth in the pci-e lanes.

[Bman212121]

I can't say as I've had many issues with it at all. I don't recall a game where SLI caused stuttering. I've had stuttering in COD2 & 4 if you don't set the options for multiple video cards even if you only have one, and I've had stuttering in several games right when dual core came out, but I can't remember a time where SLI was to blame.

I have on used SLI on a pair of 6800GT's and my 8800GTX cards, so it is possible I've dodged the bullet from other setups. 6800GTs where quite mature by the time I ran SLi with them so a lot of the problems were likely already solved.

The only times I've seen where SLI didn't help is if the game was already able to run all out on one card. UT2k4 paired with an 8800GTX comes to mind, it is already sitting on the frame cap so you really can't go much faster. In a case like that you still have the option to turn on SLI AA modes and get even better IQ.

Another thing that used to be a big concern for everyone was having profiles for all of the games. For the most part everything runs great with AFR2 so IMO that gets rid of a lot of the need to even mess with the profiles at all. You can just use the global setting to force everything to use AFR2 if you want, but most games are already setup with the correct rendering method. I have only came across one game that for some reason is set in the drivers to use split frame, so I just change that to AFR2 and it runs even better.

[Bman212121]

Originally Posted by slaWter

SLI itself is good, no doubt about that.
But it has two major drawbacks and that's why I stopped using it:

-no multi monitor support
-nVidia chipsets = teh BS!

Let's hope the multimonitor support rumor comes true.

[tdream]

Can the people who have no issues state what monitor resolution they use and what cards they have.

[jolle]

Originally Posted by Bman212121

Let's hope the multimonitor support rumor comes true.

That has been the nr1 reason not to go for it for me.

Other reasons include:
* Bound to NV chipset
* Profile dependent (varies from game to game)
* more recently, this talk about micro stutters and stuff like that.

[mailman2]

Originally Posted by Eliminator

i didnt really notice stuttering but ive noticed all games had this jerky/laggy feel to them when using SLI... not to mention that SLI did not always work properly and nvidia gave 7 series SLI users the boot when 8 series came out... i for one am never touching SLI ever again until its perfected

Thats the micro stutter everyone is talking about.

[Coolasmoo]

never noticed it here and im running 1920x1200 with a 9800GX2