[Windows 7] Hybrid SLI and CrossFire unstable, says Microsoft

[halo112358]

As it works now I fully agree with MS. Even regular SLi/CF is a horror disaster.

+1, I spent $550 on a 4870x2 and I can't use crossfire in windowed mode - good grief.

I'd rather see more focus on dynamic clock & power switching than on hybrid SLI. Hybrid SLI just sounds like an excuse for the GPU companies to ship more GPUs.

[vengance_01]

I want this solution. Ob-board GPU to handle all desktop and HD based content rendering and shutdown the main single gpu. Then a game is fired up, the on-board is disabled and everything is transferred to the main gpu till the user exit's the game. If you can do this on a laptop, you can sure as hell do it on a desktop!

[Shintai]

No, From what I heard. It's Hybrid SLi, And you can completely shut down the dedicated GPU when you don't need it.

Maybe its like the no issues at all with CF/SLI as you also heard

You still need to change from 1 GPU to the other in Hybrid antyhing. Hence its just like 2 GPUs. So it doesnt matter if you can shut down the discrete GPU when you dont need it. Its still a GPU change and reboot.

[Shintai]

+1, I spent $550 on a 4870x2 and I can't use crossfire in windowed mode - good grief.

I'd rather see more focus on dynamic clock & power switching than on hybrid SLI. Hybrid SLI just sounds like an excuse for the GPU companies to ship more GPUs.

Ye. I play most of my games in windowed aswell if they can. EvE online etc.

I wonder with the software renderer on Larrabee. If you can change the treads of the renderer between Larrabee, i7 etc. Then it could be possible since its the same input.

[halo112358]

Ye. I play most of my games in windowed aswell if they can. EvE online etc.

I wonder with the software renderer on Larrabee. If you can change the treads of the renderer between Larrabee, i7 etc. Then it could be possible since its the same input.

Yeah, I spent about an hour one night hacking around to get EvE running well in windowed mode. I needed a custom catalyst profile with only the first core clocked up and the second left at 500/300, then a bunch of scripting to launch everything seamlessly and switch profiles back to 500/300 on both cores when the ExeFile process ended. Bleh, not the best user experience.

[Shintai]

Yeah, I spent about an hour one night hacking around to get EvE running well in windowed mode. I needed a custom catalyst profile with only the first core clocked up and the second left at 500/300, then a bunch of scripting to launch everything seamlessly and switch profiles back to 500/300 on both cores when the ExeFile process ended. Bleh, not the best user experience.

I do wonder if you can run 2 clients, one on each GPU. Since you can select what output you want inside EvE.

[halo112358]

I do wonder if you can run 2 clients, one on each GPU. Since you can select what output you want inside EvE.

It hasn't ever let me select the second GPU, only the first. The second doesn't even show up in the GPU pulldown.

[fragmasterMax]

Shuttering, missing profiles unless you are playing popular games and got the latest driver. You need to fix it yourself. Minimum FPS issues, multiscreen issues and so on and on and on....

We even seen one driver support CF/SLI in a game. The next newer driver messes it up and you are back to singlecard performance.

Hotfix this, hotfix that.

Do I even have to say Far Cry 2?

update your drivers..........
my 9800gx2 sli on a card murders that game.

msft is in the pockets of amd anyway,
that was proven last year with the "power together tour"
man i've never heard so much amd/msft propaganda in a four hour timespan in my life.
on the bright side i won 150 in s/w airlines tickets, and a am2 mobo

[jaredpace]

Let me summon it up. Since you are in denial.

Can you tell me what the hotfix driver did for Far Cry 2 on crossfire cards? Yes, up to 98% improvement (Hint: missing profile).

brand new game broski.

[Shintai]

update your drivers..........
my 9800gx2 sli on a card murders that game.

msft is in the pockets of amd anyway,
that was proven last year with the "power together tour"
man i've never heard so much amd/msft propaganda in a four hour timespan in my life.
on the bright side i won 150 in s/w airlines tickets, and a am2 mobo

You play in windowed mode? Because then SLI doesnt work.

brand new game broski.

Ye, they fixed one. Forgot the 99 others.

And still required you to update your drivers. Not just install and play the game.

[Think]

Never a fan of it anyway. Multi gpu on a single board I'll accept but this sli and crossfire business was always a rabid waste of money.

[tiro_uspsss]

XP could technically only support 3 GPU's (not in reality I believe?). I believe Vista's limit is 4 GPU's.
2 GPU's are easier then 3 or 4 GPU's.
So 2 GPU's are not that big of a problem, but what about 4 to 8 GPU's? I bet it gives much more problems then the standard 2 GPU SLI or Crossfire rig.
I think this is a good choice from M$. It's better they work together with ATI and nVidia to solve the current problems and release the support in a service-pack.

last I heard, XP could handle 7 monitors.. I know I've done 2 diff GPUs many a times.. may have done 3 cant quite remember.. next time i'm piecing a rig together & if I have 4+ diff GPUs lying around i'm gonna test

[flopper]

I get a bsod at start up when windows loads using ati driver for w7.
using a 4870 in combination with a 4850 in crossfire.
Havent tried with vista driver since I dont know if they will work?

[STEvil]

3DFX Voodoo 5 6000 is 4 GPU's and has been used in XP as far as I can remember.

[dexaroni]

I really do like how Microsoft is stepping up to the plate and doing things right rather than trying to please everyone with Windows 7... hopefully standard crossfire configs will work.

[halo112358]

Never a fan of it anyway. Multi gpu on a single board I'll accept but this sli and crossfire business was always a rabid waste of money.

Honestly, the way they implement multigpu on one board is with a PCIe bridge chip. What you're really getting is a mini PCIe bus that's bridged on to your main PCIe bus, and the driver handles the crossfire from there. It's two graphics cards in smaller form factor, but it's still identical to standard crossfire or SLI as far as the driver is concerned.

This is why you have the same crossfire issues with a 4870x2 that you'd have with crossfired 4870's.

If I had an x38 or x48 motherboard I'd have popped for 2x 1gb 4870's instead of a 4870x2 - it's a lot easier to air cool 2 cards quietly (more surface area to work with) than one.

[003]

Shintai, man. I think you just got owned.

Anyways, Anybody got links to the white papers talked about in this article, because I haven't heard of the graphical sheets out yet, I've seen the UI and interface sheets.

No, Shintai is correct. If you can't see the stutter/shutter it is because either SLI/CF is not working (so no chance to see the problem), or you are not stressing the GPUs enough to constrict inter-GPU bandwidth and cause frame drops, aka stuttering. This is not a case of one opinion over another. Stuttering is an inherent problem with Alternate Frame Rendering, and currently can only be compensated for by more brute GPU power.

[mattkosem]

I do wonder if you can run 2 clients, one on each GPU. Since you can select what output you want inside EvE.

No you cannot, not with SLI or Crossfire enabled at least. With separate cards driving separate monitors without SLI or CF enabled, yes.

Yeah, I spent about an hour one night hacking around to get EvE running well in windowed mode. I needed a custom catalyst profile with only the first core clocked up and the second left at 500/300, then a bunch of scripting to launch everything seamlessly and switch profiles back to 500/300 on both cores when the ExeFile process ended. Bleh, not the best user experience.

I've never had a problem running Eve Online in windowed mode with SLI or Crossfire. Never even had to set any special settings. Not once, ever. I've had 3870 X2, 9800 GX2, 4870 CF, and 4870 X2. Not a single one of them presented any problems. No special settings in either. I always run dual clients, one at 1650x1050 and another at 1920x1080.

--Matt

[halo112358]

I've never had a problem running Eve Online in windowed mode with SLI or Crossfire. Never even had to set any special settings. Not once, ever. I've had 3870 X2, 9800 GX2, 4870 CF, and 4870 X2. Not a single one of them presented any problems. No special settings in either. I always run dual clients, one at 1650x1050 and another at 1920x1080.

You won't have problems getting the game to run in a window, but it won't use crossfire while windowed (nothing will). My issue was that I wanted to run my 4870x2 at 500/300 while I was on the desktop to keep power consumption low and ambient temps down, which worked fine, but it also meant that I'd be running at 500/300 while I ran windowed mode games....

In the end I had to script around it.

[mattkosem]

You won't have problems getting the game to run in a window, but getting it won't use crossfire while windowed (nothing will). My issue was that I wanted to run my 4870x2 at 500/300 while I was on the desktop to keep power consumption low and ambient temps down, which worked fine, but it also meant that I'd be running at 500/300 while I ran windowed mode games....

In the end I had to script around it.

Hmm, That does indeed seem to be the case. My X2 does spin up the first gpu when running in a window though. The second one remains at the 2d clock, following your point about no CF in a window. The premium client has jaggies everywhere with or without FSAA, so I don't really run it on that game. I guess it is easy to see the performance degredation though, all you need to do is force on some FSAA. The slowdown is much more harsh than in games where CF is working properly.

I take back the part about having no problems. A single 4870 is more than anyone would ever need in that game anyways though, even with 3 clients I have no trouble.

--Matt

[Xoulz]

Hybrid dual-graphics systems won’t be given native support in Windows 7.

Hybrid graphics systems might not be able to churn out the high-res frame rates demanded by enthusiast gamers, but both Nvidia and AMD have invested a lot of marketing bucks in the technology at the lower end of the scale. It turns out that Microsoft really doesn’t like hybrid graphics, though, to the point where the software company has branded the technologies ‘unstable’ in its Windows 7 documentation.

In Microsoft’s Guidelines for Graphics in Windows 7 document, which was released yesterday, Microsoft outlined its feelings about hybrid graphics, stating that ‘Windows 7 does not offer native support for hybrid graphics systems.’ Not only that, but Microsoft added the reason for the decision saying that hybrid graphics systems ‘can be unstable and provide a poor user experience,’ and that it would ‘strongly discourage system manufacturers from shipping such systems.’ Microsoft also added that ‘such systems require a reboot to switch between GPUs.’

Both Hybrid SLI and Hybrid CrossFire are low-end multi-graphics systems that allow you to complement an integrated graphics chip with a low-end discrete graphics card to boost the performance. It’s a feature that Nvidia touted as a potential advantage of its recently-announced GeForce 9 mGPU, which can get a boost from the addition of a GeForce 8400 GS or 8500 GT card.

Have you used a hybrid multi-graphics system? If so, did you find it unstable, or is Microsoft wrong here? Let us know your thoughts.



Source

I have no idea why motherboard manufacturers are even worried about SLI/Crossfire compatability...

... I'd rather just pay $50 more, for a Mobo that had Lucid's Hydra chip, than any other solution. Why we aren't seeing enthusiast mobos with this technology is beyond me.




.

[randomizer]

So 2 GPU's are not that big of a problem, but what about 4 to 8 GPU's? I bet it gives much more problems then the standard 2 GPU SLI or Crossfire rig.

It sure does. Only a small percentage of the world's population own their own power plant.

[Helmore]

I want this solution. Ob-board GPU to handle all desktop and HD based content rendering and shutdown the main single gpu. Then a game is fired up, the on-board is disabled and everything is transferred to the main gpu till the user exit's the game. If you can do this on a laptop, you can sure as hell do it on a desktop!

Microsoft does not mean that type of hybrid graphics, they are talking about the hybrid SLI/CFX in which you use a IGP in tandem with a low end discrete CPU. Like a 780G chipset with a 3450 running in crossfire next to it, just to boost performance a little. (pretty useless though, you can often get more performance by just spending $10 more on a more powerful card)
From what I gathered it seems that they are not talking about the switching between discrete and integrated to decrease power consumption whenever possible. There is also no real SLI or CFX involved in that switching and it can actually be done without restarting the system. It would be a shame if they would not support that kind of switching as it does have a lot of benefits to it, especially in notebooks but even in desktop PCs.

[Shintai]

No you cannot, not with SLI or Crossfire enabled at least. With separate cards driving separate monitors without SLI or CF enabled, yes.



I've never had a problem running Eve Online in windowed mode with SLI or Crossfire. Never even had to set any special settings. Not once, ever. I've had 3870 X2, 9800 GX2, 4870 CF, and 4870 X2. Not a single one of them presented any problems. No special settings in either. I always run dual clients, one at 1650x1050 and another at 1920x1080.

--Matt

Could you have 2 individual outputs on a X2 card?

Are you sure SLI/CF is working?

I run 2 premium clients on a single non OC 8800GT on 2 24". One 1750*1100 and one 1880*1140. No lag etc. So you could be cheated even running one GPU.

[N19h7m4r3]

I have no idea why motherboard manufacturers are even worried about SLI/Crossfire compatability...

... I'd rather just pay $50 more, for a Mobo that had Lucid's Hydra chip, than any other solution. Why we aren't seeing enthusiast mobos with this technology is beyond me.


.

+100! I want that chip on my next mobo.
No need in worrying if it's got nforce this or crossfire that .