83 replies to this topic

[Shamous13]

I decided to combine all of the information from other threads into one post to help others. I have been able to get crossfire working correctly without any micro shutter and I’ve been able to get the load balancing to work correctly on two HD7870 cards.

Lets start off with the load balancing, after the dx11 patch I was using MSIafterburner to monitor my cards and noticed that one card was loading up to 90%+ usage and my other card was sitting at 30%. This caused a huge heat increase in one card and FPS that bounced between 70 – 45fps. At first I thought it was an issue with mwo but after a bit of research I found out it affects all ATI cards on allot of games. Its caused by ultra-low power state, for AMD/ATI graphics cards in CrossfireX, one card basicly shuts down causing the other card to overload. To fix this you can either edit your registry or use the automated tool in the link provided. From what I have read you will need to do this every time you upgrade your drivers.

How do I manually enable or disable ULPS?

ULPS can be enabled/disabled by modifying the registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000
by changing the value EnableUlps to 0 to disable, and 1 to enable. Depending on the number of unique driver versions that were present on your system, there may be multiple keys in the last folder. For example you may have 0001 and 0002 in addition to 0000.

http://www.tomshardw...ire-setups.html

After editing the registry Reboot your computer

next you will have to set up a profile in the catalyst control center for
- Open Catalyst Control Center
- Open Gaming tab
- Open 3d Applications tab
- Click +Add on this page.
- Select your MWOClient.exe ( C:/Program Files (x86)/ Piranha Games/ Mechwarrior Online/ Bin32
- Then Select Bioshock.exe or Borderlands 2 as the Application Profile.



Next I added this line to my MWO user cfg, It seems to stabilize the fps a bit.
r_MultiGPU = 1

0=disabled, 1=extra overhead to allow SLI(NVidia) or Crossfire(ATI),
2(default)=automatic detection (currently SLI only, means off for ATI)
should be activated before rendering

The last step is to run the MWO repair tool http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2292954 and clear out your user shaders and systemoveride.cfg, select these options in the setup tab for the repair tool.

The last thing I did was turned on v-sync in MWO, there is no point in running 100+ fps when my screen has a refresh rate of 60.

Enjoy, if anyone has anything to add or they have found something that works better PM me and Ill update the op. FOR SLI I’ll post the information below and update it as people find better ways to get it running. Also for cryengin3 consol commands and variables there is this command listed for SLI I’m not sure if it does anything.

r_buffer_sli_workaround = 1

enable SLI workaround for buffer pooling

xor1337, on 17 May 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

I posted this elsewhere but thought it important enough to get the info in the workarounds list.

I was able to more than double my fps with SLi enabled.

Warning: turn off AA if you use this workaround, it causes dark grainy splotches.
Also causes some flashing of the mech damage glow.

Joy to ALL, I got SLi up and running on MWO!

First I wanna explain my system specs and the situation.
My system:
Intel i7 3.4Ghz
12GB DDR3
Windows 7 64bit
2x Nvidia GTX 260 in SLi

I've been playing MWO since December with all settings at Medium and AA off. With this setup I would average about 40fps. I couldn't turn the settings up anymore without some pretty choppy gameplay.

Now that I've enabled SLi I'm running with all settings at High or Very High with a solid 70fps. AA remains off because with SLi on it creates weird dark grainy spots.

Only other artifact is that the Mech Damage glowing does flicker a bit, but not enough to care about, and with the particles on very high there is usually so much smoke etc that you don't notice.

Ok now to the fix.
I'm running Nvidia beta driver 320.14 and Nvidia Inspector 1.9.7.1
Using Nvidia inspector I opened the Mechwarrior Online Profile and made the following changes:
1. SLi compatibility bits (DX1x): 0x000040F5 (Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Crysis 3)
2. SLi compatibility bits :0x02506405 (Crysis, ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead, Take-on helicopters, ArmA 3, ArmA 2, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Crysis: Warhead, Merchants of Brooklyn, Nexuiz, OCCT)
3.Number of GPUs to use on SLi rendering mode: SLI_GPU_COUNT_TWO
4.NVIDIA predefined number of GPUs to use on SLi rendering mode on Direct X 10: SLI_PREDEFINED_GPU_COUNT_DX10_TWO
5.NVIDIA predefined number of GPUs to use on SLi rendering mode: SLI_PREDEFINED_GPU_COUNT_TWO
6.NVIDIA predefined SLi mode on DirectX 10: SLI_PREDEFINED_MODE_DX10_FORCE_AFR
7.NVIDIA predefined SLi mode: SLI_PREDEFINED_MODE_FORCE_AFR2

Just hit "Apply changes" and then make sure SLi is enabled in the Nvidia Driver Control panel.

I'll Say again, TURN OFF AA, SLi makes grainy dark patches on screen with it on.
This fix more than doubled my fps and the only cost is flickering Mech glow damage!

I'm just throwing this out there Game Devs, it would be really nice if you could work on the flickering mech glow damage AND the AA dark patches with SLi enabled.

edit: updated op
Edit: update op for upls

Edited by Shamous13, 09 August 2015 - 03:57 PM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Are you saying you have no flicker with this on a ATI Cards? That would be fantastic.

To Devs: When mine Flickers in Game, all Odd Frames are the game... Even Frames are the MECHLAB!!!

[Shamous13]

No flicker whatsoever. also I have turned off shadows and damage glow.

[CeeKay Boques]

Excited to test this tonight. Get 100fps on 4850 x2s, but it flickers. I've done everything on your list except ULPS and Bioshock profile, and reset shaders.

[Shamous13]

I've played around trying other preset profiles and they end up flickering. their is one other that i found that worked I just cant remember which one rite now. I'll update the op tonight when I get home.

[WarGruf]

If your running DX9 use the AFR-CompatibleD3D profile and that will sort out the flickering you see... Also Disable Vsync in the game options and just Force it through CCC, almost doubled my FPS

DX11 on the other hand works fine for me but the FPS dips too sporadic. Plus its just not optimised enough yet....

[Night Fury76]

Thanks for the SLI repost and thanks WarGruf i'll try having a play.
After the patch I was getting what technoviking is getting so had to return to a single gtx460 card

[Ripper X]

I ran into a snag. I am actually getting lower frames in crossfire than I did with 1 video card. 2 Radeon 7870s, 3570K CPU. I would have thought that with crossfired 7870s I would get much better frames than barely 30fps in DX11 and around 35-40 fps in DX9. With just one card I get 50ish fps

Ran Guild Wars 2 in crossfire mode with maxed out settings and got around 100fps with v-sync off.

Edit: I found out what the problem was. It was AA and the user cfg. r_MultiGPU = 1
With V-Sync and AA off I was able to reach 80+fps in DX9. In DX11 I took a much harder hit at around 60 to 70fps and a bit of a stutter at times with frames going below 40fps.

Hope this helps anyone who ran into the same problem I did.

Edited by Ripper X, 07 March 2014 - 03:24 AM.

[Shamous13]

Ripper X, on 06 March 2014 - 11:29 PM, said:

I ran into a snag. I am actually getting lower frames in crossfire than I did with 1 video card. 2 Radeon 7870s, 3570K CPU. I would have thought that with crossfired 7870s I would get much better frames than barely 30fps in DX11 and around 35-40 fps in DX9. With just one card I get 50ish fps

Ran Guild Wars 2 in crossfire mode with maxed out settings and got around 100fps with v-sync off.

Edit: I found out what the problem was. It was AA and the user cfg. r_MultiGPU = 1
With V-Sync and AA off I was able to reach 80+fps in DX9. In DX11 I took a much harder hit at around 60 to 70fps and a bit of a stutter at times with frames going below 40fps.

Hope this helps anyone who ran into the same problem I did.

Did you do step 1? I found that it resolved the problem for me. you could try doing a slight oc on your cards. +5hz

[CeeKay Boques]

Well this worked! Thanks so much.

Unfortunately, I did all the steps at once, the ULPS, the Bioshock change, and the Repair. Really should have done one at time to see if I could isolate what the real fix was.

Bottom line, thanks a lot, this adds 40 FPS to my sons game.

[Shamous13]

its a combination of all of them each one helps one issue at a time.

[CeeKay Boques]

By the way, left on the shaders and glow, worked fine...

dx9 though

[Ripper X]

Shamous13, on 07 March 2014 - 05:18 AM, said:

Did you do step 1? I found that it resolved the problem for me. you could try doing a slight oc on your cards. +5hz

Yep I had done all of the steps. My cards are OCed +100.
Once I got rid of the user cfg. my frames jumped up to nearly 1.5x and then I got rid of the AA and i got around 2x the frames.

Edited by Ripper X, 07 March 2014 - 03:06 PM.

[Smokeyjedi]

Most excellent!

[Exarch Levin]

I'm not sure if this will help with my issue as my GPUs are regularly "pegged" at 83-86% and 99%, and my FPS is the same regardless of resolution (and no core on my CPU is ever above 70%) but I'll have to give it a shot. I've got nothing to lose and playable FPS to gain

[Exarch Levin]

Cleared out drivers and installed newest AMD beta. Then followed this guide again.

Mechlab GPU usage is down to both cards @ ~50%, which is an improvement (but still a sign of a problem in MWO). Now I get FPS in the 60-80 range for the most part, with occasional drops into the high 40s.

Still, my CPU and GPU are never maxed during gameplay. That's a mystery.

Also found that GPU usage spikes up to 86%/99% (2 card %s) on the post-match score screen...

Thanks for the guide, big improvement.

Edited by Exarch Levin, 07 March 2014 - 11:54 PM.

[frag85]

CF7970s still have issues with the default CF profile, AFR, Bioshock (any of them), Crysis (any of them) and several other CF profiles. Turning on V-sync to see if that helps does get rid of the flicker, but i'm back where I was with 1 card and getting 40-50FPS that isn't very smooth.

I also tried updating to the latest 14.2 beta drivers, still no go, DX9 or 11. DX11 I seem to get a ghost effect where every other frame is where the match started or where I was when I alt-tabbed, like the 2nd card is just rendering the same frame over and over, same as when DX11 was in the MWO Testbuild a few times.

It seems every month or so I come back to hear people are getting CF working, I spend the better part of a day off screwing around and I'm right back where I started, broken CF, so I deal with (now) 45FPS on a single card. The game runs worse than ever.

Edit: Brief run through of the CF profile issues.
Single card/CF OFF: 90-100% GPU. 40-60FPS
Default: No scaling., 50-60% GPU usage (40-60FPS)
AFR: Scaling, but either a black screen, occasionally seeing the game, or a constant flicker.100% GPU
Bioshock: Seems OK, some settings have the background/skybox flicker, lasers cause weird artifacts and flickering. 100% GPU. 90-120FPS
Crysis: Same as AFR. 100%GPU 70-90FPS
1x1: Reverse scaling <45FPS

Pretty much the same things I've been seeing since I got these AMD cards last october.

Edited by frag85, 13 March 2014 - 06:57 PM.

[Shamous13]

frag85, on 13 March 2014 - 06:48 PM, said:

CF7970s still have issues with the default CF profile, AFR, Bioshock (any of them), Crysis (any of them) and several other CF profiles. Turning on V-sync to see if that helps does get rid of the flicker, but i'm back where I was with 1 card and getting 40-50FPS that isn't very smooth.

I also tried updating to the latest 14.2 beta drivers, still no go, DX9 or 11. DX11 I seem to get a ghost effect where every other frame is where the match started or where I was when I alt-tabbed, like the 2nd card is just rendering the same frame over and over, same as when DX11 was in the MWO Testbuild a few times.

It seems every month or so I come back to hear people are getting CF working, I spend the better part of a day off screwing around and I'm right back where I started, broken CF, so I deal with (now) 45FPS on a single card. The game runs worse than ever.

Edit: Brief run through of the CF profile issues.
Single card/CF OFF: 90-100% GPU. 40-60FPS
Default: No scaling., 50-60% GPU usage (40-60FPS)
AFR: Scaling, but either a black screen, occasionally seeing the game, or a constant flicker.100% GPU
Bioshock: Seems OK, some settings have the background/skybox flicker, lasers cause weird artifacts and flickering. 100% GPU. 90-120FPS
Crysis: Same as AFR. 100%GPU 70-90FPS
1x1: Reverse scaling <45FPS

Pretty much the same things I've been seeing since I got these AMD cards last october.

Did you do everything posted in the OP? have you run the MWO repair tool and deleted your systemoverride.cfg you can select this option in the repair tool.

Edit: Also if your using a custom user.cfg for graphic settings turn off all of the settings by putting a ";" infront of the commands. PGI has done something that has made using a custom cfg a issue. see this thread for settings that currently work. also try adding this to your cfg file.

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 08 March 2014 - 07:13 PM, said:

anyone with FPS troubles in dx11 try adding r_flush=0 to your user.cfg

not sure if it will work for DX9. report back here.

Edited by Shamous13, 14 March 2014 - 04:03 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

I was like you frag85, did you try the ULPS? Doesn't make sense that that's it, but I did it anyway. Also do the shaders/reinstall fix.

And clean out your User.cfg and just put the R_multigpu = 1 in it. Testing, remember?

[frag85]

This is the flickering I get with AFR.
While in the video it appears to just be a slightly darker screen, the whole screen is flickering.

http://youtu.be/LH-T_i302vg

And the ghosting in AFR, if the game is not flickering its doing this:
http://youtu.be/yCBOBmTfuew



Framerates I'm seeing on tourmaline, walking out to the atlas and hanging a left.



I still believe its a problem with the 7970, drivers and MWO. Not every card is treated the same in the video card drivers, so people with say CF7770. 7870 or a 6000 series that got it working-good for them, they don't have 7970s.

Edited by frag85, 14 March 2014 - 03:54 PM.