GTX 295, SLI and EQ2

[Queen Alexandria]

<p>I have a GTX 295 graphics card which is understood to be SLI.  SLI is not supported in EQ2 because it can cause odd behavior.  Fortunately I didnt notice any odd behavior until I went to Commonlands and Lavastorm... as well as Veeshan's Peak.  From what I gather there is some type of graphic that causes the game to glitch for me unless I disable SLI.</p><p>Everytime I disable SLI it wants me to restart my PC causing a major inconvenience.  I don't want to have to restart my PC twice everytime I play EQ2 and decide to play another game.</p><p>Is there any way to disable SLI for only one game?  Or is there possibly a way to request this issue be pinpointed and possibly fixed?  The rest of the game works fine without having to disable SLI.  It just seems kind of strange.</p><p>The glitch I am experiencing is my UI will flicker on and off.  I can play the game fine but as you can imagine it causes a major slowdown and it is hard to read text.  As soon as i zone out into a different place everything works fine.</p><p>Any work arounds for this?</p><p>Any help is appreciated.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>While SLI may contribute to that issue, it's possible that it could be resolved with a driver change/update.  What version are you using currently?  The UI flicker seems to be caused by certain hardware configs with the 190/191 series drivers.  In most cases you can work around it by using the older 186 series drivers for now.</p>

[skycruise]

<p>One trick I have discovered to resolve this flicckering is to:</p><p>1) squint</p><p>2) go into Start Menu | options  | widescreen letterbox | SLIDE the slider over anywheres and no more flicker</p><p>or change the font  texture resolution!</p>

[Wskrs]

<p>I have a very similiar setup and a GTX 295 as well and I have tried everything to get multi gpu to work in eq2 and can not but there is an easy way to set up your computer.</p><p>Go into the Nvidia Control Panel and then to Manage 3D Settings on the left, on the right click on Program settings and UNCHECK the box that says show only programs found on this computer. Then find EverQuest 2 in the list and while it's selected find the Featured called Multi GPU performance mode and set it to Single-GPU.</p><p>EQ2 will now run very well, also if you want in game options you can check the synchronize refresh and triple buffer boxes but I am not sure if this does anything for performance or not.</p><p>Hope this is what you need</p><p>Wskrs</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Zenaide@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">I have a GTX 295 graphics card which is understood to be SLI</span></strong>.  SLI is not supported in EQ2 because it can cause odd behavior.  Fortunately I didnt notice any odd behavior until I went to Commonlands and Lavastorm... as well as Veeshan's Peak.  From what I gather there is some type of graphic that causes the game to glitch for me unless I disable SLI.</p><p>Everytime I disable SLI it wants me to restart my PC causing a major inconvenience.  I don't want to have to restart my PC twice everytime I play EQ2 and decide to play another game.</p><p>Is there any way to disable SLI for only one game?  Or is there possibly a way to request this issue be pinpointed and possibly fixed?  The rest of the game works fine without having to disable SLI.  It just seems kind of strange.</p><p>The glitch I am experiencing is my UI will flicker on and off.  I can play the game fine but as you can imagine it causes a major slowdown and it is hard to read text.  As soon as i zone out into a different place everything works fine.</p><p>Any work arounds for this?</p><p>Any help is appreciated.</p></blockquote><p>Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your verbage.  </p><p>In order to have SLI enabled you have to have "2" physical video cards of the same make and model in order for SLI to work.  By the wording of your post it sounds as if you have only 1 card that is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">"capable"</span> of SLI which is a big difference to having 2 cards in SLI configuration.  If that's the case, then SLI will not work and can cause some serious graphic issues as the motherboard tries to split the work between the 2 cards and doesn't find 2.  Granted EQ2 doesn't support SLI so you probably won't see too many problems but If you do only have 1 physical card then disable SLI completely.  </p><p>If you do have 2 cards then I applogize for the misunderstanding on my part.  I would then recomend checking and/or updating your video drivers.  I had a similar issue a year or two ago and actually had to roll back to an older driver to stop the flicker. </p><p>Another possible solution for you is to check the physical bridge between the 2 cards and if it has come loose, or burned out.</p>

[Kain-UK]

<p>The GTX295 is 2 cards bolted together into 1 package.</p><p>Therefore the OP is running SLI with one card. My 9800GX2 is the same... two 9800GTX cards bolted together so i'm running SLI in 1 card. It was great when I only had one PCI-Express port.</p><p>Doesn't like EQ2 very much though.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Kain-UK wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The GTX295 is 2 cards bolted together into 1 package.</p><p>Therefore the OP is running SLI with one card. My 9800GX2 is the same... two 9800GTX cards bolted together so i'm running SLI in 1 card. It was great when I only had one PCI-Express port.</p><p>Doesn't like EQ2 very much though.</p></blockquote><p>Exactly my point friend.  I appologize for not being clear in my earlier post.  The 2 cards are bolted together essensially making them 1 card with 2 gpus using 1 PCI slot.  Therefore its really only 1 card (in one PCI slot). </p><p>If you're enabling the SLI in the Nvidia graphics control panel you are telling the computer you have 2 different dual cards (IE a quad SLI in the case of the GTX 295) through 2 seperate dual cards through an external bridge and connected to the mother board on 2 PCI slots.</p><p>I'm running a GTX 295 now (just built my new machine) and i'm not having any problems... SLI disabled.  Moreover, I'm running Call of Duty MW2 at max settings with zero problems... SLI disabled.  I love this card!</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Exactly my point friend.  I appologize for not being clear in my earlier post.  The 2 cards are bolted together essensially making them 1 card with 2 gpus using 1 PCI slot.  Therefore its really only 1 card (in one PCI slot). </p><p>If you're enabling the SLI in the Nvidia graphics control panel you are telling the computer you have 2 different dual cards (IE a quad SLI in the case of the GTX 295) through 2 seperate dual cards through an external bridge and connected to the mother board on 2 PCI slots.</p><p>I'm running a GTX 295 now (just built my new machine) and i'm not having any problems... SLI disabled.  Moreover, I'm running Call of Duty MW2 at max settings with zero problems... SLI disabled.  I love this card!</p></blockquote><p>I believe you're right about this. </p><p>The 295s are really nice cards and I wish I had money for one myself.  I ended up with a 280 because there was a really good deal for one on newegg when I was upgrading.  It's great, but not quite on par with the 295.</p>

[TemberWolf]

<p>I have 2 ATi HD3870's and noticed I would get worse perfromance in full screen than windowed. People have already discussed that and I knew it was going to happen but when I enabled Anti-aliasing there was an incress in performance for full screen mode. Maybe using AA forces the game to some what be more willing to use the SLI/Crossfire set up.</p><p>TSR-JasonC made a post with info on how to do that here: <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=35985" target="_blank">Neat rendering engine tricks</a></p><p>I'm not saying this will fix the issue you are having but either way the game looks sooooo much better with AA enabled that it hurts my eyes to look at it with out it......though gpu shadows seams to break this.</p>