SLI support for WoW

World of Warcraft, like any 3D game as far as I know, can be made to take advantage of video cards in SLI. Check your World of Warcraft program specific settings in the nVidia control panel, you'll likely need to change the setting from "single card" to SFR/AFR. I believe this requires moving it from the recommended nVidia setting which may imply that any issues while playing the game in SLI will not be supported by them. I've never had any problems with it though. I think I use AFR1.

Q u o t e:


WoW does NOT have native SLI support. Whoever is feeding you this information either needs to be fired or retrained.

Pardon? What does native SLI support entail exactly? The ability to have your cards render every other frame? That relies on nothing regarding the application being run. As I said, as far as I know anything can be made to take advantage of an SLI setup, regardless of the presence of a marketing logo, or lack thereof.

Set up AFR, each card renders every other frame. Ta da, SLI. And this is from personal experience of my dual-8800GTX setup at home.

Q u o t e:



Does WoW have native multi-core technology built in?

Yes, although it's not true multi-threading. It uses additional cores to offload some threaded systems, such as software sound.

Q u o t e:
But Drysc, that can't be his problem. A single 8500GT should give a better performance than what he is reporting.


Edit:

Yes wow, since a recent patch, supports dual cores.

It really depends on the resolution and settings he could be forcing for filtering/fsaa options. Without it running the second card I can see 25-30fps being possible.

Of course chipset/video card drivers are a possibility as well, but that's going to require me to move this thread to tech support for those guys to help out.

Q u o t e:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii20/Victoriousllama/settings.jpg

is my video settings

Can't tell the FSAA level but assuming you're forcing nothing specific through the nVidia control panel your resolution (1680x1050) is high enough where I think your FPS is accurate for a single card. Forcing SLI has to do with the application specific settings found in the nVidia control panel, and you should probably refer to their documentation for help on that.

Also, just an FYI you have "Level of Detail" checked in your WoW video options, and for slightly degraded performance but less "pop-in" (the effect that makes mountains and such look like they're deforming as you get closer/further away) you should uncheck it. That is, after you bump your FPS a bit by enabling SLI.

Q u o t e:


How the heck do you fit two of those in a computer? I have one and it barely fits and I have a full tower.

I couldn't until I got a new case, it really depends on the inner design of the case. Make sure you research before buying anything and really look at the space requirements of not only the card, but the cabling that will be running to everything. A good cable management system is invaluable and worth the trouble of sweating over setting up.

A lot of case manufacturers have gotten into the habit of mentioning "SLI support" or some other way of indicating that the interior design allows enough space for dual video cards. Nothing beats actually seeing the case in-person though, if you're able.

Q u o t e:


You've got your refresh rate set at 60Hz if you change it to 75 Hz you will/might get 75 FPS...........

I don't think a sync limitation is the issue in this case (they aren't capping at 60FPS), but it's good advice to match your monitors native resolution/refresh rate. I'm guessing for 1680x1050 it's still 60Hz anyway though, not sure I've ever seen one that runs at 75Hz although they may exist.

Q u o t e:
thanks drysc i just got about 30-40 more fps with my dual gtx setup using afr1, running around in netherstorm now @ 140 fps everything turned up 1920x1200res on a 24" widescreen

Awesome! Not that you'll likely notice any difference between 100 and 140, but it's still cool to see the numbers jump, eh? ;)

Q u o t e:
Drysc, wow will not use SLi nomatter what you do. Even changing modes it still only uses one GPU.

Sorry, you're incorrect. As I said I don't believe the application (World of Warcraft) has any say on where the frames are routed for rendering. It's up to the API and drivers. If it wants to send every other frame to a separate card, it can, and it's beyond the game to refuse it to do so.

Now if you're talking support, you're right I don't think it's officially supported, which means it may not necessarily work for you, but it can and does work for ... well, me at least.

I'm sure I can switch to SFR, turn on the lines, take a screenshot and prove it to you if you're really that much in doubt.

Q u o t e:
You probably should, although WoW defaults to AFR on most nVidia drivers. I bet you don't see the AFR load balance go much farther than halfway up from the mid marker for each card (except at the loading screen).

I have a GX2, and when I enable SLI for WoW, the load balance rarely gets over 50% for each card. Meaning the combined GPU output is ~100%, instead of higher (the theoretical maximum being 200%).

It defaulted to "single gpu" for me actually. I saw no improvement with SFR though, and huge improvements with AFR, so I guess it was the opposite for me.

Q u o t e:
Just to note Drysc, you might want to talk with your fellow PC Technical support forum folks. It's pretty well common knowledge over there that most of the time, WoW is primarily CPU bound rather than GPU. This is why most people don't see much benefit from adding another card for SLI unless they are running at very high settings and resolution + encounter a scene that is not held back by the CPU.

Oh sure, but I don't think anyone would or probably should get SLI for World of Warcraft. That's not why I have two cards anyway, there are other games in the world.

Q u o t e:


Sorry, i am not incorrect. I have an SLi setup right next to me and it does not work. If one core is heating up and the other is not then SLi is not working. If the nvidia SLi sidebar is all the way up or down then SLi is not working. I guarantee your SLi is not working. 7950gx2, 2 6600's 2 6800's, some guy recently on a tech board i frequent posted his new 8800 gt's don't work. they all do not run SLi correctly with wow. Unless of course you mean SLi works the same way Blizzard says it does, meaning the game actually runs with SLi enabled then sure it works but still does not take advantage of it.

SLi and multi-threads need to be added to this game. this is the dual core age and one of the top 5 games (WoW) should support both. there is no excuse. you have the money, the means and the manpower to do so. so why is it after 2-3 years now people are still asking for this to be implemented?

Multithreads would be the most performance enhancing thing you could do to this game to reduce load times and lag. everyone on a pentium 4 w/hyperthreading or any dual core would benefit with almost twice the framerate. I saw an entire article about some german guys forcing multithreading with wow in OpenGl, their framerate went from 54fps to 108fps in empty ironforge.

Well apparently a printscreen doesn't capture the "SLi Visual Indicators" but they indeed do show, and move as they throw frames to alternating cards. Green section in the middle, increasing and decreasing with the load. It works for me at least. The last I read from a tech support rep is that it is actually supported, so you may want to contact them for assistance. I may have been mistaken in reading that, but regardless it does work for me. The performance gains appear to be fairly minimal contrary to my previous findings though, but still notable.

The game does throw some functions that run on their own threads to alternate cores, it's just not truly multi-threaded at this point. I couldn't say if it's planned or even necessary to do so at this point, similar to running the game in SLi. Even though SLi does work. :)