Question Still no crossfire support?

Discussion in 'Community Support' started by DayGlow, Jan 4, 2016.

  1. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    Come on, this is getting really crazy. Still no crossfire support. Running a 3 screen setup and need the horsepower to run a full grid with settings turned up. People been asking since the start.
     
  2. Andi Goodwin

    Andi Goodwin Moderator Beta tester

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    to be honest imho ; triple screens can be run on 1 gpu ... people with triple screens are not a majority in the sim racing world and there are a million other things that need doing to this game ; im sure its on a to do list but other aspects of the game need the attention aswell and are more important . i know this sounds like a rebuttal but its how i see it ...

    Andi
     
  3. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    Sorry, but the million things that need attention doesn't wash. Crossfire/SLI is a basic function that needs to be covered. Amazingly the vast majority of games released support it. Even better Nvidia/AMD help companies support it as it benefits them. They have no problem releasing new content continuously, but it's well after release and still no multi GPU support.

    The Crossfire/triple screen aren't dependent. Multi GPU is needed for anyone that wants to play at a higher resolution with acceptable FPS. No matter if I'm running Eyefinity, a 1440P, or even 4K screen. If you want 60fps for proper gameplay then you need the horsepower to support it.
     
  4. Andi Goodwin

    Andi Goodwin Moderator Beta tester

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    sorry disagree...

    Andi
     
  5. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    So you rather new content than making the game feature complete?

    Hell just fix the flashing and negative scaling. They don't have to optimize it.
     
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  6. Andi Goodwin

    Andi Goodwin Moderator Beta tester

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    no id prefer more features , as in full setup menus , better physics ;weather ;night racing; full broadcast suit; better mp dedicated server and support for leagues :in game telemetry exported to motec /virtual engineer someone moving the game to dx11/12 and from the very beginning of the game ive wanted Pit girls in 4k and after they are released yep crossfire /sli support ...why not ohh i forgot to say content ..yep id like some of that

    Andi

    Andi
     
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  7. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    If you want 4K pit girls you need multi GPU support.
     
  8. Andi Goodwin

    Andi Goodwin Moderator Beta tester

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    there is a fantastic concept and its been around for ages ... we can all do it it its called reading
    ta da

    Andi
     
  9. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    pretty myopic to only care about features that mean something to you.

    It's not that uncommon for people that play sims to have more expensive setups.

    Using your logic, why bother with wheel support? The vast majority of gamers in general don't use a wheel, only a gamepad.

    Again, it's not like multi-gpu support is that uncommon in the overall gaming world. It's a base function that most developers support.
     
  10. pixeljetstream

    pixeljetstream Well-Known Member Beta tester

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    SLI or CrossFire work mostly by doing alternate frame rendering. So every other frame is sent to another GPU, that only works well if each frame is independent of the previous and if the CPU can produce frames quick enough (ideally less than half time spent on CPU than GPU for 2x scaling). As the developer uses the graphics api he essentially has to ensure this somehow, there are no explicit warnings telling him that something may be bad for multi-gpu ;) there is some guidelines provided by the IHVs. Only with the latest apis like Directx12 or Vulkan the multiple GPUs are/ will be explicitly exposed (which more or less makes multi-GPU a full responsibility for the developer then).

    The other alternative is that those IHVs look into the command stream of the game and figure out themselves whats going on and then instruct internal heuristics in the driver so that problematic usage patterns are worked around. Or they work directly with the game developer to remove patterns that break things, provide them with enough hardware... as you mentioned. However, as this costs them effort (=money) and there is tons of games, they will prioritize this work for titles that help sell new hardware: titles that are popular in the media, in benchmarks... This may skew your impression on how many titles (say all of STEAM) actually support it, as the ones that are in the media likely benefit from the direct support. So chances are over years we saw many titles supporting it, because they were "new" and fell into that category at some point.

    Just saying if you have a grown system (engine that is developed for longer, or by people that are no longer with the company) and you hadn't taken all the guidelines into account early on, then it may be a bit more work to "fix" things later on. And again if your CPU timing is already not much quicker (want 2x) than the time your GPU frame takes, then it may be arguable whether to invest into this at all. People with tripple screens, wheel... typically have money, and current cards are quite powerful, so the problem solves itself naturally by time as people upgrade.

    However, I agree with you that very likely within sim-racing there is more people with SLI or wheels... then you would find in other games. Would think s3s has some statistics about what hardware their player base uses to help them invest in the right stuff. But as Andi said, and I am sure you agree, with so few programmers on their end, so many features for the core game that benefit "all", it's not easy to justify the cost spending for a few. That's just the harsh reality. It doesn't mean "don't care" about it, well probably for Andi ;)
     
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    Last edited: Jan 6, 2016
  11. Andi Goodwin

    Andi Goodwin Moderator Beta tester

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    its not that i dont care i do ;i want this game to be the best possible , but its a time/money thing ... and a lot of people seem to get good fps on a single card on triple screens (nvidia 970... ) and seeing as its a dx9 game and without a miracle happening i dont see an upgrade in the near future to the 2008 lizard engine (or even if its worth upgrading... personal opinion) then id really prefer the time invested in other features ( even proper triple screen support (again if lizard is capable ))

    i know i come across as a grumpy fart sometimes, its just i dont really understand the egocentric view of many racers ; for the game to shine it needs to be a full product across the board and not just on one parameter...
    thats why i race very little and spend most of my time ingame , testing and shouting at JF ; who along with the rest of the team want the features aswell but are a team that is so small its tough on them

    Andi
     
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  12. Insaneozzy

    Insaneozzy Well-Known Member

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    What this discussion is telling me is that RRE/Raceroom AG are more concerned with content (profits) than they are with optimizing the game so all player can have the full experience from what is available at this time. Lets not forget the games been in development for 3yrs, surely this is time enough to optimize hardware drivers for one of the only 2 video card manufacturers on the planet. I'm sure AMD-ATI would jump at the opportunity to assist RRE with the process.

    I think it's bad business to leave a percentage of your users "out in the cold" with inferior hardware optimization. I'm one of the lucky GTX-980 triple screen types, and no, I don't have money.

    But I was once an ATI crossfire supporter, the reason I dropped ATI cards was due to the lack of support in 70% of games, I'm talking 4+ yrs ago.
    ATI has always played 2nd fiddle to nVidia as far as having their drivers optimized within games, and it has been this way for many years, can't see it changing anytime soon either.

    You can flap your gums all you like about getting improvements to user hardware processes in RRE, but don't be surprised when a heap of content drops before any crossfire optimization is undertaken, profits before players.

    Just my 2 cents.
     
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  13. m.bohlken

    m.bohlken Well-Known Member

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    Hm, interessting aspect - maybe AMD would assist S3S in the development of a DX12 and Crossfire-Compatible graphics-engine that supports Triple-Screen and VR. ^^ But I guess that would just happen in dreams...

    As long R3E isn't on the Benchmarking-list of big Hardware-Test-Magazines AMD and Nvidia aren't very interessted in optimizing a game in their drivers.

    I'm not sure that Raceroom AG is so much interested in Profits but I'm pretty sure that they don't want to lose money. We don't have any insights in the Raceroom AG, their internal organisation and what happens in the Background. But regarding to r3E they simply need new Content to pay their bills, and preinvest in future Content to pay their bills in future. The rest of the money will hopefully be invested in the completion of the game and additionally preinvests for the future of the game or a successor.
     
  14. Insaneozzy

    Insaneozzy Well-Known Member

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    Agreed, that would be a BIG ASK, but it's how nVidia got a foothold of the market, they still actively work with game studios to maximize their drivers, but this probably cost's a substantial sum from the Dev.
    I don't know, if S3S were using DX11 to start with, there might of been a glimmer of hope. I believe Kunos has optimized their graphics in AC, and there a smaller Dev team than S3S.
    I'm not apposed to Dev companies making a buck, making a profit is a necessity if ones company is to expand and be successful, but there are things one can do to enrich the experience of the financially invested user without it affecting profits, in fact there are things S3S/Raceroom could do to improve the sales and grow the user base, and I'm sure those idea's have been bashed to death on threads all over the net, so I'm not going to get on my soapbox here.

    Cheers
     
  15. gp20

    gp20 Well-Known Member

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    Hopefully i'm able to get 120 fps without sli on a single screen (projector).
    I will try VSR today and i should be able to have an upper résolution without going lower than 60 fps.
    An R9 285X should work and you can find it for 160 euros.
     
  16. tort21

    tort21 New Member

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    A beta tester saying pit girls in 4K are more important than something as basic as SLI/X-Fire support?! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Multi-gpu support isn't some small minority or exotic feature and absolutely needs addressed sooner rather than later. Priorities are all out of whack....
    There are more and more people running 4K, several people with 120/144hz monitors running higher than 1080P, more than you probably think running triple monitors, VR coming on strong needing high refresh rates....point being, there are several reasons to ALLOW people with multi-gpus to take full advantage of the horsepower at hand and be able to maximize what the game already has (eye candy cranked with high refresh rates).
     
  17. smarteyeball

    smarteyeball New Member

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    Unfortunately my experience over the years with SLI/Crossfire setups and games engine that aren't developed with multi GPU support from the outset, particularly older engines that get upgraded over time - Multi GPU implementation and support often stays poor or simply non existent for a variety of reasons already mentioned in this thread.

    R3E may get decent multi GPU support in the future, but for the immediate future I'm not going to hold my breath.
     
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  18. CheerfullyInsane

    CheerfullyInsane Well-Known Member

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    You may want to re-read his post one more time.
    It's called sarcasm.

    As for this whole Crossfire/SLI thing....
    I'm definitely with Andi on this one. Plenty of other things to do before we go down that path.
    Looking at Nvidias list of officially supported SLI games, there's around 320 of them.
    The X-fire list from Raptr has around 450.
    Most of which are FPS or the like.
    So multi-GPU support is far from a necessity these days, it is in fact fairly rarely implemented except for AAA titles.
     
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  19. DayGlow

    DayGlow New Member

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    Strange, every sim I've tried is able to use CF. May not be optimized, but can be used for a small gain.

    To say it's rarely implemented is simply false.
     
  20. CheerfullyInsane

    CheerfullyInsane Well-Known Member

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    Okay, it's fairly rarely officially supported then.
    Usually you can gain something by using multi-GPUs, but investing in another GPU to gain 2-3 FPS is not what I'd call cost-effective.
     
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