home-Average-What is SLI-Ready memory. NVIDIA SLI: theory and practice of using Sli technology nvidia RAM

What is SLI-Ready memory. NVIDIA SLI: theory and practice of using Sli technology nvidia RAM

SLI-Ready Memory

Possible values:

High performance, High Frequency, Optimal, Disabled

Description:

This option is specific to motherboards on nVIDIA chipsets, allows you to read from the SPD microcircuit not only the four main timings of the memory module (tCL, tRCD, tRP and tRAS) and the operating frequency, but also the auxiliary timings, the optimal module supply voltage, etc. SLI-Ready Memory is the marketing name for memory modules that support Enhanced Performance Profile (EPP) in SPD. When choosing Disabled only standard information will be read from the SPD chip. Other values \u200b\u200ballow you to set the profile of the modules: High performance (with minimal delays), High Frequency (at maximum frequency) and Optimal (represents a compromise between the previous two values). Do not forget only that the SLI mode for memory modules is, to some extent, legalized overclocking and theoretically can lead to unstable work computer. The situation is smoothed out only by the fact that the manufacturer guarantees performance for all frequencies and timings set using extended profiles.

In some BIOS versions for motherboards based on NVIDIA chipsets, you are deprived of the ability to control the use of extended profiles (if possible, they are always used), and this option is a complete analog

Hello question! Bought two geForce video cards GTX 1070 38 thousand each and installed them in my computer in an SLI bundle, but the results intests in Futuremark 3DMark show that performance (compared to a single video card) increased by only 10-15%, and I was expecting at least 50%. Also in modern games, two vidyuhi did not increase my FPS, and in some (in particularFAR CRY PRIMAL) even downgraded. It turns out that it would be better if I bought not two, but one video card for this moneyGeForce GTX 1080 or even GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. And so I threw the money down the drain. Please do not repeat my mistake. And yet, few people know that not all NVIDIA video cards of the tenth series can work in bridge mode (SLI), for example, GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 cannot, alsoGTX 1070 cannot be paired with GTX 1080 ... Please tell us about it on your website.

Hello everyone! Almost all users who like to chop into various toys have probably thought or heard about the fact that two or more video cards can be installed in the system to combine their power. Actually the technology of combining two or more graphics processors for processing three-dimensional images presented by Nvidia is called SLI (scalable link interface, Russian scalable communication interface). The analog from AMD is called CrossFireX. What are the pros and cons of each technology, is it worth using these technologies, how do they work I'll tell you about this today.

  • And most importantly, I will tell you why it is unprofitable for video card manufacturers that SLI or CrossFireX technologies increase the performance of the computer's graphics system by 100%.

So let's start with the green ones (Nvidia). In order to put a bundle in your SLI system, you will need 2+ video cards of the same series and one model. Unlike Red (AMD) (which we'll talk about a little later), GPUs are more finicky in this regard. If the older lines of cards made it possible to combine absolutely any models into a bridge (the main thing is that they were the same), then in the last tenth line everything has changed. You can only build a bridge with GTX 1070, 1080 and 1080Ti. What is the reason for this for me personally remains a mystery, but, unfortunately, now only these models can be combined. I can't give any information about the titans.

(Two GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards connected by an SLI bridge)

As for the reds, they have both advantages over greens and disadvantages. The main advantage is that you can combine absolutely any model, the main condition is that the combined video cards are built on the same architecture. For example, AMD allows to put together RX 460 and RX 470. But putting the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in a bundle will no longer work. Well, the main disadvantage of CrossFireX is the performance gain. The power gain with direct competing cards is significantly lower for reds than for greens. And AMD's optimization in most games supporting bundles of video cards is much worse. Yes, not all games support SLI and CrossFireX. As for the secondary manufacturer of video cards, it has absolutely no value. That is, if you have two GTX 970s, one from MSI and the other from Palit, this will not affect the result in any way. This rule applies to both Nvidia and AMD video cards.

To build a system based on SLI and CrossfireX, you will need:

1. A motherboard with two or more PCI-express x16 slots that supports this technology. Not all mothers that have two or more connectors for video cards support a bunch of video cards! On the motherboard itself there is always a corresponding marking, it is written about this on the manufacturer's website, and it is also always indicated in the accompanying instructions. Remember that if you do not need a motherboard that supports SLI and CrossFireX, then choose the appropriate board, since you always overpay money for the fact that the motherboard is equipped with video card communication support.

2. Powerful power supply. Two graphics cards \u003d high power consumption. Recommended unit from 550 watts.

3. The video cards themselves supporting these technologies.

4. The bridge that connects the video cards. As far as I know, AMD allows you to combine cards without using this bridge, that is, using software... However, in this case, the loss in performance will be about 15-20% than if you were using a bridge.

In my opinion, building a system based on these technologies is not worth it. Not worth it, because it is better to buy one more powerful video card than two, but weaker. For example, two GTX 1070s will be weaker than one GTX 1080. And all because these technologies are very poorly optimized for games and other resource-intensive applications, the green ones are certainly better than the red ones, but still bad. The performance gain, as you might think, will not be 100% from the use of the second GPU. In the best case, it will be 40-50%. And then, in the overwhelming majority, it will be 15-25%. That is, the question of the expediency of such a purchase remains open in terms of price / performance. It makes sense to install such a system for yourself only if the power of the top-end on this moment a video card is not enough for you. And this only happens in very highly specialized cases. For example, to achieve a stable number of frames per second on a 144Hz monitor in very heavy games. In light games, the top 1080Ti copes with this task calmly. Or if you want to play in high definition - 4 or 8k.

Also, do not forget about video memory. If you combine two video cards with different amounts of memory, then only the memory that is smaller in size is used. For example, you put RX 480 with 4gb and RX48 with 8gb. As you might think, 12 gigabytes of video memory will be available to you. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Only 4 gigs will be available. If you have two identical video cards, but operating at different frequencies, then both of them will also work at the lowest frequency. That is, for example, one works at 1544Hz, the other at 1622Hz, both will work at 1544Hz. In the future, with the full transition to DirectX 12, we are promised full optimization and full use of all the resources of the combined video cards. That is, there will be a 100% increase in power and a complete summation of the available video memory. But this is all a promise, in fact we have what we have. Of course, there are such interesting game projects where we can get both 70% and 80% performance gain, but, unfortunately, there are very few such projects and they are rather an exception to the rule. As I like to repeat, it is ultimately up to you to decide, and I have already decided for myself that at the moment SLI and CrossFireX are extremely inappropriate!

Why video card makers will never bring SLI and CrossFireX technologies to mind and why a second video card will never add 100% performance to your computer's graphics system

The answer is very simple. Imagine the situation. You bought a computer with a powerful video card and after a couple of years you started to miss its power. You went to a store or aftermarket and bought a second such graphics card inexpensively, adding 100% performance to your computer's graphics system. But this will never happen! It is unprofitable for the manufacturer, but it is beneficial that you always buy a new product and at a high price. That's the whole secret. That's all, see you soon!

SLI-Ready memory, also known as EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles) memory, was created by the marketing departments of NVIDIA and Corsair.

EPP profiles, in which, in addition to the standard memory timings, the value of the optimal supply voltage of the modules is also "written", as well as some extra optionsare written to the SPD chip of the module.

Thanks to EPP profiles, the laboriousness of self-optimization of the memory subsystem is reduced, although “additional” timings do not have a significant effect on system performance.

So there is no significant gain from using SLI-Ready memory compared to conventional manually optimized memory.

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Extensiveness and intensity are two key concepts of the development of human progress. Extensive and intensive paths of development of society, technology, and of all mankind as a whole, have been replacing each other for many centuries. There are many examples of this in all spheres of economic activity. But today we are not interested in agriculture and cattle breeding, we are interested in information Technology and computers. As an example, let's take a quick look at the development of central processing units.

We will not go deep into the distant 80s and 90s, let's start right away with Pentium 4. After a long intensive development of NetBurst technology, building up "steroid" megahertz, the industry hit the wall - it turned out to be very difficult to "overclock" single-core processors further, and to get more more powerful processor, higher costs are required. And then dual-core processors appeared - an extensive solution to the problem. Soon they also stopped providing the required performance, and a new architecture, Core, appeared, which at lower clock frequencies gives more performance - an intensive solution to the problem. And so it will continue.

But what happens with the development of the second component, which is important for the fan of spectacular PC games - a video card? And the same thing happens as with processors. At this stage of development, single-chip video cards can no longer provide the required performance. Therefore, both leading companies in the video card market (NVIDIA and AMD) are developing and actively introducing their own technologies to increase the performance of a video system by combining two, three, and even four video cards in one PC. In this article, we will consider the first company (since it was she who presented its development first) NVIDIA and its SLI technology.

What is SLI technology?

NVIDIA SLI technology is a revolutionary approach to graphics performance scaling by combining multiple NVIDIA graphics cards on a single system.

History

In 1998, 3dfx introduced the Voodoo2 graphics processor, among other innovations of which was the SLI technology (English Scan Line Interleave), which involved the joint work of two Voodoo2 chips to form an image. Even cards from different manufacturers, as well as cards with different memory sizes, could work with SLI technology. The SLI system allowed working with resolutions up to 1024x768, which seemed incredible at the time. The disadvantages of 3dfx SLI were the high cost of accelerators ($ 600) and high heat dissipation. However, video cards are soon moving from the PCI bus to the faster dedicated AGP graphics port. Since there was only one port on motherboards, the release of video cards with SLI support was temporarily stopped.

In 2000, with the release of the new VSA-100 3dfx chip, it was possible to realize SLI on AGP, but this time within the framework of one board, which housed two or four such chips.

However, boards based on the SLI system were very power hungry and failed due to power problems. About 200 Voodoo5 6000 boards were sold all over the world, and only 100 of them were actually workers. Such an unsuccessful promotion of a promising accelerator, in which very large investments were made, led to the bankruptcy of the company. In 2001 NVIDIA buys 3dfx for $ 110 million.

In 2004, with the release of the first solutions based on the new tire PCI Express NVIDIA announces support in its products for multi-chip SLI data processing technology, which stands for Scalable Link Interface.

At first, the advancement of SLI technology did not go very smoothly, primarily due to constantly revealed flaws in the drivers, as well as the need to "sharpen" them for each specific application, otherwise the player would not get any benefit from buying a pair of accelerators. But generations of accelerators changed, drivers were improved, the list of supported games expanded. And so, at the end of 2007, Triple SLI technology was put into operation, which allows combining 3 NVIDIA video cards in a bundle:

The manufacturer promises a performance boost of up to 250% over a single chip. But this did not become the limit, now the next step is Quad SLI, which makes it possible to force 4 GPUs to work on rendering the game scene, albeit in a pair of dual-GPU video cards.

Imaging algorithms

Split Frame Rendering

Split Frame Rendering Algorithm

This is a commonly used mode when the image is split into several parts, the number of which corresponds to the number of video cards in the bundle. Each part of the image is fully processed by one video card, including the geometric and pixel components. ( Analog in CrossFire - Scissor algorithm)

The Split Frame Rendering algorithm is easily scalable to 3, 4, and possibly more GPUs in the future.

Alternate frame rendering

Alternate Frame Rendering Algorithm Diagram

The frames are processed in turn: one video card processes only even frames, and the second only processes odd frames. However, this algorithm has a drawback. The fact is that one frame can be simple, and another difficult to process. In addition, this algorithm was patented by ATI during the release of a dual-GPU video card.

Quad SLI technology also uses a hybrid mode that combines SFR and AFR.

SLI AA (Anti Aliasing), SLI FSAA (Full Scene Anti Aliasing)

This algorithm aims to improve image quality. The same picture is generated on all video cards with different anti-aliasing patterns. The video card smooths the frame with a certain step relative to the image of another video card. The resulting images are then mixed and output. Thus, the maximum clarity and detail of the image is achieved. The following anti-aliasing modes are available: 8x, 10x, 12x, 14x, 16x and 32x. ( Analog in CrossFire - SuperAA)

Construction principles

To build a computer based on SLI, you must have:

  • a motherboard with two or more PCI Express slots supporting SLI technology (as a rule, the name of a motherboard contains the word SLI).
  • Sufficiently powerful power supply unit (usually recommended from 550 W);
  • video cards GeForce 6/7/8/9 / GTX or Quadro FX with PCI Express bus;
  • a bridge connecting video cards.

At the same time, we note that support for chipsets for working with SLI is implemented in software, not hardware. But video cards must belong to the same class, while the version BIOS boards and their manufacturer does not matter.

Currently, SLI technology is supported by the following operating systems:

  • Windows XP 32-bit
  • Windows XP 64-bit
  • Windows Vista 32-bit
  • Windows Vista 64-bit
  • Linux 32-bit
  • Linux 64-bit (AMD-64 / EM64T)

An SLI system can be organized in two ways:

  • With the help of a special bridge;
  • Programmatically.

In the latter case, the load on the PCIe bus increases, which has a bad effect on performance, so this method has not become widespread. This mode can only be used with relatively weak accelerators.

If the SLI bridge is not installed, then the driver issues a warning that the SLI mode will not work at full capacity.

For example, this is how a special bridge for connecting video cards may look like if it is made on a PCB. In addition, flexible bridges are now widespread as they are cheaper to manufacture. But to activate the 3-Way SLI technology, so far only a rigid special bridge is used, which actually accommodates three conventional ones in a "ring" mode.

As mentioned above, the Quad SLI system is also popularized. It involves unification in unified system two dual-chip boards. Thus, it turns out that 4 chips are involved in the construction of the image, but this is still the lot of inveterate enthusiasts and has no practical value for ordinary users.

For a simple user, something else is important, for the sake of which it was actually conceived this technology... Buying an SLI motherboard is a good head start for upgrading your PC in the future, as it provides the option to add another graphics card. No other way of "upgrade", except for a complete change of the system, does not even come close to the increase in gaming performance, which is provided by the second video card.

It looks something like this. You are buying a good PC with a good modern graphics card. Play calmly modern games, but after a year and a half your system can no longer satisfy you with the image quality and speed in recent games. Then, instead of replacing the old video card (or even the entire PC), you simply add another one and get almost double the power of the video system.

However, everything sounds so simple in theory. But in practice, the user will have to face many difficulties.

The first is the games and applications themselves. No one has yet come up with a cure for the dreaded word "optimization" - yes, not only drivers, but also games must be optimized for SLI technology in order to work correctly with it. NVIDIA says SLI technology supports “ longest list of games ». If the game you are interested in is not on the list, the company offers to create your own settings profile for it.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of games that are not SLI compliant, and creating a profile does not fix this in any way. There is only one way out - to wait for patches from game developers and new drivers from NVIDIA. However, these games include mostly old ones, which can be handled without problems by a single modern video card, or less popular ones, which are not interesting to the vast majority of players due to poor playability. But new powerful games already provide for the use of two video cards. For example, in the game Call of Duty 4 there is a very specific switch in the graphics settings section.

You can find out about enabling the SLI function by special indicators right in the game, with the appropriate "test" driver setting.

If you see horizontal or vertical green stripes on the monitor screen, it means that Show SLI Visual Indicators is enabled in the NVIDIA Display Control Panel. When this option is enabled, you can see how the graphics load is distributed to the GPU, and the names of the SLI components in your system will be changed: SLI for two GPUs will be named “SLI”, the name of 3-way NVIDIA SLI will be changed to “SLI x3”, and Quad SLI will be called “Quad SLI”. For games rendered using Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) technology, the vertical green bar will grow or shrink depending on the scale of the expansion. For games rendered using Split-Frame Rendering (SFR) technology, the horizontal green bar will go up and down to show how the load is distributed across all GPUs. If the detail level of the top and bottom half of the screen is the same, the horizontal bar will be close to the middle. To enable or disable this feature, simply open the NVIDIA Control Panel and select 3D Settings.

The second common problem in computing with multiple graphics chips is the synchronization of the latter. As mentioned above, the AFR rendering method has one peculiarity: one frame can be simple, while the other can be difficult to process. With a large difference in the complexity of frame processing, one video card can process it much faster than the other. This leads to "microlag" - small image delays, like jerks, but the overall FPS looks comfortable. This effect appears quite rarely, but even the developers do not know how to deal with it. There is a simple way out for the user - in games where "microlags" with the AFR method are observed, switch to the SFR method, specifying it in the game profile.

In SFR mode, the display is split into two parts. The first card gives out the top of the picture, and the second - the bottom. With dynamic load balancing, the driver evenly distributes the load between the two cards.

The third problem is the processor. The fact is that when using several video adapters, the load on the processor increases not only due to the use of heavy graphics modes, but also due to synchronization of video chips. Therefore, in order to unleash the full potential of a combination of several video cards, you need a powerful processor. Although today this is not such a pressing issue as a couple of years ago.

Additional features of new technology

The new generation of SLI motherboards and graphics cards provide users with much more functionality than conventional 3D acceleration.

Hybrid SLI Enables More Rational Use of Shared Mode graphics coreintegrated into the chipset and a discrete graphics card.

The technology consists of two parts: GeForce Boost and HybridPower.

The first will be used in applications intensively working with 3D graphics. With GeForce Boost, the accelerator integrated into the system logic will take over part of the calculations of the three-dimensional scene, which will give a noticeable increase in performance to those systems where not the fastest discrete adapter is installed, for example, the GeForce 8500 GT or GeForce 8400 GS.

HybridPower, on the other hand, will allow the use of integrated graphics by disabling the external accelerator when the user is browsing the Internet, office applications or watching video. The greatest benefit, according to NVIDIA, from this technology will be the owners of laptops with a dedicated graphics card, the time autonomous work which will increase markedly.

Hybrid SLI is currently supported by: GeForce 8500 GT and GeForce 8400 GS desktop GPUs for GeForce Boost; powerful GeForce GTX 280, GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce GTX 260, GeForce 9800 GTX +, GeForce 9800 GTX and GeForce 9800 GT in HybridPower mode; and motherboards for aMD processors on nForce 780a, nForce 750a, nForce 730a (GeForce Boost only) with integrated GeForce 8200 graphics accelerator.

As you can see, energy savings can reach impressive values.

Highly useful function and for overclockers, since in addition to saving energy, it allows the main video card to "rest" at the time of idleness and extend its service life, especially if extreme overclocking is used.

Another useful additional feature of the SLI link is the ability to use up to 4 monitors simultaneously.

Practical use

We have already tested various video cards in SLI mode many times. Let's try to summarize the information received a little.

In preparing the article, information was used from the official site NVIDIA and the free encyclopedia Wikipedia.

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