X3: Terran Conflict in SLI

[Seyumi]

I am having trouble figuring out if X3: Terran Conflict is/will be SLI friendly. These are the facts that I was able to dig up online:

-Currently, X3:TC is ATI Crossfire friendly and see a significant gain in CF Mode
-Major benchmarks reviews at Xbitlabs other places shows that X3:TC has little/no performance gain while in Nvidia SLI.
-According to Nvidia's Official SLI Page, X3: Reunion supports SLI
-People over at Extreme Overclock Fourms are having the highest benchmark scores in SLI / TRI SLI benches with X3:TC benchmark

This is what I'm thinking of:

-The current Nvidia drivers do not support X3:TC since it hasn't been released in America yet
-I've never run SLI before but I heard you can "Force SLI" into games and they will use SLI even though they officially don't support it
-I'm assuming this is how the people at Extreme Overclock forums are getting the big bench #'s while in SLI and TRI SLI mode

This is the reason why I'm trying to research this:

-Currently my computer can't run X3:TC at highest settings even in non-laggy sectors (30" 2560x1600 monitor, 8800GTX, 3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 800, Intel X38 Motherboard, 1000W Power Supply)
-I will be upgrading my computer primary for X3:TC in April when 2.0 in America is released (and yes I know about the fixed EXE that may be in the 2.1 patch to increase performance)
-Computer tower upgrade will be something around a i7 920 @ 4Ghz, Evga X58 Classified, 6 GB Triple Channel DDR3 2000 @ CL7, same 30" 2560x1600 Monitor, 1000W power supply)
-I’m an Nvidia fan so graphics card will either be a Evga GTX 285 FTW Edition or a Evga GTX 295 (dual core gpu). Extra 285's or a 295 will be added until game will run smoothly at max settings with VERY LARGE scale battles.
-I would rather just buy a 295 and get it over with since I doubt the game would need more than that to run at full settings since the game is very CPU bound.
-I’m just trying to figure out if the 295 will be a waste of money (since it's dual gpu) and just get a 285 instead for better performance with the whole SLI issue. Maybe not now but once the drivers are officially supported.
- How many 285's or 295's do you think I need to run this game smoothly on 2560x1600 with dozens if not hundreds of ships/stations on the screen at the same time?
-I’m asking here because I’m sure the people at Extreme Overclock Forum are completely clueless and have probably never actually played the game before with large scale battles. After trying to browse all 190+ pages of useless bragging posts, they only seem to care about how high they can get their #'s on the benchmark program for e-peen points which probably doesn't even compare to the real game anymore. Any help from people actually playing X3:TC in SLI would be greatly appreciated. Thank You~

[Tracker001]

Here's a posting about SLI results . May help.
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=234881&start=0

[CBJ]

At the high end the graphics card really shouldn't be the limiting factor. Throwing several high-end cards at the game probably isn't going to help your framerate much as slow-downs are much more likely to be caused by the CPU running out of steam than the graphics card.

In your position I would wait for the 2.0 patch and see how things look in the Tech Support forum. Some of the high-end nVidia cards are currently not performing as well as expected in X3TC under certain circumstances and you don't want to spend that much money only to find that performance is no better than the card you already have. If all goes well then I'd say that a single GTX 285 would would be more than adequate (actually your 8800GTX should be fine too...) and you shouldn't need to fork out for multiple GPUs in any form.

And finally, you might like to rethink your Core i7 upgrade. The Core i7 920 is only a 2.66GHz part and may actually perform less well than your current 3.0GHz Core 2 part as X3TC can only use a single core and Core i7 doesn't offer much, if anything, in the way of a performance improvement per GHz over the Core 2 architecture.

Of course all of this assumes that your primary focus for the upgrade is X3TC, which may well not be the case.

[aka1nas]

Based on some of the benchmark threads for TC I've seen on other forums, TC might break the "rule" about being clock-for-clock equivalent between the I7 and Core2s. The I7 is actually 30%+ faster per clock in many areas, it's just not usually in areas that most games utilize much (the I7s dominate in database, web server, and encoding apps for example).

The X games have so much more going on in the background, that I'm not sure you can compare them directly to a generic 3D FPS with regards to what drives performance.

Regarding SLI, TC did not have it's own NV profile last time I checked. Making a new one and copying the settings from the Reunion profile worked great for me and SLI is noticeably working (scaling isn't always great, as the game is usually CPU bound).

[jannix]

Only reason why I would consider any multi gpu solution is if you want to drive a gigantic panel and game at some insanely high resolution.

If you use say one of those Dell 3008WFPs or something like that and want to run crysis in highest settings, or some use case like that. Otherwise stick to a single decent gpu as CBJ advises.

[xeon_1]

The problem is for sli or crossfire to work properly and give significant gains you need a good cpu.
Or in TC case a very good cpu.
I will run some benchmarks today with in this case crosfire on and off and my cpu on stock and overclocked and post them here so you can see what makes the largest difference

[xeon_1]

Ok i tried to disable one core of my gfx card but that trick doesn't work any more.
But anyway here are the results of my pc stock vs overclocked.
Its not over clocked to its max but its enough to convey the picture.

Code: Select all

--------------------------
   X3 - Terran Conflict
--------------------------
Game Version: 1.2.0.0

Operating System:	Windows Server® 2008 Standard (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
DirectX Version:	DirectX 10
Graphics Card Info:	ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 [2809 MB]    Driver: 8.14.0010.0655
CPU Info:		Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175 (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Usable System Memory:	4094 MB


Video Settings During Benchmark:
	Screen Resolution:	1920 x 1200 * [32], fullscreen
	Using Shader Profile:	3.0
	Antialias Mode:		8x
	Anisotropic Mode:	16x

Graphics & Shader Settings:
	Texture Quality:	high
	Shader Quality:		high
	High Quality Bumpmaps:	enabled
	Environment Mapping:	enabled
	Glow Filter:		enabled
	Ship Color Variations:	enabled
	More Dynamic Lights:	enabled
	Used Vertexsize:	28 bytes

Framerates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Scene "Trade"	 21.2 average fps	 5.0 minimum fps	 46.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Fight"	 44.7 average fps	 16.0 minimum fps	 96.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Build"	 61.8 average fps	 36.0 minimum fps	 138.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Think"	 29.3 average fps	 15.0 minimum fps	 54.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 39.2 fps


(c)2008 EGOSOFT
For more information visit http://www.egosoft.com 

Now overclocked

Code: Select all

--------------------------
   X3 - Terran Conflict
--------------------------
Game Version: 1.2.0.0

Operating System:	Windows Server® 2008 Standard (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
DirectX Version:	DirectX 10
Graphics Card Info:	ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 [2809 MB]    Driver: 8.14.0010.0655
CPU Info:		Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175 (2 CPUs), ~2.5GHz
Usable System Memory:	4094 MB


Video Settings During Benchmark:
	Screen Resolution:	1920 x 1200 * [32], fullscreen
	Using Shader Profile:	3.0
	Antialias Mode:		8x
	Anisotropic Mode:	16x

Graphics & Shader Settings:
	Texture Quality:	high
	Shader Quality:		high
	High Quality Bumpmaps:	enabled
	Environment Mapping:	enabled
	Glow Filter:		enabled
	Ship Color Variations:	enabled
	More Dynamic Lights:	enabled
	Used Vertexsize:	28 bytes

Framerates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Scene "Trade"	 24.2 average fps	 6.0 minimum fps	 53.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Fight"	 50.2 average fps	 19.0 minimum fps	 111.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Build"	 70.3 average fps	 41.0 minimum fps	 154.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Think"	 33.5 average fps	 17.0 minimum fps	 63.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 44.6 fps


(c)2008 EGOSOFT
For more information visit http://www.egosoft.com 

As you can see the results are up
The only thing crossfire sli adds in this game is a bit of extra preformance but more importanly the abilty to crank up the AA without any noticable effect.
Here is the stock bench at 2xAA

Code: Select all

--------------------------
   X3 - Terran Conflict
--------------------------
Game Version: 1.2.0.0

Operating System:	Windows Server® 2008 Standard (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.090302-1506)
DirectX Version:	DirectX 10
Graphics Card Info:	ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 [2809 MB]    Driver: 8.14.0010.0655
CPU Info:		Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175 (2 CPUs), ~2.2GHz
Usable System Memory:	4094 MB


Video Settings During Benchmark:
	Screen Resolution:	1920 x 1200 * [32], fullscreen
	Using Shader Profile:	3.0
	Antialias Mode:		2x
	Anisotropic Mode:	16x

Graphics & Shader Settings:
	Texture Quality:	high
	Shader Quality:		high
	High Quality Bumpmaps:	enabled
	Environment Mapping:	enabled
	Glow Filter:		enabled
	Ship Color Variations:	enabled
	More Dynamic Lights:	enabled
	Used Vertexsize:	28 bytes

Framerates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Scene "Trade"	 20.9 average fps	 5.0 minimum fps	 46.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Fight"	 44.6 average fps	 16.0 minimum fps	 98.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Build"	 62.3 average fps	 36.0 minimum fps	 136.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Think"	 29.5 average fps	 15.0 minimum fps	 55.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 39.3 fps


(c)2008 EGOSOFT
For more information visit http://www.egosoft.com 

So if you have a small screen it may benefit you to go sli/crossfire but other wise either overclock or buy a new cpu.
For a bigger gain.