SLI Support

[thomot512]

Hi,
I do not manage to make this game take advantage of my second GPU. Is it normal?
Also there is no option to change the refresh rate, we have to force it through the graphic drivers.
Oh, and impossible to stop the Vsync.
Quite a bunch of issue. I'm a bit disappointed.

[CBJ]

With current NVIDIA drivers and Vulkan the labelling on the VSync options is wrong. If you want to turn VSync off you actually need to select the option marked "triple buffering"!

There's no in-game option to change refresh rate; as you say, that can and should be done with the drivers.

With regard to SLI, I'm afraid I don't know the answer at the moment.

[Cinderelli]

Hi,
I do not manage to make this game take advantage of my second GPU. Is it normal?
Also there is no option to change the refresh rate, we have to force it through the graphic drivers.
Oh, and impossible to stop the Vsync.
Quite a bunch of issue. I'm a bit disappointed.

I am more than a bit disappointed at lack of SLI support.
I have two RTX 2080Ti cards, and one of them is sitting there doing nothing in this game.
Totally unacceptable. The graphics are stunning on my 32-inch 4K monitor, but I want/need both cards to be working.
If there is not going to be any SLI support for this game, I will be walking away from X4 Foundations.

[Sicario]

SLI support would definitely help out people to even run the game without texture glitches that have 2x 2gb GPUs

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

SLI support would definitely help out people to even run the game without texture glitches that have 2x 2gb GPUs

No it wouldn’t. VRAM is mirrored in SLI, so a pair of 2GB cards still functionally only have 2GB of memory.

[elriytane]

Hi,
I do not manage to make this game take advantage of my second GPU. Is it normal?
Also there is no option to change the refresh rate, we have to force it through the graphic drivers.
Oh, and impossible to stop the Vsync.
Quite a bunch of issue. I'm a bit disappointed.

I am more than a bit disappointed at lack of SLI support.
I have two RTX 2080Ti cards, and one of them is sitting there doing nothing in this game.
Totally unacceptable. The graphics are stunning on my 32-inch 4K monitor, but I want/need both cards to be working.
If there is not going to be any SLI support for this game, I will be walking away from X4 Foundations.

SLI isnt the norm anymore, and very few games make use of it, so really SLI is a waste of money

[qwizzie]

With regards to SLI support for Nvidia cards version 417.01 (latest driver) : (https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver)

This already includes support for Vulkan 1.1

Release notes version 417.01 : (http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/4 ... -notes.pdf)

Increasing 4-way SLI/Multi-GPU Performance

Issue

With some games and applications, you may experience little to no performance gain or
even a performance drop with 4-way SLI or multi-GPU configurations.

Resolution

1 Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, then click Manage 3D Settings from the navigation pane.
2 Click the Global Settings tab, then scroll to the Power management mode feature, click the
corresponding list arrow and select Prefer maximum performance, then click Apply

Update

I did some testing on my 2x Nvidia 1080ti SLI and found when i leave Nvidia power management on maximum quality and set the game on adaptive sync it limits FPS to 60 (known info).
But when you set Nvidia power management to maximum performance, the adaptive sync does not have a hard cap anymore and can go much higher (my FPS went up from 60 to 77, right in front a station).
The primary card seems to be put to work much harder and as endresult provides higher FPS.

Correcion : I cant seem to reproduce the steady higher FPS on maximum performance in Nvidia power management, FPS seem to become more irratic. Mostly dropping below 60 FPS.

The problem with not using both cards in SLI does remain though, only the memory of second card gets used somewhat (25%) ... regardless of max quality or max prestation setting in Nvidia power management.

Also there appears to be a new beta driver out (version 417.17) : https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

Developer Beta Driver Downloads
Windows driver version 417.17 and Linux driver version 415.18.02 provide new features for Vulkan developers to test their upcoming Vulkan applications.

November 28th, 2018 - Windows 417.17, Linux 415.18.02

Turing support
New Extensions:
VK_KHR_swapchain_mutable_format
VK_EXT_scalar_block_layout
Fixes:
VK_EXT_transform_feedback bug fixes

Maybe worth checking into.

Update

I checked the beta driver briefly, not much difference with current driver, second card is still not utilized except for memory. Also i came to the conclusion i prefer to have Nvidia power management on maximum quality and the game itself on Adapative Sync with full screen.

[Cinderelli]

With regards to SLI support for Nvidia cards version 417.01 (latest driver) : (https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver)

This already includes support for Vulkan 1.1

Release notes version 417.01 : (http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/4 ... -notes.pdf)

Increasing 4-way SLI/Multi-GPU Performance

Issue

With some games and applications, you may experience little to no performance gain or
even a performance drop with 4-way SLI or multi-GPU configurations.

Resolution

1 Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, then click Manage 3D Settings from the navigation pane.
2 Click the Global Settings tab, then scroll to the Power management mode feature, click the
corresponding list arrow and select Prefer maximum performance, then click Apply

Update

I did some testing on my 2x Nvidia 1080ti SLI and found when i leave Nvidia power management on maximum quality and set the game on adaptive sync it limits FPS to 60 (known info).
But when you set Nvidia power management to maximum performance, the adaptive sync does not have a hard cap anymore and can go much higher (my FPS went up from 60 to 77, right in front a station).
The primary card seems to be put to work much harder and as endresult provides higher FPS.

Correcion : I cant seem to reproduce the steady higher FPS on maximum performance in Nvidia power management, FPS seem to become more irratic. Mostly dropping below 60 FPS.

The problem with not using both cards in SLI does remain though, only the memory of second card gets used somewhat (25%) ... regardless of max quality or max prestation setting in Nvidia power management.

Also there appears to be a new beta driver out (version 417.17) : https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

Developer Beta Driver Downloads
Windows driver version 417.17 and Linux driver version 415.18.02 provide new features for Vulkan developers to test their upcoming Vulkan applications.

November 28th, 2018 - Windows 417.17, Linux 415.18.02

Turing support
New Extensions:
VK_KHR_swapchain_mutable_format
VK_EXT_scalar_block_layout
Fixes:
VK_EXT_transform_feedback bug fixes

Maybe worth checking into.

Update

I checked the beta driver briefly, not much difference with current driver, second card is still not utilized except for memory. Also i came to the conclusion i prefer to have Nvidia power management on maximum quality and the game itself on Adapative Sync with full screen.

I installed driver 417.22
Nothing has changed, still no SLI support.

[thomot512]

With current NVIDIA drivers and Vulkan the labelling on the VSync options is wrong. If you want to turn VSync off you actually need to select the option marked "triple buffering"!

There's no in-game option to change refresh rate; as you say, that can and should be done with the drivers.

With regard to SLI, I'm afraid I don't know the answer at the moment.

Thx for the info on the VSync, I did set my refresh rate through the drivers. But I'm waiting on the SLI support to start playing the game. I'm going to come back from time to time to check if this has been corrected.

[philberto83uk]

Would be great to get SLI support I could then just max everything and not have to worry about changing any settings because just 1 of my GPU's can handle almost maxed everything at 3840 x 2160 and having the second one used would mean i could just max it all and chill not worrying about any frame drops.

[Cinderelli]

With current NVIDIA drivers and Vulkan the labelling on the VSync options is wrong. If you want to turn VSync off you actually need to select the option marked "triple buffering"!

There's no in-game option to change refresh rate; as you say, that can and should be done with the drivers.

With regard to SLI, I'm afraid I don't know the answer at the moment.

Thx for the info on the VSync, I did set my refresh rate through the drivers. But I'm waiting on the SLI support to start playing the game. I'm going to come back from time to time to check if this has been corrected.

Same here. I keep checking back daily to see if SLI support has been enabled. I must say that I am impressed thus far with how fast the developers are addressing issues and releasing patches for X4. My heart is in my throat every time I read patch release notes, but still no proper SLI support. I really don't understand why as NVidia has fully supported SLI in Vulkan 1.1.
Why has Egosoft not implemented SLI yet?

[mike2k4u]

why you need SLI in a game that runs perfectly on 1 card (1080TI)....
i ran a computer for about 2 years in Xfire configuration and i am glad i got rid of it.... considering most of the game developers not supporting it out of the box and worst graphical issues and gliches i had were caused due to xfire (please note that SLi is the same)

working with computer is my day to day work SLI and Xfire today is useless waste of money time and electricity and wasting developers time on SLI while they can make the game better is also a waste of time and other ppl who suffer from real bugs
so stop whining im more disappointed in this post opened then no SLI support dont care about SLI as long Egosoft does great work with updates and fixes

[qwizzie]

With current NVIDIA drivers and Vulkan the labelling on the VSync options is wrong. If you want to turn VSync off you actually need to select the option marked "triple buffering"!

There's no in-game option to change refresh rate; as you say, that can and should be done with the drivers.

With regard to SLI, I'm afraid I don't know the answer at the moment.

Thx for the info on the VSync, I did set my refresh rate through the drivers. But I'm waiting on the SLI support to start playing the game. I'm going to come back from time to time to check if this has been corrected.

Same here. I keep checking back daily to see if SLI support has been enabled. I must say that I am impressed thus far with how fast the developers are addressing issues and releasing patches for X4. My heart is in my throat every time I read patch release notes, but still no proper SLI support. I really don't understand why as NVidia has fully supported SLI in Vulkan 1.1.
Why has Egosoft not implemented SLI yet?

Same here with regards to wishing SLI gets supported properly. Specially when Egosoft introduces more ships / races / fighting later on, a full utilization of that second card can come in handy.
I feel like the solution lays at Egosoft and not Nvidia, as it seems this game overrules / restricts standard Nvidia SLI setup.

[MarvinTheMartian]

So, while I'm currently only on standard HD (1920x1200), I'll add my (less critical) voice to the desire for SLI support using 2x GTX 1070 G1s
Still very happy with performance though and intend on larger screen/higher resolution in the near future so hope to push the envelope at some point

[vrod]

Although I am using 1080p resolution, I am running triple monitors like this.

I have (2) 980Ti's (SLI) and would also like to take advantage of this. As a note, the game does run acceptable with a single card, but sometimes a little slow in sectors with many asteroids and debris.

thanks.

[Cinderelli]

So, while I'm currently only on standard HD (1920x1200), I'll add my (less critical) voice to the desire for SLI support using 2x GTX 1070 G1s
Still very happy with performance though and intend on larger screen/higher resolution in the near future so hope to push the envelope at some point

The added benefits of SLI support will be very useful when you do get a larger screen with a higher resolution.
I myself am running a 32-inch 4K monitor. Though the game does run fairly well using only one of my 2080Ti cards,
I know it will run even better with all my settings on ultra using both of my cards.

[Cinderelli]

Thx for the info on the VSync, I did set my refresh rate through the drivers. But I'm waiting on the SLI support to start playing the game. I'm going to come back from time to time to check if this has been corrected.

Same here. I keep checking back daily to see if SLI support has been enabled. I must say that I am impressed thus far with how fast the developers are addressing issues and releasing patches for X4. My heart is in my throat every time I read patch release notes, but still no proper SLI support. I really don't understand why as NVidia has fully supported SLI in Vulkan 1.1.
Why has Egosoft not implemented SLI yet?

Same here with regards to wishing SLI gets supported properly. Specially when Egosoft introduces more ships / races / fighting later on, a full utilization of that second card can come in handy.
I feel like the solution lays at Egosoft and not Nvidia, as it seems this game overrules / restricts standard Nvidia SLI setup.

I totally agree. With more items being rendered, with more activities happening in the game, and now with more war happening, it really is a no-brainer to be using SLI.
You are very correct about Egosoft restricting SLI support. NVIDIA fully supports SLI for X4 Foundations. They added full SLI support in Vulkan 1.1 which Egosoft uses for X4 Foundations. But, as Egosoft stated in their latest video, they are the first ones releasing a game with Vulkan only support. There is much to learn and do on their part, and I am impressed with how quickly they are patching bugs and releasing updates. I do look forward to the day they enable full SLI support, but these things take time, programming, and resources.

[miles12]

SLI support would definitely help out people to even run the game without texture glitches that have 2x 2gb GPUs

No it wouldn’t. VRAM is mirrored in SLI, so a pair of 2GB cards still functionally only have 2GB of memory.

If this is indeed true then why does GTA5 and the majority of total war games show 4GB available in regards to custom graphical options in SLi rather than 2GB on my dual 760GTX setup with each card only having 2GB and I can use this 4GB and little above before I start experiencing glitches? Mirroring 2GB of VRAM on a card would be like RAID'ing a hard drive it would be pointless and cause a massive bottle neck in read/write times and serve no benefit as RAM data redundancy on a GPU is pointless.

Seems like a bit of a cop out considering that X-Rebirth runs fine and on X4 I get tons of graphical glitches in regards to things like text, which wouldn't appear to require much RAM... this game is unplayable on my rig, which is a shame considering.

[Altroot]

For the issue raised I hope the following links help those who need it.

If your game is not supported SLI. Then use this tool to enable SLI For your games:
https://www.nvidiainspector.com/
*tip: Be sure to create and edit custom profiles only. Changing settings of the "Global Profile" (Your default profile) may destabilize your system and/or cause issues.
At the top of the inspector application is "profiles" X4F can be found in the dropdown box. (X4F is there, between "x3" and "xa")

PDF SLI Best Practices
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/w ... 1_Feb.pdf
- PDF file download required for alternate browsers.

Hope this helps and hope admin have time to create a SLI support page for future queries.

Fly safe,
Altroot