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Why is my graphic performance so bad?
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Cyber Power PC offers you your choices of a bunch of hardware. If you pick cheap junk and it ends up being cheap junk, then it's your own fault for asking them to use cheap junk parts in your system. If you went with a "default" power supply, or any cheap power supply with a high nominal wattage rating, then you picked cheap junk. That's your fault, not theirs.
Alienware doesn't give you very many choices. But that's not because they want to force you to get something good. A general rule in buying a PC is that if they won't tell you exactly what parts they're using, they're likely to be junk.
Have you considered asking what hardware you should get before making the purchase, rather than just buying something at random and hoping that the brand name logo will magically make it work well?
Considering that SLI is proprietary to Nvidia and the AMD equivalent is CrossFire, running AMD cards in SLI at all is rather unlikely.
If you care if your computer is reliable, then why did you get a dual GPU card? That's one of the worst things you can do for reliability.
And if your computer has been so reliable, then why did you need to start this thread complaining that it wasn't working right?
I've stated like 4 times before this that surround lets you use four monitors, and that I don't want to use surround. Good heavens.
It's a balance of wanting power vs wanting reliability. Wanting full power is buying from CyberpowerPC and having my computer arrive dead. Balancing power with reliability is just having an issue with one game's performance.
Why not two single GPU cards, then? That's a lot easier to cool than a dual GPU card, so it will tend to be more reliable. And it will be cheaper, too.
But if you really want reliability, then you want a high quality power supply, a high quality motherboard, and a high quality UPS. It's not like you couldn't fit those into your budget. Whatever components you get for the sake of performance, those three things will help. You decided to buy a pig in a poke and probably ended up with a lesser quality power supply and motherboard, and most likely no UPS at all.
And why did you trust Dell so much, anyway? Because they advertise a lot?
He is typing a lot but it is all bad information...
In the event that he isn't just trying to troll, there is a hefty performance difference between having shadowmaps in a cache and actually calculating them new each time you turn. Also, once again, AO is not just a particular type of shadows and has nothing to do with the games problems with shadow optimization.
Edit: srsly I love edits. But after reading the rest of OPs experience, I simply cannot bring myself to believe that this is actually happening somewhere. The cards don't fit, but the 690 does, but putting them in makes windows not boot, which means you have to buy and install windows 8... what? That is skipping over the prior refusal to remove the old card and update drivers, the odd 4 monitor setup that he says won't work on the 690, the claimed issues with alienware and tigerdirect... since I first started getting interested in PCs I haven't had a fraction of the issues this guy has had just recently. On top of it all he continues to chide people attempting to help him, insisting he knows better than them.
Yes, you can use 4 monitors with a GTX690 with both GPUs working.
Nothing prevents you from playing GW2 in window mode while being in surround.
The correct link for the tool and the connections is the following:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/3dvision-surround/system-requirements
That return the image I posted before.
I don't care if you want to use nvidia surround or not - once you are linking multiple monitors to a NVIDIA card you are using surround.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Not worth it =/ he does not understand.
I dont know if this has been mentioned on the thread or not, however, Ambient Occlusion is NOT a shadow. Ambient Occlusion is a calculation done to determine the amount of shadows that need to be drawn and the intensity of shadows on objects. For example, a tree casting shadows without AO will simply have black shadows on the trunk and ground, and they wil lhave the exact same intensity. With AO on, those shadows will be gradient in an attempt to emulate how light and shadows work in real life, so the shadows nearest the tree trunk will be darkest, while the shadows of the leaves will be much fainter.
I am no graphics engineer, or programmer, but this is my understanding of AO and it has nothing to do with the GW2 clients stability or performance.
Also, are you using a Sandy bridge CPu or Ivy bridge? and do you have the built in GPU turned off? if not, then that combined with the two other cards are most likely your problem.
One more thing (looks like you do have ive bridge CPU) do you have the Lucid Logix software installed and are the games / programs you use in the list?
Edit: Meant to hit quote and didnt, so the post I was going to respond to didnt show properly, therefore deleting this post
Again, I've tried to educate you that this was possible multiple times already, but again, it's not useful to me. In surround, you can't have a taskbar on each screen showing the contents of each (Just one that spans all of them or is only on one), and maximizing applications or videos takes over all the screens. It's a broken setup only worth using if you want to play games across 3 monitors. Not worthy of a true command center.
Ambient occlusion is computations to make pixels lighter or darker on the basis that more or less light should reach the object that the pixels represent. Whether you want to call that shadows or not is just semantics.
I'm not insisting that it's responsible for performance issues in Guild Wars 2. I am insisting more generally that making lighting work very close to the way it does in real life is computationally intractible unless you have very simple geometry. But that's why neither Guild Wars 2 nor any other game that I'm aware of even tries to do that.
As to what Guild Wars 2 does do, I don't know, as I turn shadows off, as well as some other lighting effects. I think shadows are ugly. Even real-life shadows are ugly, let alone bad approximations to them.
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The original poster has a Sandy Bridge-E CPU. That's in the original post. Sandy Bridge-E does not have integrated graphics built in, as it's meant primarily for servers that don't need integrated graphics. Or perhaps rather, the die is meant primarily for its Xeon incarnations.
No, you were saying you couldn't use 4 monitors and having the 2 GPUs working or in your own words "max 3D performance".
And how are you connecting 3 monitors to your GTX690 without using surround?
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I think what he is trying to say is that he wants his "command center" to be able to transform his one computer into four different ones by having four monitors (what?!) doing four different things on them at the same time. One playing WoW, one playing GW2, one having some type of social media BS and one playing porn or somesuch nonsense. But he can only get this ridiculous setup to work in Surround meaning that the views are shared over the four monitors (really?!) instead of one seperate view each.
Since I don't try to make my computer do stupid shit like this I can't help him as far as telling him how to make it happen but maybe it can be done thought I highly doubt it.
My advice is to slow down, do one thing at a time, never buy Alienware products again, quit over-tasking (is that a word?), get rid of the old GPU (make sure to turn off your computer first and not force anything into or out of sockets), just use new GPU (DO NOT RE-INSTALL WINDOWS, REPEAT, DO NOT RE-INSTALL WINDOWS!) and enjoy GW2 in its graphical goodliness!
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
Max 3D performance is a setting, just as surround is. That's what I use to connect 3 monitors. And yeah, in the max 3d performance setting, you can't have 4 monitors running with dual GPU. And then I stated multiple times that I didn't want to use the other dual GPU settings, as they were inferior to max 3D performance. You're just trying hard not to appear to have been wrong now.
And how is this? If you're referring to the "activate all monitors setting", then I've already mentioned this, and like surround, have said that I don't want to use it, as it's a weaker setting than "max 3D performance".
It works by you plugging the 4 monitors to the card.
You only need to activate surround if you want to make 3 monitors act as 1.
Since you don't you plug the 4 monitors and don't activate surround.
Just the same as connectiong 3 monitors without using surround like you are doing but with 4.
As you can see, 4 monitors with no surround.
Surround is only used to make several monitors act as a single monitor.Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
My god, for the 100th time, the setting I wish to use is "max 3D performance", which only allows 3 monitors.
Screenshot of the setting please.
To run all 4 displays independant>> go to NVCPL>>Configure SLI, Surround, PhysX>>Select "Max 3D performance. Then go to Display>>Set up multiple displays>>put a check mark in all 4 displays. Then click/hold on each one and drag to the position you want.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_600_Series
.Support for up to 4 independent 2D displays, or 3 stereoscopic/3D displays (NV Surround)
You not using 3D goggles are you?
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzEHVajkxNpRWEZLUEFETjh2a0E/edit?usp=sharing
And checking all 4 monitors doesn't work. If you try to do it, it will uncheck all the monitors on GPU A (With 3 connections) as soon as you try to check the monitor on GPU B (Which only has 1 connection).
You need to connect the 4th monitor to the GTX690 first.
I'm not sure if the GTX690(b) acting as the physX GPU can cause problems. Any chance of not having that on or both?Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
What does that mean? And no I'm not using 3D goggles.
Your 4th monitor is connected to the 8800GTX.
Unlug the monitor from it and plug it on the GTX690.
PS: No need to remove the 8800GTX, it can stay in, maybe even as the physX card.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders