Linux + Wine + SLI

[Throwing Strikes]

I've been running Linux(opensuse) and Wine on my rig for a long time. I always have a nasty habit of buying new hardware. A while back I upgraded from a 7800GTX to a 8800GTX. While running World of Warcraft with Wine I saw a average of 10fps increase with the 8800.


I noticed on the release notes of Nvidia's 9755 drivers... "8800 series SLI is now supported"

What I'm trying to ask is.... Would I see nice performance gain if I ran twin 8800GTXs in SLI vs. just one?

[niniendowarrior]

SLI support in Linux is pitiful. Michael has been at it for a while now.

Do *not* expect performance improvements.

[Throwing Strikes]

Update!! I threw caution to the wind and dropped the money for another eVGA 8800gtx. I'll post my finding when I get them.

SLI can only get better right?

[niniendowarrior]

I have no real experience about it, but if the driver handles SLI stupidly it could end up performing slower than a single card.

No, it doesn't necessarily mean it'll get only better.

[Throwing Strikes]

Just got my card and I slapped it inside my computer, hooked everything up, and boot up my computer. And what do I get? Kernel Panic! So much for wishful thinking. I rebooted back into bios and switched it into Single card more and it booted up just fine.

So I did some searching and found something at Mepis.org. It had some really good infomation about some problems I could be having. It also pointed me to the NVidia Driver ReadME. Which was very useful.

1>) Multiple CPUs + Multiple GPUs + 32bit Kernel = Bad

2>) Having more than a Gig of RAM on a 32bit Kernel is also not good for SLI either.

I got OpenSuSE 10.2 x86_64 downloading right now. Hopefully this will fix my problems.

[d2kx]

Just buy me another 8800 GTX, mkay? ^^

If you get a 10 FPS improvement from 7800 -> 8800, than there's something badly wrong. And SLI on Linux... and that on Wine... don't expect too much, really

You should have a windows partition for gaming, otherwise that would be wasted money.

Btw.: Your processor is most likely not fast enough to full power these two beasts.

[byteframe]

compatred to my old volt modded 7900 GT, my new 8800 gts is running like shit on linux. NVIDIA is starting piss me off.

[d2kx]

byteframe, you never had an ATI card running under Linux, do you? ^^

[byteframe]

Yes I have.

[Throwing Strikes]

As of Nvidia Driver 100.14.11 and my SLI setup in AFR. WoW runs awesome, 70-130 fps in the Outland or Azeroth. I still have serous FPS drops(25-35) in some towns and large citys. When indoors or in the Under City I average about 90-130fps. In Arctic Valley BG I get 35-85 and spikes to 130 depending on how many players are on screen. Its not the silver bullet but it makes the Battlegrounds a whole lot more playable.

Also Byteframe, booting Linux with vga=normal fixed a whole set of problems for my 8800gtx the same should hold true for your 8800gts.