Question / Help Screencloning question with SLI GTX780 and seperate refresh rates

[Rice]

Hi guys,

I have posted this question on several forums, so here is a copy/paste. I have been searching for this for over weeks, but no one seems to have a solution for this. I have a question regarding the screencloning with a SLI configuration. Currently i have AMD HD6970 crossfire setup. With crossfire turned on, i can't screenclone in 3D-mode. So in other words, when i'm in game, only my main monitor would get signal and my second screen would turn black.

The reason i wanna do this, is because i want to stream to Twitch or record my gameplay using a Elgato Game Capture HD while still being able to game on my 144hz gaming monitor. This screen has to be plugged into the DVI-D port of your graphics card in order to make use of this 144hz refresh rate. So, in order to get 144hz on my main gaming monitor and still being able to stream with my capture device, i have to plug the capture device into the HDMI port of my graphics card. Then i have to setup a screenclone to this capture device. With the AMD cards, all works well if you disable Crossfire. U can clone the screen, get 144hz on the gaming monitor and 60hz on the capture device. Both in 2D AND 3D. When i enable crossfire, the capture device screen would go black.

So i went on to Google and searched a bit. Some say, with Nvidia SLI you still can clone your screen, even with these two different refresh rates in 2D and most importantly in 3D. Atleast for now. Because back in the days, this wasn't possible due to some driver limitations.

I'm getting to this point that i want to dump my two AMD cards and get two GTX 780's or maybe even GTX 780 Ti's in SLI, so i can game at high FPS with a high 144hz refresh rate, while still being able to stream to Twitch with my Capture device running at 60hz. But i want to make sure that those cards are able to do this.

A few days ago a friend of mine wanted to test this on his GTX690 for me. He hooked up two screens, one gaming monitor and one IPS panel that supports up to 75hz. He was able to do a cloned setup with these two screens. In 2D mode he was able to get 144hz on his gaming monitor and 75hz on his second IPS panel, but in game (Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 were tested) he wasn't able to put his refresh rate above 75hz, so it was kinda capped to the refresh rate of the least fastest monitor, the IPS panel.

Is there a way to accomplish this, or is there anybody that is willing to test this for me? I can't wait to finally stream while be still being able to game at high FPS. The videocard should be outputting two different signals. Just like the AMD card does whilist not in Crossfire.

Kind Regards.

 

[Rice]

Nobody with a SLI setup like this one? I'm wondering how other people are gaming with 144hz and still streaming/recording. Shouldn't be that hard, right?

 

[Lain]

144hz is fairly uncommon, 144hz combined with crossfire/sli may even be much more uncommon. It probably won't be easy finding people with a similar setup. I'm not entirely sure what to suggest to help with the situation though unfortunately.

 

[jesyjames]

I have a 144hz monitor with a gtx 780ti sli and a capture card. I can play games just fine @ 144hz and sli while cloning the screen to the capture card at 60hz. I also have a 2nd, 60hz monitor.

I think the problem your friend might of had is that when you are cloning you have to pick which monitor is the primary monitor. If you pick the capture card it will limit the refresh rate. If you pick your 144hz monitor, you are golden.

Now, be aware that when you "clone" the screen in SLI there is a performance reduction, basically akin to running SLI in windowed mode vs. full screen. It's not too bad, like 10 percent, but it's worth noting.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[Rice]

Awesome guys, thanks for your reply. I've been researching this for like ages now.

Thanks Jesyjames, your reply helped me alot! Now i know that it should be possible, but that you experience a 10% performance decrease in the process. That should be fine, i guess. Maybe you can even overclock your card abit to help and fill that gap right up.

Now that you are mentioning windowed mode: With my AMD Crossfire setup, i could indeed run games and clone them in windowed-mode. But what happend when i did that is that when you go window mode, it will basicly kill the crossfire setup, since crossfire is only working in fullscreen mode and not in window mode.

Could you please verify, that you are indeed running in fullscreen mode and not windowed mode or borderless mode? And; is SLI still functioning with games in windowed mode? like i said: with AMD that won't work so if that's the case, it's not a valid 'fix'.

Cheers!

 

[jesyjames]

Oh yeah i run in fullscreen mode. It works fine either way. I had the same issues you are having with AMD btw.

I'm pretty sure all I did was clone monitors 1 and 3 (144hz/Capture Card), set monitor 1 as the primary, adjust refresh rate to 144hz. Monitor 3 is greyed out at 60hz and can't be adjusted. Monitor 2 is just a second screen.

 

[jesyjames]

Here I did a quick screen capture to show you. Sorry about my mic cutting out, but you get the idea: http://www.twitch.tv/sm4llz/b/539266637

 

[Rice]

Thanks for the video! That looks good. The game didn't came up in the preview video u made, u are aware of that? Anyway, it should be working since you're streaming on Twitch. And if it wasn't working, then people would tell you in chat, LOL.

Kinda 'cool' to know that u had the same troubles with AMD. They are great cards, and never had much troubles with them. This was the first thing that wasn't working with my setup. Also the Nvidia drivers should be better imo. Can't wait to buy new videocards now.

For people with AMD cards: you can still Crossfire while recording, using Dxtory. But this will drastically reduce framerates. When downscaling the capture with dxtory to like 720p it's bearable, and in some games unplayable (at least with my AMD 6970's) but with 1080p things get really stuttery. And that's what you don't want when playing FPS-games. Dat one deage tho!

Jesyjames, what would u do? Wait for the GTX 800 series to arrive (they should be here Q3 so i've heard) or just buy two GTX 780's (the Ti's are 200 dollars more expensive, for only 10% more performance. Not worth the money, don't u think?) and go with that? They are pretty 'cheap' nowdays since the Ti variant came out.

 

[jesyjames]

lol no I didn't know the game didn't show, but that doesn't surprise me. I figured there was a problem. I know the mic was all over the place. I was using monitor capture which I've never used before- should've just used the capture card.. But you got what you needed out of it.

I''m probably the wrong person to ask about upgrading since I just did it because I tend to lack patience. I always think it's best to wait unless you have a specific need. I see you are using 6970s. I think in your specific case the upgrade would be significant and fix a need. Of course, if you do wait you'll get more for your money.

 

[Rice]

Yeah, thanks bro!

I decided to go with the SLI GTX 780 setup. Just ordered them, will get them tomorrow. Can't wait! My games weren't running as smooth as i wanted even with much of the settings turned down. As you know: once you go 144hz, you become a little crybaby that's in search of all FPSESES (LOL). I will let you know how things turn out! Thanks for your help man.

 

[jesyjames]

Awesome =) I hope the elgato capture card won't be an issue, but I would be shocked if it is. I'm using the Live Gamer HD. Let me know how it goes.

 

[Rice]

So i promised to come back and tell you how stuff did turn out:

It's amazing! Battlefield 4 runs pretty sweet at everything maxed out. Even with the screenclone! I finally got everything setup like how i want it to be. Gaming on my main screen works with 144hz. I even setup the clone to my Elgato game capture HD, which is doing fine at 60hz. I even managed to overclock my GTX 780's to 1106 mhz on the GPU and 6850 mhz on the memory, which is amazing in my opinion.

I even got my audio working just fine now. I'm using a seperate USB audio device for my Steelseries headset. With virtual audio cable i was able to setup three audio outputs: One to my headset and one to my regular realtek audio device and one to my HDMI port of the GTX 780 so that my capture card picks everything up. After that i ran another program that picks up my mic and the sends it to the HDMI aswell, so my capture card is able to pickup all my audio and voice stuff.

Should be able to stream pretty great now :) Will try that later today. I will report back how everything went.

So: if you're a dual gfx-cards kinda guy that wants all the frames he can possibly get: With SLI you can actually set this up right. Let's hope that AMD will be releasing drivers for this in the near future so AMD guys can get advantage of this aswell.

 

[Videophile]

Hey @Rice, question:

For VAC, what is the delay on the audio set to? Is it noticeable?

 

[jesyjames]

That's awesome! Glad it's working out.

Which program are you using to capture all your audio and route it to hdmi? I assume you are doing a two pc setup? I might need to figure that out in the very near future.

Remember I mentioned the screen cloning issue performance loss? Well... I've been doing some testing this morning because I'm trying to decide if I want to sell my parts from my recent upgrade or turn them into a second streaming pc.

Right now i don't actually have a 2nd monitor plugged in like I usually do, just my main and then the Livegamer HD. What is interesting is I am not getting the message about how cloning results in a loss in performance with SLI that used to always pop up. I don't know if it's because I don't have another monitor plugged in or a driver update that changed. Anyway, in all of my benchmarks (3 different ones), I'm getting almost exactly the same FPS with SLI and cloning as I am without cloning and SLI. So, if so... that's absolutely fantastic. That means I could use a two pc setup, sli, 144hz, and enjoy zero loss in performance.

For what it's worth, streaming on a single pc using game capture seems to result in about an average 10% FPS loss(using GTX 780 sli, 4930k @ 4.6 ghz) on very fast preset. Using the Livegamer HD on the same pc seems a hair worse at about 12% FPS loss.

Now I just need to decide if that 10 percent loss is worth the hassle of streaming on two pcs.

 

[Rice]

Hey @Rice, question:

For VAC, what is the delay on the audio set to? Is it noticeable?

You might wanna try some different settings on VAC to get the best results but this is what i did:

1. I setup VAC to install one new 'audio device' called Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable). In Windows, set this device to 'default communications device'. This is your main 'soundcard' now.

2. Open up a few instances of audiorepeater_ks.exe. I had to use three instances since i have three different audio devices that i want to send the audio to. I use the following settings: Wave in: Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable) Wave out: Speakers (2- USB PnP Sound Device) Total buffer (ms): 100 Buffers: 12. This will be the settings that enable my Steelseries headset. Now you can setup a second instance of audiorepeater_ks.exe and select Speakers of your internal soundcard if you use that, and then a third to setup to output to your HDMI port of the graphicscard.

You have to checkout which settings work best for you. 100ms is the buffer size as you can see, and that is not noticable on your stream. I had difficulties setting a buffer lower than that. I also had problems with 4 or even 5 buffers, so yesterday when i started testing stuff, i left the buffers to 12. If you go with like 4 or 5 you would notice a crackling noise sometimes.

I could make a video on how to set this up properly if you guys like. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask! You can even add me on Steam: ricks13 is my username there.

@jesyjames: I'm using a program called VAC or Virtual Audio Cable for this. This is not freeware, but it's a very cheap application. You can find it over here:

http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm

It's a little difficult to configure at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty neat. You can do very cool stuff with it! It's even possible to stream your gameplay sounds and leave teamspeak sounds of of the stream to twitch for instance if you would like that. If you have problems configuring it, please feel free to ask!

Oh and by the way: i'm indeed working with a two PC setup. Strange thing: Yesterday i had some issues with the 'faster' preset. It didn't render my frames properly. So next up is tweaking my OBS client on my laptop (i7 4700) so it will handle everything just fine. I'm kinda disapointed by the quality Twitch lets you stream tho (no partnered). The quality my capture device comes up with is very very good. If i record gameplay and play that stuff back at my laptop, it's identical to my gaming machine.

 

[Rice]

Oh BTW; forgot to mention which application i use in order to send the microphone to the HDMI-port:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/noisegator/

This is a neat little application that is free to use. It works as a noisegate for your mic. So when u'r not talking, the mic is closed. When you start talking, the mic opens up again to transmit your voice/audio. U need to test and fiddle with the settings abit in order to get it right. Very good app!