The problem with multiple cards for mxs is the terrain textures:
jlv wrote:There isn't much I can do about it. SLI systems currently have some bad restrictions of what you can do with generated textures when running in alternate frame rendering mode. Basically, you have to render, use and discard the generated texture all in one frame, otherwise the texture will be on the wrong card for the next frame and it will have to be copied to the other card. So you can do things like post processing effects or shadow buffers, but for something like MX Sim's terrain cache you need the generated textures for multiple frames, so you get stuck copying the textures over to the other card. If the drivers were really clever they'd notice this and render on both cards when rendering into a texture that's used that way, but so far nothing does that.
I was thinking I could try keeping two copies of the terrain texture cache, one that would only be used on odd frames and the other for even frames. That way it would never access a texture that was on the wrong card. (Unless it got out of sync. Then all hell breaks loose...) The only thing is it would be a fair amount of work with no guarantee that it would actually increase performance. And it would probably make the ATI drivers leak memory twice as fast!
On top of that, anything you'd put in an SLI configuration can run MX Sim pretty easily on a single GPU anyway. So it's not a high priority right now.
You might find that running in split frame mode will work well too. You won't get the same geometry processing speedups as in AFR mode, but it will double your fill rate without the alternate frame rendering issues.
Actually, it's worse than that. Any OpenGL app will automatically use both, but since MXS renders textures on the GPU and keeps using them after the frame they were rendered in, the GL driver will wind up copying the textures between GPUs when you use SLI in alternate frame mode. To make it use SLI effectively, it'll need to keep separate copies of the terrain textures for odd and even frames.
jlv wrote:No, it uses both GPUs, but since the terrain textures are used across frames it has to copy them between the cards. In AFR mode the SLI setup will have one card rendering even frames and the other doing odd frames. So when a terrain tile is rendered on an even frame it'll have to be copied to the other card on the next odd frame and vice versa. I think I could probably make it fast by keeping separate terrain texture caches for odd and even frames, but it'd be a complicated mess.
When you're parked or if you have ground texture levels at 0, it'll probably be faster than a single card since it isn't rendering to the terrain cache in that case.
jlv wrote:I don't recommend it. The game uses the GPU to render textures which are used for more than one frame, which causes problems in SLI setups in alternate frame mode. If they share the same memory it might work well enough, but even in that case alternate frame rendering with 2 GPUs will still give you an extra frame of lag compared to a single GPU.
jlv wrote:I probably will get around to that at some point, but don't expect any magic. The game spends around half of its time in the OpenGL driver so even if you eliminated the time spent on other stuff it would only double the speed. The routines that can be easily parallelized are more like 10% though.
LOD's for the models would make a much bigger difference. At a minimum I need to make some wheels that look good and get down to a couple hundred triangles at a distance. That would save around 4000 triangles per bike.
jlv wrote:As a "speed of light" maximum possible improvement, 2x is pretty bad.
As an example, imagine a scene with DJ's new trees, only without the LOD's. A alternate frame dual GPU setup would double the FPS on that scene in the best possible case. Putting the LOD's in would reduce the geometry by something like 500 times, making it run 500 times faster in the best possible case. Generally the real world improvement won't be near the upper limit, but 2 times is a pretty bad as an upper limit.
And that's not to say that it's never worth chasing something with a low upper limit. But you want to attack the stuff with potential order of magnitude improvements first.
TeamHavocRacing wrote:If I had a nickel for every time someone asked for this, I would have a whole shitload of nickels.
One day then i hope, even though one of my cards does good enough for me on mxs, would i just run single gpu option in nvidia? or alternate frame rendering?
Thanks Nate! Saved me the trouble of explaining that again.
Motolife_99 wrote:One day then i hope, even though one of my cards does good enough for me on mxs, would i just run single gpu option in nvidia? or alternate frame rendering?
Use split frame or single GPU.
Josh Vanderhoof
Sole Proprietor jlv@mxsimulator.com
If you email, put "MX Simulator" in the subject to make sure it gets through my spam filter.
I've updated my PC and it is much, much better than what it used to be, I am still getting the freezes... It's becoming very frustrating, it's happening in every race type, singleplayer and multiplayer... It's only since this snapshot, I went back to the old one for 3hrs and I didn't have any troubles at all
It's almost to the point where you can't play, buttons get stuck on, constantly running over berms, the game is hard enough without constant frame freezes.
stocksy129 wrote:I've updated my PC and it is much, much better than what it used to be, I am still getting the freezes... It's becoming very frustrating, it's happening in every race type, singleplayer and multiplayer... It's only since this snapshot, I went back to the old one for 3hrs and I didn't have any troubles at all
It's almost to the point where you can't play, buttons get stuck on, constantly running over berms, the game is hard enough without constant frame freezes.
same problem^^
jlv wrote:
Either way, for a suicidal rampage it was pretty good.
stocksy129 wrote:I've updated my PC and it is much, much better than what it used to be, I am still getting the freezes... It's becoming very frustrating, it's happening in every race type, singleplayer and multiplayer... It's only since this snapshot, I went back to the old one for 3hrs and I didn't have any troubles at all
It's almost to the point where you can't play, buttons get stuck on, constantly running over berms, the game is hard enough without constant frame freezes.
stocksy129 wrote:I've updated my PC and it is much, much better than what it used to be, I am still getting the freezes... It's becoming very frustrating, it's happening in every race type, singleplayer and multiplayer... It's only since this snapshot, I went back to the old one for 3hrs and I didn't have any troubles at all
It's almost to the point where you can't play, buttons get stuck on, constantly running over berms, the game is hard enough without constant frame freezes.
2012hondacr250 wrote:When i download it and do everything it asks I try to start the game it says cant find game data.If anyone knows what is happening please tell me.
I have the same problem. I download the snapshot and try to open it and a small window pops us that says something like "Problem opening MX Simulator" and "Can't find game files". Anyone have a solution?
Replace mx.exe or mxbin with one of the above files. The default location for mx.exe should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\MX Simulator". I'd keep a backup of the originals since these aren't well tested.
I dont have 2016 bikes, its just 2013 and lower. How can i fix this?
Replace mx.exe or mxbin with one of the above files. The default location for mx.exe should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\MX Simulator". I'd keep a backup of the originals since these aren't well tested.
I dont have 2016 bikes, its just 2013 and lower. How can i fix this?
