Linux driver works very good, with performance on par with Windows, but it has a major flaw. It doesn’t include SLI profiles for any games apart from Doom3 engine.
With SteamOS right behing the corner, does Nvidia have any near future plan to include them just like in Windows?
I know that there’s not many games that need the raw power of SLI right now but that will change in the future.
The most demanding game right now for linux is Serious Sam 3 which doesn’t run at 60 fps at 2560x1440 with my GTX 680 SLI. I need SLI to get the same performance as Windows.
Also, Metro Last Light is coming to linux, which also need SLI to give proper performance.
So, no news?
Heyyo,
Yes, I’m doing a necro on this old thread because it’s something I’d also love to see improved upon… and better to do this than to start my own anyways.
Disclaimer about this thread: I know people are going to say “Just use Windows” and to those? I say skip this thread please. SLI was revived from when nVidia bought 3DFX as an “exercise in parallelism” by nVidia (as quoted on the Geforce website) so it would be nice to have proper support for SLI in Linux. So far the main hamper I’ve notice is the lack of sli profiles in Linux, and as far as I can see no way to create them. Another argument is SteamOS and of course Steam for Linux bringing new popularity to gaming on Linux and nVidia has started boosting their support with Linux with constantly evolving support for Optimus on Linux which is exciting (and working very well on my Alienware M14x R2 with nVidia GT650M running Ubuntu 14.04 beta2 yay).
I haven’t really seen a good guide on Profiles in Linux… especially SLI Profiles for nVidia cards on Linux… is there a chance we can get one please? Or even a way to export and/or modify Windows SLI profiles to work on Linux?
Currently the driver’s README guide to enabling SLI on Linux only says to use “–sli=on” which does enable SLI, but it doesn’t actually use sli in anything OpenGL. My SLI visual indicator is always at zero and my framerate is halved from having sli disabled.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/334.21/README/sli.html
The driver’s README guide for Profiles is also quite blank and doesn’t say what arguments/commands you can use in the profiles either such as ways to handle the SLI configuration.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/334.21/README/profiles.html
So please nVidia… can you tell us how to make this work better, or provide a few SLI profiles in Linux please? I’m sure if you show us the community how, we could convert the SLI profiles from Windows drivers over to Linux for the games natively supported in Linux. :)
Heyyo,
Sorry for necro yet again… I’m just wondering if there’s been any progress made on the SLI Developments on Unix?
As for SLI Profiles? Here’s the only ones that work in Linux (ID Tech 4 Engine games)… SLI is broken in any other application… either only results in single GPU framerates (using SFR) or HALF of a single card (using AFR)
NOTE! My list was compiled with NVIDIA 343 drivers. Older or newer drivers may be incompatible. If so? Just use the procname’s I have above and create your own profiles.
Essentially? I just enabled “GLDoom3” and also “GLThreadedOptimizations”. I also setup an “AlwaysOn” profile setting for “GLThreadedOptimizations” as an example of settings you can always have activated. It’s up to you to leave it on or disable it since there’s the chance it can affect your OpenGL performance negatively.
The Application profile examples I have below are for:
To use these application profiles? The easiest way is via the file manager.
- Open your File Manager (example, Cinnamon uses Nemo)
- go to your "Home" folder
- Tap "CTRL" and "H" to toggle hidden folders and files
- Go into the ".nv" folder
- Open (or if it doesn't exist? create the text file) "nvidia-application-profiles-rc" with your favorite text editor (such as gedit)
- Copy and paste the following into the file and save (the last part with "alwaysapplied" is optional but I recommend it for enabling Threaded Optimizations on all OpenGL apps. (Some really old ones might have compatibility issues but you can always make a custom application profile with the "GLThreadedOptimizations" set to "false") :
- Save and exit
- Open up the "nVidia X Server Settings" application
- Browse to "Application Profiles"
- If the "nvidia-application-profiles-rc" didn't properly load the modified configuration? Click the "Reload" button. It looks like a green circle with two circular arrows.
{
"rules": [
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "prey.x86"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "etqw-rthread.x86"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "etqw.86"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "quake4smp.x86"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "quake4"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "procname",
"matches": "thedarkmod.x86"
},
"profile": "idtech4app"
},
{
"pattern": {
"feature": "true",
"matches": "alwayson"
},
"profile": "alwaysapplies"
}
],
"profiles": [
{
"name": "idtech4app",
"settings": [
{
"key": "GLDoom3",
"value": true
},
{
"key": "GLThreadedOptimizations",
"value": true
}
]
},
{
"name": "alwaysapplies",
"settings": [
{
"key": "GLThreadedOptimizations",
"value": true
}
]
}
]
}
Finally October 2015 after sudo nvidia-xconfig --sli=On command I no longer see ghosting on the screen. Now … game profiles. I mean what “working” sli good for if system can’t use it in the game.
In my understanding Windows Drivers already comes with game profiles and user no need to do anything. Not the case for Linux gamer. I have wonderful GeForce Experience application for Windows that does everything for me. Optimize settings and Drivers.
So with that I wonder if there is a repository of all available games with SLI profile. And tutorials on how to make them work. Also I’d love to do Valley Bench test with SLI enabled if possible.
I have GTX980 and even with single GPU enabled I can smoke all games at the moment but as we know it’ll pass in few years , then SLI will be handy.