SLI + Metro Last Light Bug

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I’ve been grinding Metro Last Light and so far the experience has been mostly positive. I experience many crashes in the game but I don’t believe that to be Nvidia’s fault. One thing I have noticed however, is when I play this game with SLI enabled and I change the volume on my wireless SoundBlaster Tactic 3D headset the Ubuntu volume indicator comes up in the top right of the screen to show the volume level, which is all fine. Where things go horribly wrong is while this volume indicator is visible, the bottom half of the screen stops updating until the volume indicator disappears. After disappearing the game continues to run ok. These are the types of errors Metro throws after a crash:

traps: MetroLL[4265] trap invalid opcode ip:9006527 sp:c06fceb8 error:0 in MetroLL[8048000+1336000]

kernel: [34926.480112] MetroLL[5738]: segfault at 0 ip 0000000008f877db sp 00000000c1efda10 error 4 in MetroLL[8048000+1336000]
kernel: [36888.004743] MetroLL[5926]: segfault at 3f ip 0000000008dd7227 sp 00000000c1fe02c0 error 4 in MetroLL[8048000+1336000]
kernel: [37546.666052] MetroLL[5971]: segfault at 18 ip 0000000008f85a8c sp 00000000ffa73560 error 4 in MetroLL[8048000+1336000]

This is with driver 331.20 on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit with Gnome 3.4.2 & 2x GTX480 cards in SFR configuration. I have not experimented yet with other modes. Other games that run in fullscreen and allow the Ubuntu volume indicator to display in-game also exhibit this same bug. Example: Serious Sam 3.

Edit: Unsurprisingly using AFR mode does not exhibit this behavior. I’ve always found AFR to be laggy compared to SFR mode in linux. BTW Metro sure kicks ass on linux even with SLI enabled. Keep up the good work!

2

There’s no SLI profile for Metro Last Light in linux, so it’s better to turn SLI off. Performance is better that way.
Right now there’s only a profile that include Doom 3, Quake IV and ETQW.
If Nvidia want to take linux gaming seriously, it better start to include more SLI profiles for games.

3

It seems to me enabling SLI doesn’t negatively impact performance, at least in this game. I wouldn’t say that it runs better with SLI though.

4

@pnarciso:

I’m not pratical at all about sli, and probably i’ll never be; but just out of curiosity:
does an application need a profile to be used in SLI configuration?

5

In most cases to take advantage of SLI there must be specific profiles for each game. Windows have them, linux won’t. That’s why SLI in linux is useless for now.

6

Bump. Still an issue in 331.38. Bottom half of screen will not update when the Ubuntu volume indicator is visible and using SLI in SFR mode. While on the desktop there are no problems, only fullscreen applictions like Metro LL.