Explicit Multi-GPU Support added to Shadowlands!

Community General Discussion
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-update- For those necroing this old post, Just want to update that support for this feature does not work in current Shadowlands as I mentioned in one of my last replies to this thread. Unfortunately Blizzard didn’t seem to carry over support for this feature from the Shadowlands Beta and Pre-Patch into the final retail launch of Shadowlands as it stopped working. -end of update-

This is a WoW Public Service Announcement:

There is an unannounced feature that was added alongside the Shadowlands DX12 Ultimate update which included the Ray Tracing and other graphical improvement updates: Explicit Multi-GPU Support!

In simple terms, SLI through PCI-E (https://developer.nvidia.com/explicit-multi-gpu-programming-directx-12).

Recently I had acquired two RTX 3070 Graphic cards to upgrade the two computers in my house, however remembering of this DX12 feature (announcement was way back in 2016), I decided to stick both 3070s into my computer (https://i.imgur.com/sF35HdX.jpg) to mess around with them and see which games, if any, over the past 4 years have added support for this feature.

Anyways, long story short, I had fired up World of Warcraft, I wasn’t expecting anything, however as soon as I fired up WoW, lo and behold, I was immediately met with a significant increase to performance!

While World of Warcraft had always had support for SLI in the past, unfortunately this was limited to just hardware sli (sli hardware bridge required) and would only function with DX11 selected in the options menu (would not work with DX12), in addition, it required matching graphic cards with a SLI bridge (or NVLink) as once upon a time I use to run dual 1080 Tis back in the Nvidia 10 series days.

Anyways, the main takeaways from the addition of Explicit Multi-GPU support in WoW’s Direct X 12 Ultimate update:

  1. A hardware SLI Bridge/NVLink is not required.
  2. The graphic cards do not need to match, they do not need to be the same brand (i.e. mixing MSI and Gigabyte as in my case)
  3. The graphic cards do not need to be the same model/series (i.e. mixing a previous Nvidia 20 series with a Nvidia 30 series card)
  4. The chipset does not even need to be the same manufacturer (i.e. you can mix Nvidia with AMD! https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2326-amd-nvidia-sli-directx-12-benchmark-explicit-multi-gpu )

I run a 4k 120hz oled monitor, and with one 3070 I can only get about 70-90 fps average @4K and no where near my monitor’s refresh rate, however with two I average between 115-140 fps!

So if you have a second graphics card laying around… even if it’s different and generation older than your current, you should give it a try, you may see a performance increase in World of Warcraft as I did!

–Edit–
This is unverified however:
5. A graphic card with native DX12U hardware support may be required for this to work, i.e. Nvidia RTX 30 series or AMD Radeon 6000 series graphic card.

5 Likes
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Is there an advantage? WoW is so poorly optimized that the infamous World Boss raid can bring any computer to it’s knees.

Granted there are a few PCs out there which maintain a decent fps even at max settings but well…

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yes, higher fps.

As in my case, @4K i go from ~70-90 fps average to 115-140 fps., pretty much virtually anywhere up to a 100% increase in graphical performance.

That has more to do with server performance (wow’s end), not client performance (your pc), so this probably won’t help with that, except you getting virtually up to 100% higher framerate in all that slow down :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

That’s unless you’re lagging out due to a slower/older pc (i.e. if you run a budget setup with a budget orientated graphic card), then yes, it may help in that case.

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That is good news. I hope this continues.

WoW really needs to get up to speed in giving better performance if you have great configurations. It was not the case in BFA so I hope this changes for the better in Shadowlands.

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That’s pretty neat but for even less than one of those 3070s you could get the second best AMD card for cheaper that current performs the same overclocked as the 3090 flagship Nvidia card and beat those frames in 4k.

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Firstly, the new 6000 series Radeon cards aren’t released yet

Secondly, the “second best”, 6800XT, will cost $649 MSRP (in reality ~$700+, or $1000+ scalped prices) isn’t cheaper than one 3070 which cost $499 MSRP (or in or in reality, mine cost me $549 each off Amazon).

Lastly, Yes! I plan on trying to get my hands on a 6800XT on release dat next week, and if I do manage to get one I plan on trying out my own personal benchmarks, as I had also managed to recently purchase a 3080, so I’ll be returning whichever of the two performs worse.

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You’re right but I was saying for two, though as you stated you bought one for each machine so that’s a good but for anyone reading this thread definitely check out benchmarks before you buy a new GPU right now is the best time to upgrade because competition is so one sided by AMD out performing everyone that you can expect price cuts to Nvidia and Intel products if you’re one of those brand loyalist simpletons

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Also if I manage to snag a 6800 XT… I plan on testing it in SLI with one of my Nvidia cards too (#4 in my OP), as apparently mixing Nvidia with AMD can see a significant performance uptick as compared to dual Nvidia cards, due to them filling in for eachother’s unique/exclusive graphical features support the other lacks (best of both worlds), as seen in Gamer’s Nexus’ 2016 benchmark (linked in the OP) where the amd+nvidia configuration was better than the dual nvidia cards.

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Coming from a purely tech support point of view I would love to see your gx.log

Should be inside the Logs folder of your wow folder.

It’ll be nice purely as a point of reference. A place to start in case someone ever complains that their FPS is low despite having SLI active - I would interested in finding out how it’s logged

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11/14 10:22:56.356 LogOpen
11/14 10:22:56.356 World of Warcraft Retail x86_64 9.0.1.36577
11/14 10:22:56.356 Windows 10 (10.0.19042) x86_64
11/14 10:22:56.356 AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor | Sockets:1 Cores:8 Threads:16
11/14 10:22:56.356 16.0 GB System Memory
11/14 10:22:56.356 On AC Power - Battery Not Present
11/14 10:22:56.488 Adapter 0: “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070” family:Turing vendor:0x10de device:0x2484 driver(0x1b0015000e1662) location:11 dx11:true dx12:true
11/14 10:22:56.488 Monitor 0 “Generic PnP Monitor” Size(3840x2160) Pos(0x0)
11/14 10:22:56.578 Adapter 1: “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070” family:Turing vendor:0x10de device:0x2484 driver(0x1b0015000e1662) location:12 dx11:true dx12:true
11/14 10:22:56.578 Nvidia driver version: r457_22
11/14 10:22:56.578 Choosing gpu with monitor attached: “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 [1]”
11/14 10:22:56.578 D3d12 Device Create
11/14 10:22:56.657 DXGI_FORMAT_B8G8R8A8_UNORM UAV support: true
11/14 10:22:56.657 Ray Tracing Support: DXR 1.1
11/14 10:22:56.657 Variable Rate Shading Supported: true
11/14 10:22:57.846 NotifyOnDeviceCreate
11/14 10:22:57.846 D3d12 Device Create Successful
11/14 10:22:57.846 No
11/14 10:22:57.846 Detected Graphics Defaults: 7 (CPU = 7, GPU = 7, MEM = 7)
11/14 10:22:57.917 Render Settings Changed. New Render Size: 3840x2160
11/14 10:22:57.917 RTShadows: 3
11/14 10:22:58.665 Render Settings Changed
11/14 10:23:13.535 Render Settings Changed

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Im about to yank the 1080 I gave my brother and see how a 5800xt and it play along.

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This is kinda weird considering how SLI is pretty much officially dead for all intents and purposes.

I doubt most people are going to be rocking double 3090s for WoW, lol.

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This is a DX12 feature however and one that caused some talk when it was first announced way back. It was kind of forgotten as multi gpu usage dropped.

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I guess. The big one for me was the multi-core CPU support, as that’s still pretty much the game’s main bottleneck.

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not just this, but also because it is dependent on the individual game developers if they want to implement it or not for each individual game… so I find it surprising that the wow devs added it.

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Umm the 3070 doesn’t support SLI to my knowledge, only the 3090 does

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This is not a nvidia thing but a DX12 feature using the pcie lanes to “connect” the cards.

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Ah, but regardless there is no chance that it is worth having 2 gpus in 1 system if the trends of the last few years are anything to go by

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read the post and you’ll learn that sli works with any card.

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Correct, especially if you only play wow. Though if you are trying to achieve high refresh on 4k however this might be a option as you dont need the same GPU’s.

1 Like