Hello all,
First and foremost thank you to anyone reading this and considering helping, as this is my first post on the EVGA forums and I apologize beforehand for the length. Secondly, I just want to make it clear that I've only ever owned EVGA GPU's and never had any issues (thus my continued consumer support) until now.
 
My issue is with my latest upgrade to my gaming system and a seeming lack thereof in performance. I recently purchased dual GTX670 FTW+ 4GB for my system to replace a dual set of aging GTX260 Core 216 Superclocked. Both sets made by EVGA and both arguable great cards for their respective times.
 
Here's the kicker. Frame rates for the 670's are only marginally better than the 260's in virtually every game I try. Granted I have the settings turned to max now for the 670's, I'm getting very close to the same frame rate. Interestingly enough, be it Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, or Metro 2033, all of them are at around 30-35FPS average. Average coming from between 25-40FPS. Borderlands 2 is even running between 30-50FPS and even lags at times. All resolutions at 1920x1080p using HDMI on 32" HDTV@60Hz. All other benchmarks and videos I've seen of 670's (even single cards) are running these games at least 60+ for the same resolution.
 
I've run benchmarks (Heaven, 3DMark11) and all seems to be normal or better for my system specs (below). Here's the 3DMark11 score: . Minecraft runs flawlessly... 
 
So what's the deal? I realize I have some bottlenecking going on, and I still need to overclock the CPU, but it shouldn't be bad enough to keep me from running these games at 60+FPS or at least above 50 at stock speeds in my mind. Especially with 2 cards!
 
On a related (?) note. Skyrim and Metro 2033 show 0% usage for card 2 in SLI in-game and I don't really know why. SLI shows working in the other games listed so it's not an issue with a card. Been searching Google and a ton of forums for the last 2 days and can't find the info I'm looking for about it.
 
Any help is greatly appreciated/welcomed. Please understand that I'm in college and might not have the time to read/reply/test immediately but will as soon as I can.
 
System is as follows:
PSU: Enermax 85+, MOBO: EVGA 750i SLI FTW, CPU: Q9650@3.0gHz stock, RAM: 4x2GB OCZ Titanium DDR2 800mHz, GPU: 2x GTX670 FTW+ 4GB.
 
Never had a problem with the 260's. Q9650 is also liquid cooled for eventual overclocking (soon).
Still need to make a signature with my info but hope that does it for now.
 
Regards,
SharpShot888

Yeah its like running alcohol in a car. Sure it may run, but not very well! lol
 
Overclock the tar out of it, and come back with some results! :D

With the bottleneck your having it wont allow the usage to go any higher. Its only using whatever usage you see, because the CPU cant send enough information. Skyrim and Metro rape GPU's so unless they have a backing to let them run 100% they are going to get nerfed off.
 
Im not sure how much of a gain you can get, but if anything it will be better than nothing!

Yeah that's kind of what i was thinking too. It does seem odd to me that it doesn't split the load between the two cards at all though.
 
But it does make sense from a bandwidth (information) standpoint because Metro didn't use any of the second card in game, but in the benchmark it ran at about 6% max. Probably because the CPU was being used a lot more for the benchmark than the beginning part of the game, feeding more of the info to the GPU's.
 
Thanks again for the help understanding this. My friend and I kind of thought this was the case, but the examples put it into better perspective. And I think my 3DMark link got messed up, but I was the top of the list for that setup, even without the overclock.
 
Off to push my CPU! haha

Alright... So I got a little time to start working on the overclock and am running at 3.6gHz as I'm writing this. Still need to check stability at least overnight, but I think I'm going to turn the voltage down first. Have vcore at 1.360v (CPU-Z) at the moment. Going to see if it's stable at something slightly lower before it runs all night. Max temp after about 15 minutes prime95 was 62C and I idle at about 39-41C according to realtemp. Might be able to lower that a bit if it takes less voltage (not to mention I'm afraid of overvoltage = quick degradation from what I know).
 
Haven't tested FPS on the 670's with the overclock yet, but will keep you guys updated once I do. Soon!

I say buy a new CPU/motherboard right after your done with this semester. I too am in collage and I just spent $826 on a total of 5 books, and by the way I am renting them too! Like everyone said its your CPU my man. Also to answer your SLI question no it does not matter how you put them. Also I think your issue with SLI is because your CPU does not have enough lanes to support it. IDK I could be wrong, just an idea to throw out for someone to confirm it. Just to let you know as well is that SLI still needs to mature with these cards. Hopefully the up coming drivers can help improve SLI a bit more.  Hey quick question, what firmware does your cards have? Make sure they are updated to the latest one because it can give you minor improvements if you do not have the latest one.