SLI-DR Expert with SLI causes Game Crashes

[Austhor]

I"m the one who had 2 6600GT. I now run a single 7800GTX. Still, a fix would nice to get a second 7800 GTX ;-) .

 

Angry_Games, thanks for all your effort.

 

PS: falling back to 11/02 didn't help me either.

[SuperFly03]

I have a new condrum for ya. I played BF2 for 4 hours straight with 0 problems. I decide to look at my Nvidia drivers to toy with things and to my surprise im not using SLI. That wasn't a big deal my FPS was fine, so I enable SLI and go on chatting on AIM. 2 min later my system bugs out and restarts itself. I get back into windows, and it does it again. So i go into the Genie Bios and change it to 16-1-1-2 (or whatever the non-sli mode is) and unplug the power to the 2nd 7800GTX just ot make sure. NOw im in windows and everything is just fine. ANy thoughts?

 

 

The ONLY thing that changed was me checking that damn SLI box and hitting apply.

 

Edit: oops shift key got away from me it seems lol

 

Edit 2: Officialy just ebayed my 2nd 7800GTX, hopefully ill get around 85% of my money back

[Muppet]

PS: falling back to 11/02 didn't help me either.

I didn't realise that, are you still running the 11/2 bios now.My PC has been rock solid for 6 days now.It's Saturday here in NZ now and i have spent half the day finishinf COD2 and playing Quake4 and no crashes.

I do think now it's bios related (well for me anyway) not sure about your though sorry.

[Muppet]

Austhor is there any chance you can post pics of your bios settings, or do you have SLI broadcast aperature enabled and i think there is a special SLI setting for 6600s.Maybe there is something in there

[MenionLeah]

There is a BIOS control to enable "Dual NV chip cards" in the Genie BIOS, but it can only be accessed when PCI-Express lanes are set to 2-1-1-16 (I think that is what it is) instead of the 8-4-0-8 settings. The manual doesn't aknowledge that this setting exists but I'm guessing it is for those video cards that have two 6600GT GPU's on the same card, a single card SLI. I don't think it will help Austhor out if he has two single GPU 6600GT's but then again, if nothing else is working, I'd give it a try anyway. Sounds like he has moved on to a 7800GTX instead though.

 

Flashing to the 11/02/05 BIOS tomorrow (well, later today, but after I get some sleep). Been so busy this week that I haven't even been able to play games to experience the crash.

 

Angry, if you want to test for long periods of time without actually having to play games the entire time, you could try setting up a non-dedicated DoD:S server filled with bots with your computer as a spectator. That should be identical to actually playing without having to sit there playing games all day which you probably don't want to do. Actually, you probably do, because that would be a lot of fun, but who has time to sit at their computer playing games all day, heh.

[-.-PhanTom-.-]

maybe related?

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45382

[PredatorUK]

My PC hasn't once had the frequency out of range error since flashing to the 11/02 BIOS which is a right result. However, HL2 has frozen on 2 occasions which perhaps could be PSU related.

 

The problem I have is that my XFX7800GT's came with standard 4pin connectors and not the PCI-e one's, so powering them is a bit of a nightmare.

[Austhor]

Sorry guys, I was busy with other stuff.

 

The problem, the solution actually, is that I now run a single 7800GTX. I have no interest going back to SLI 6600GT. The single GTX is still 50-60% faster.

 

But when I had SLI set, I had Aperture to Auto (only Auto, and Disable are allowed), and I had the BIOS setup correctly for SLI.

 

I also tried increasing the PCIE bus speed to 102. It didn't help either.

 

The only difference I recognize, in comparison to you guys, is that my 6600s do not have any power connectors on them. That could be why falling back to 11/02 worked with you guys and not here.

 

By the way, I don't know if any of you guys had this problem, but falling back to 11/02 caused my BIOS screen to disappear. I had to use the second card to get to the BIOS. I never had this "issue" with 12/07. Windows would still come up fine and SLI was working. I just had to swap VGA to second card to configure BIOS.

 

Now with a single 7800, I haven't seen the dreaded black screen once. I'm quite satisfied for now, minus a big hole in my wallet.

 

Still, a fix would fantastic. These are SLI boards after all.

 

One pattern I'm noticing:

1. Cards with no power connectors, 6600s, do not seem to get fixed by 11/02 BIOS, at least in my case.

2. PredatorUK, with a 4 pin connector seems to suffer mildly. Still, it could be something else.

3. Cards with proper power connectors seem to be fixed with 11/02.

 

I don't know, just a thought.

[Lane]

Muppet,

 

Yep.. like some peoples i was having same prob describe on this article.. You don't imagine the time i have spend on search what was the prob.. i need say the Expert seems really more stable too.. i think this s due to the 8Pin 12V connector, on most (4+4 Pin), this connector is shared with 2 rails ( in my case the 12V1 and 12V2, the 12V3 is for PCI ex with 24A) ) this permit a better stability too, but if you have not enough power on the rails power your GPU ( one ATI X1800XT or 1900XTX or 2x 7800GTX SLI) you will experience same problem..

It's nice have 4 rails on a PSU, but if the rails used for the GPU's can't give enough power...lol

So i think the rules now will be 20A on each Rails minimum for stability, if OC; more of 22-24A on rails power the GPU, and don't forget separate GPU rails if you use SLI ( example: GPU 1=12V rail 1, GPU2 = 12V rail 2) it need too don't have a lot of thing wire on Rails power the GPU's ( HDD, DVD Drive, Leds and fans..)

[SuperFly03]

The wierdest thing happened last night to me. I have a Dell Axim PDA with Windows Mobile 5.0 and Microsoft Active sync installed. When I docked my PDA last night my copmuter restarted itself, I thought "huh, that doesn't make any sense." Tried it again, and again it restarted. So now I have disabled the MSActive Sync process and I'm stable again. I still haven't decided whether or not to keep my 2nd 7800GTX since I can't seem to keep SLI stable.

 

I just can't figure out whats causing the random restarts. Both cards were powered on seperate rails (i have 4 12v rails). Also have 2 HDD's Koolance WC system, some lights and a DVD burner spread across the rest of the PSU.

[SeanDude05]

11/02 solved the out of range, crashing and freezing issues I had. No issues after three days.

[Guest Upok]

Same problems here. I am so glad to have found this thread, I thought I was the only one having this problem. I don't mean to take joy in other's suffering, but I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Signature is below, I was getting the random crashes and weird stutters in SLI. Single card, all the problems went away. Flashed back to 11/2 this morning and so far, so good. FEAR, CoD2 and Quake4 are all stable as can be in SLI.

One more vote for it being a BIOS issue.