Expert SLI questions

[04NickySP2]

Hello All.

 

I've recently been battling the dreaded artifacting problems with the nVidia 7900GT cards. I'm trying to run them in SLI and everytime I enable SLI and try to game (Oblivion, TOCA3, BFME2) I start artifacting after a few minutes.

 

After the first time the problem started I tested each card by themselves. I found one good and one bad so I thought hey no problems I will just RMA the thing. Well after 4 bad RMA cards that would artifact with just that card installed I finally received the new updated eVGA 256-P2-N583-AR replacement. I installed it alone last night and was able to play Oblivion for almsot 2 hours before I shutdown to pop in the second card. Only two minutes into Oblivion I started artifacting.

 

I tested each card about 4 hours with 3dmark06 and I can't get either one to artifact while being the only card installed.

 

Now to my questions. Is it possible that I'm effected by the Expert SLI problems? Could I just be overloading the PSU and the gfx cards are starving for power? Should I try running to the local PC store and picking up another motherboard to test?

 

Thanks in advance everyone!

[billdavis]

id say more power

 

try increasing your pci-e pseed to 101 or so

[watsonte]

You have more than enough power to run what is in your sig, the PC Power and Cooling PSU will give you all you need to run SLI with the 7900s, what I think is that what you are having issues with is the 7900s, despite all your RMAs the cards are still iffy, and I dont think they have fixed them entirely after going through the EVGA forum....

 

Check your temps, running SLI with the cards could result in one overheating and thus your issue...

[04NickySP2]

I just got back from Fry's Electronics picking up a pair of Zalman VF900-Cu coolers. Will post again shortly.

[04NickySP2]

Well after another long night I'm still unable to get the cards to run in SLI without artifacting. The good news about the VF900's are the temps are staying under 49c at full load.

 

I've even backed my Opty 165 back to stock 200X9 to see if that made any difference. I guess it's time to call eVGA and spend eternity on the phone repeating everything I've already done.

[OldGuy]

Have you tried another bios just for the heck of it?? Since you've backed everything down to stock clocks at the moment, why not try another bios to see if it is the culprit? If the cards are okay as stand alones but not in SLI I'd give another bios a shot...

[04NickySP2]

Well it turns out the new updated 7900 GT is the problem. Last night twice it hardlocked the system. So it appears that eVGA might not have actually fixed the problem .... yet.

[cybervicke]

Its known that 7900 cards are having problems with artifacts.. im sorry.

[billdavis]

do you have the old 7900gt or new ones

the new ones have infineon ram

 

if you have the new ones follow this guide

if you have the old ones find a way to rma it

 

 

How I enabled SLi mode on DFI NF4 SLI-DR “Expert” board every time without any problems at all when moving from a single card, be it ATI or Nvidia. Did it this way upwards of 40 times over the course of 2 days and each time if was with Windows pre-installed and using a single video card.

 

1. In pre-existing windows installation I used device manager to uninstall the previous video driver and said NO to reboot and ran driver cleaner to remove the current video driver also.

 

2. Then I chose shutdown of windows and computer turned off and I put the second video card in and put the SLI bridge on with A/c power off to computer.

 

3. Then I re-connected A/c power to the computer and booted to bios. I ignored flashing Leds and as soon as they settled down it booted to bios while holding down the DEL key.

 

4. In Genie bios I enabled SLI lane transfer to 8x and 8x and 4x and rebooted to bios again and made sure the lane change was showing to function. It was.

 

5. Saved and exited bios and used the F8 key during boot to enter SAFE MODE and installed the 81.95 or 81.98 drivers that were previously unzipped on the hard drive in their respective folders.

 

6. After driver installation in SAFE MODE, I was asked did I want to reboot and I answered yes and booted straight to windows and entered the video card setup menu and enabled SLI and was asked to shutdown programs which amounted to a complete reboot and SLI was enabled thusly every time I tried it. Zero failures to enable SLI on the DFI NF4 SLI-DR “expert” board.

 

A couple of informational notes:

 

1. Testing done with bios 11/25/05 and 12/07/05

 

2. Used windows XP 32 bit w/SP2, with Nvidia 6.70 chipset drivers installed using 2x36 gig raptors in raid 0 with one dual layer DVD burner and one back up PATA 200 gig drive hooked up and all powered by a Sunbeam 550 watt SLi power supply.

 

3. Single to SLI mode swapping was done by removing a pre-existing ATI X800 card; a single 6600GT by Leadtek and a single xFx 7800GTX video card.

 

4. I moved to SLI using two Leadtek 6600GTs or two xFx 7800GTXs and enabled SLi as above.

 

5. Noted that the 81.98 drivers are a little slower in benches than the 81.95’s but the 81.98’s have the 3kmark2006 bench as a menu choice for global driver setup.

 

6. Previous to the 81.xx drivers it had seemed to me, there had been no real issue for enabling SLi for me, but with the release of 81.xx there was some minor problems. So I just went thru the steps above time after time with zero problems and settled on this as the easiest method for enabling SLi for me.

 

By Robert aKa RGone…2006

[Voltes-5]

billdavis, thanks for the instructions. Last time I tried SLI with my pair of 7900GT, I did not have any issues. But the newer card was bad so I got an RMA today. I went ahead and did the same thing I did the last time but would not get any image at all with my two card on SLI. So I found your post and did as your post say and dang after a couple of hours of scratching my head, I finally got it to work. Thanks a lot.

[Guest mars]

Anyone tried 91.33 Forceware with SLI? ...And 6.86 chipset drivers? I am going to go 2x7600GT SLI - and I think this will be easier than 2x7900GT.

 

Anyone have any anecdotal evidence?

 

Thanks,

Mars.

[Voltes-5]

Anyone tried 91.33 Forceware with SLI? ...And 6.86 chipset drivers? I am going to go 2x7600GT SLI - and I think this will be easier than 2x7900GT.

 

Anyone have any anecdotal evidence?

 

Thanks,

Mars.

 

The 91.31and 6.86 is running my system. After playing Oblivion for a couple of months I decided to tweak the system up a bit when I did SLI. I did this just a couple of days ago and it seems to be good so far.