Mod the Ultra-D to SLI-D Picture Tutorial

[gudodayn]

No, the video cards still have to be the same GPU core and memory speed I believe.

Eg. 6800GT matching a 6800GT, the two cards can be of different manufacturers but the GPU and memory speeds of the video cards need to be the same.

The new drivers allows SLI mode without the bridge (there is a performance hit) and without exact identical cards

[leo888]

The new nVidia driver 80.xx and up let us use two SLI card from different manufacturers but it have to be the same model and it doesn't have to be the same speed as it would be better to have both at same speed. As some has tested that if you have a faster card on the first slot and putting the slower on the second slot, the second one will be overclock according to the speed of the first, and vice versa. Also the new driver works without the need for SLI bridge Connector. We would lose 5 - 10% performance wihtout the connector compare to having one.

[Voltes-5]

I got the Ultra-D las week and its up and running with my Newcatle at 2.55-1:1. I proceeded to mod it up to SLI but it seems that the points to be penciled are covered with some sort of hard plastic or glue. Anyone got a similar board?

[red930]

Read the entire thread for pointers to deal with the change in the epoxy coating.

 

I got the Ultra-D las week and its up and running with my Newcatle at 2.55-1:1. I proceeded to mod it up to SLI but it seems that the points to be penciled are covered with some sort of hard plastic or glue. Anyone got a similar board?

[Ziris]

I did this mod last night to one of my DFI Ultra-D boards. Didn't have an X-acto knife so I used a very small and sharp flat head screw driver to remove the epoxy which worked well. I then joined the connectors with a regular #2 pencil.

 

On the first boot I saw Nforce SLI!!

 

It was a very simple mod. I then pulled my other 7800GT out of my other rig to test SLI and it worked like a champ. Ran 3D Mark 05 and scored 9744. Seems low but it could just be the performance hit in not having a bridge, I hope anyway.

 

Thanks for the guide!!

[Voltes-5]

Guilty as charged Ex.....did not go through the entire thread, I'm away from home right now so will know wha to do when I get to my system.

[Ninjagordy]

Edit by THunDA..

 

We have a classified section for things like this..

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=35

[rodman]

FYI, after the SLI mod, LAN port 1 will not function correctly anymore. I had to install the Yukon drivers and use Lan 2, as the sec pcix slot shares the same path so there was a conflict till I disabled lan 1. Basicly Nvidia lan drivers are a no go after such a mod. I also had conflict issues untill I uninstalled and reinstalled the chipset drivers after going back to 1 card. SLI blows anyway since Vsync is not supported in the leatest games like FEAR and COD2

[nMLasKi]

Hey people, I just did the SLI MOD, I have an ULTRA-DR and the mod was succesfull (it says NFORCE 4 SLI)

 

Here comes the problems:

 

- The first time I installed the drivers, everything worked fine, I uninstalled previous like always (control panel, reboot @ safe mode and then driver cleaner).

 

I benched FEAR and Quake 4 (hwspirit timedemo 1) Nvidia drivers: 81.94

 

The tests were benched with 1 BFG 7800GTX OC and 1 ASUS 7800GTX (primary PCI-E) without SLI Bridge

 

FEAR @ 1024 Maximun detail AA 4x Anisotropic 16x soft shadows ON

 

Single Card: 51 fps

Dual Card: 71

 

Quake 4 HWSpirit timedemo 1280x1024 Ultra Quality AA 4x Anisotropic 16x

 

Single Card: 71.5 fps

Dual Card: 89 fps

 

Well the results are very bad considering benchs I saw in a lot of reviews, I.E FEAR gains almost 2x with SLI, Quake 4 over 75 %, and my gain is very poor here.

 

So I decide to try with 2 identical cards, and I did so, with 2 ASUS 7800GTX

 

Uninstalled the drivers OK (like I said before) install 81.94 again, when I try to setup SLI I got a very bad msg error (rundll32 error at nvcpl file), and another msg comes with the typical critical symbol (the red one).

 

I tried every possible combination with the 2 cards (BFG, ASUS, 2xASUS) and still have the same error, the games works fine but the gains is even worst than the first time (FEAR = 61 fps, Quake 4 = 75 fps)

 

Any idea ? Did I something wrong ?? Should I use the SLI bridge ??

 

Thanks and forgive me for my english

[Nil Einne]

You most definitely need a SLI bridge. Frankly I suprised it works without one

 

BTW, the fact that your second test is so diff from your first shows you how careful you have to be with benchmarks. For a good benchmark I would recommend at least 3 independent runs. If variance is more then ~10%, I would say at least 5-10 runs is necessary for a reliable benchmark. I guess your cards are all same clock etc right?

[nMLasKi]

Ni Einne: for the moment I have only one card, the BFG OC 7800GTX, the tests were ran with 2 cards of a friend of mine, I want to purchase one of his cards but first I wanna make sure 100 % stability 100 % compatibilty. I tried to use the SLI bridge from ASUS, but it is different (the ASUS mobo of my friend is different from the DFI), the ASUS SLI bridge is larger I think and I could´t get another to try it. I don´t know about the clocks, but I think ASUS clocks are different to BFG clocks, but I tried everyway possible (2 exactly ASUS cards, 1 ASUS and 1 BFG) and I always get the same error. do you think this error is because of the SLI Bridge ?? Do you think the SLI bridge will fix it once for all ?? Because Its no doubt of the performance loss, but why am I having problems with the drivers ??

 

Thanks again

[nMLasKi]

Could it be some bios setting ?? There is one reffer to SLI.."SLI broadcast aperture" or something like that, the first time it was on DISABLED and I changed it to AUTO. Could it be something with the bios version (I think I should update it) ?? Another weird thing: when I did the mod, in the device manager now I have an "PCI Bridge device" in the list of other hard, and I can´t update the driver, I mean, teorically there is a "new" piece of hard but I don´t know what it is, I guess it is something related to the mod, but always is as "other detected devices" with the exclamation symbol.

Maybe some kind of driver conflict ??