New rig totally unstable in SLI, SLI-DR, FX-55, at my wit's end

[dobbs]

Sorry Rgone - I've updated my sig. I did a quickie one earlier that I thought listed all of the pertinent items but I guess everything is pertinent at this point.

 

Actually nothing's resolved, I think maybe you saw my memory timings question that was answered by RyderOCZ. That cleared up what I should be using for this board (I think, but everything's still in play). I am still most definitely having the problems listed in the original post.

 

As far as not upping voltages -- I don't have the VX brand of memory. I have OCZ4001024ELDCGE-K EL , which is referenced at http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memo...al_channel_gold

 

They're rated for 2.8v, so they're not a VX module as far as I can tell. You're saying I should go higher than the 2.9v I have them at now?

 

I'm really willing to do / try anything to get rid of the crashes. I'd rather not RMA the entire system.

[Sharp]

Hello,

 

Just a small question,

Did you plug all the power connectors into the board?

24pin ATX/4pin +12/hard drive connector/floppy drive connector.

 

I suppose you have

[dobbs]

Yes, they're all plugged in.

[Sharp]

Do you know someone else with an SLi board that can test your gfx cards in SLi mode?

 

Then you can be sure that they work properly in SLi mode.

[zeus_999]

I would really suspect the power supply

I agree with AG, I think the PSU is the root of all your problems.

[dobbs]

Unfortunately I'm SOL as far as knowing someone else with a SLI setup. I'm the only one I'm afraid.

[Smoken Joe]

It sounds like it might be the PSU to me too have you tested it with a multmeter? I assume you have also tried removing extra parts?

 

This may seem stupid but does it have problems with SLI disabled and the SLI connector in place? You might have a tweaked board or one both of the cards have a problem with the SLI bridge.

 

Did you try the old take the MB of the case and install in the cardboard case and the minimum devises trick?

[wolfden]

Hi dobbs: My system is almost identical to yours. That power supply is good enough for my twin cards.(See my sig.) I updated my 6800 drivers at Nvidea site and all my games run well. All other drivers used were on NF4 cd that came with the board. I play games like Battlefield Vietnam etc etc and no problems. You should not be having any problems. (PS Also used 3/10 bios. ) Its got to be something minor but I am not experienced enough to help you. Good Luck I also used Rgone sticky and it made my system very stable. You can find it at

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread...ht=rgone+sticky Try it and see if you can get your system stable first and then overclock.

[dobbs]

I updated to the 414-2 BIOS last night and 76.10 drivers on a fresh install in Windows. Curiously, when I enable the "Show GPU usage" double green line thing in SLI mode, it doesn't show any activity. Is it broken in these drivers, Angry? Anyway, the thing is still crashing in HL2. I'm going to try some more games other than the 2 I have + 3dMark05 to see if I can get a broader sense of what's working and what's not.

 

What's strange is that after I freeze in game and power off my system, it boots back into Windows fine. But then on the NEXT reboot it gives me the "Windows has recovered from a serious error" message and submission of the error report comes back with the usual Error in Nvidia Graphics Display Driver message. So at least I know the nv4_disp.dll crash is what's happening in game, but that's what I suspected all along.

 

I ran the system for 4 hours in memtest prior to this latest fresh install of Windows under the 414-2 BIOS. Then overnight I ran 8 hours of Prime and no errors there either. This morning I disabled SLI mode in the driver and left the thing on in Half Life 2 just to see if it'd crash. This is with both cards in the machine, the connector on, just disabled in the driver. We'll see.

 

wolfden - You're using the 6.39 Nforce drivers from the CD ? Can you tell me what the BIOS rev is on your 2 6800GTs? It will say it when the machine boots or you can see it in the Advanced panel for the driver. We have almost the exact same system except for the memory and hard drives etc. You have about the same # of fans as me in the case so it looks like our power pull is roughly the same.

[Guest Angus]

the sad thing is im about to go sli like you dobbs, hopefully we can resolve our problems.

[Stevedub]

Man I was getting that same error message when trying to run 3d mark 05. I was told that it was my power supply. So I have a new one I'm going to try out today.

[dobbs]

Update:

 

I've decided to go away from the 70.xx driver series and restart testing with the 66.93s that came on the DFI CD. I also am starting from scratch with RGone's settings for max stability to see if those will make a difference. From this baseline (should it work) I hope to incrementally start changing settings and determine just what in the hell is causing these crashes.

 

I did find something that I didn't know was happening until now -- inside of Windows, since I'm rebooting so often due to the crashes, I discovered that my Mitsumi 7 in 1 Floppy deal was alternately being detected / not detected by the OS. Basically what this is is a floppy drive with 2 little USB smart card readers stuck onto it that act as other Windows devices. Half the time it would be recognized by Windows and half the time it wouldn't. I've since just unplugged it completely since a floppy drive is of minimal use to me unless I'm flashing BIOSes etc.

 

The fact that it was bouncing in and out of Windows could mean a couple things -- 1) Power supply is indeed insufficient if a device that's plugged in is not always recognized

2) Drive is faulty and is causing issues with the system

3) Memory issues are preventing the driver from being loaded properly at boot time (?)

 

I decided I'd just remove it from the mix.

 

I also redid the power connections in my case to make sure that everything was on different leads. Right now the motherboard is the only thing on one of the leads, the CD-ROM and SATA drive have their own separate one, and the messy chain of fans that line my case have another. Each video card also has its own 12v rail.

 

We shall see...