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2D/3D performance profile in SLI

biuro74

biuro74

biuro74

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Joined
17 Feb 2009
Posts
1,239
Hi,

I've got 2 GTX460 Hawks in SLI, just bought second one used yesterday. I've noticed they don't use the same 2D profiles. Their BIOSes contain 3 profiles: 3D (780/1800) and two 2D: medium: 405/1800 and low: 51/135. Thing is when I work in 2D desktop mode, cards should go to 2D medium for a while, and after few seconds - go to 2D low mode.

My first card worked this way, when I checked it months ago. Later I wasn't interested, presuming all was fine. Until yesterday. My first card (which is primary #1 now) goes to medium mode and keeps that frequencies until 3D.. Today I've launched Afterburner, overclocked both cards a bit and after settings reset both card went to low 2D (?). But now, when I write this message, card #1 is id medium 2D mode whether #2 is in low 2D.

I use newest 296.10 drivers under Win 7 x64 Ultimate. BIOSes are a bit different and looks like my #1 card has newer one:
#1 70.04.2E.00.04
#2 70.04.1B.00.02

Both are Hawks, not Tallon Attacks.

It messes up my temps inside :) because normally (I mean normally - when both go to the same modes at the same time) #1 card temperature is a 1 deg higher, and this difference raises upto 8-9 degs when cards are in different 2D modes.

Any ideas, please, except flashing one of them with the second one BIOS ? :) Is it any bug in BIOS, drivers, or rather should I worry about #1 card because it doesn't come to low 2D mode from any reason ?
 
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No, I can't manually underclock them as minimum freq in Afterburner is 405 MHz (medium 2D profile). I'd like to avoid flashing :> It's really annoying, I'd say there's something wrong with my card (BIOS ?), but there's NOW as there WAS fine few months ago.
Or maybe.. it's normal in SLI systems as master #1 card should work a bit more efficient all the time - do SLI owners have the same ?
 
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You can connect monitors from different cards with Nvidia as far as I'm aware, this is why the card won't clock down to the lowest possibility, it stays up to support the second monitor.
 
Sure, I can, but it is NOT recommended as far as I'm aware due to lower SLI efficiency:

http://sli.nvidia.com/object/sli_multi_monitor.html#connection

So it seems I have to choose: better efficiency, or power management. Or just turn TV off when not needed ;-) Of course, I will check out how it goes with 2nd card, by now I'm interested in any shortcut that would turn on/off 2nd monitor like some scripts, or profiles shortcut.. I've read once on this forum some guy had such shortcut, but how to do this ? Drivers do not support profiles anymore taht could be switched...
 
But yes whenever you connect two monitors to any card from nvidia or AMD they will not drop down to their lowest clock state on one card.
 
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