Do I have an SLI problem..? or just FAIL!

[irtuk]

Hey all.

I picked up a cheap 480GTX on ebay a while back with a view to fitting it into my rig as a second card for SLI now that the 480GTX is a bit long in the tooth, and also for fun and experimenting with SLI.

Well I got round to this last night and I am getting my learning in spades. I currently have an issue with enabling SLI that seems to have cropped up for a few people from what I can gather, but I have not gotten it straight yet.

So the original card is an OcUK Value GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card. GPU-Z says …. well I don't currently know because every time I try to start it up the Nvidia kernel driver crashes

The ebay card was described as Water Cooled GTX 480 block EK ASUS GeForce 1.5GB 1536 mb

The SLI bridge is from amazon and labelled Nvidia, my Mobo is a crosshair formula V with BIOS version 1403x64, CPU is an AMD FX8350

I have two monitors, a 30" U3011 and a 24" dell both of which are plugged into the original card.

The cards are seated in slot "1" from the top down, thats from the CPU downwards and slot "3" because of the configuration of the cooling pipes between them, slot 2 is just a little too close.

When I booted up after a clean ( and I mean CLEAN ) install of the latest Nvidia drivers, 335.23 as I write this, I get a little popup saying SLI capable system and I go to enable SLI.

On the way I check device manager and both cards are listed and both cards are 'happy' for want of a better word, no warning triangles, disabled devices etc.

When I click "Maximise 3D performance" the Nvidia control panel starts applying the change, and then hangs, I have left it for ten minutes or so, its dead and requires a restart. On restarting the graphics drivers are all borked, one card is disabled, nvidia control won't start and I am basically back at the beginning.

Any thoughts here? As I write this I have unplugged the second monitor and I am going to roll the Nvidia driver back to the last one I have available which looks like 327.23

-Ed

 

[irtuk]

Good shout. let me check the card firmware.

 

[irtuk]

These damn drivers do not like being d*cked around with …. sheesh. I have stripped everything back and I am putting the latest driver back on so I can check with GPUz what the BIOS versions are on the cards. I am assuming this is the right thing to do but I don't have long left tonight if I am gonna be on the 7am train up to London...

 

[irtuk]

Well, GPUz won't start at all, but system information from NVIDIA control panel shows two 480GTX cards with identical details, 700MHZ graphics clock, 1401 processor, BIOS version 7.00.21.00.02 on a PCIExpress x16 gen2 Bus. Device ID and part numbers both match.

I am going to try enabling SLI again with only one monitor and then get some sleep.

-Ed

 

[irtuk]

mmm this time it moaned about a couple of programs, logitech game control and windows reader for some reason. I killed the offending processes, Looks like it's crashed again and I am off to bed.

 

[irtuk]

Yeah the second card is in the cooling loop. The loop looks fine as well. I will test the eBay card tonight. Dunno if the tubing will allow it in the card one slot though.

 

[irtuk]

Yeah the second card is watercooled and the loop is fine, all flowing nicely, I will take a look at temps later on when I get back home today, and tomorrow is "work" from home Friday so, plenty opportunities to test.

The PSU is a corsair HX850 so it should be ok, although the machine is clocked slightly so I could do with getting everything back down to stock speeds, as well as testing just the "new" GPU.

 

[irtuk]

No offence taken I have done things maybe not quite that daft but, maybe not far off

Anyway, worth mentioning because I have not as yet I don't think, I am running Windows 8.1 64 bit

 

[irtuk]

When I was 16 .... EISA was introduced with a 32-bit bus, the 386 was King, Steve Jobs unveiled the NeXT having left Apple, PC's had 1 or 2 MB RAM and HDD's were maybe 50MB, Windows was version 2 and the "device driver" was a relatively new concept.....

 

[irtuk]

So it was the card ....

So it was the card that was borked. And after a weekend of fiddling I have some definite "do" and "donts" to remember for the future and a paltry Firestrike bench of 3431. It's new card time.

I am looking at this Asus Radeon R9 thinking that it's going to sit well and play nicely with the other components, it being an AMD rig and all, I would also like to be able to access the overclocking features in AMD Overdrive for the card.

The other thing that's caught my eye is this watercooled card which would probably run quieter and keep the rig fully watercooled.

Any sage advice here? Am I going down the right path with "full AMD"?

-Ed