Help SLi graphics problems....

[briantonkinson]

Wondering if anyone can help. I have recently built an SLi system (see specs below) I am running Windows in SLi mode fine but when I try and play SLi games such as Trackmania nations and Quake 3 in SLi mode I get graphical glitches in the form of horizontal lines across the screen and quick vanishing blocks. These disappear if I throw it into Single GPU mode through NVidia control panel.

I am using latest none-beta BIOS (1302) and latest graphics drivers (169.21).

Spec:
ASUS M2N SLi Deluxe MB
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2 X Gainward NVIDIA GeForce 8600 256MB Silent FX GCards
2GB GEIL DDR2 800 (4.4.4.12 latency).
300GB Maxtor Diomandmax10 SATA HDD
480W Tagan PSU

Everythings running reasnably cool. CPU is water cooled. MB and GCard are cooled by two internal fans (1 120mm and 1 80mm) and there are three intake fans at the front of the PC.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Brian

 

[briantonkinson]

Seems to be with all 3d apps yeah - I have tried disabling all overclocking but to no avail.

ca9phoenix - what you mean you took the SLi bridge off and it worked fine in SLi mode. I assume you can't do SLi without the SLi bridge??? Going to try swapping the cards over when I get a chance in case I perhaps have 1 buggy card but doesn't soyund like it.

 

[briantonkinson]

SimonB - what MoBo you using?

 

[briantonkinson]

OK run SLI without the bridge - but there is a performance drop (noticeable). I'm not impressed. Surely this makes the cards faulty technically?

To be honest there aren’t many games that support SLI anyway - even 3D mark is recommended to run as single GPU by NVIDA.

Would have to say NVIDIA have gone down quite a way in my estimation. This is rubbish and I am going to contact advertising standards about the whole "twice the performance" business because it's clearly nonsense.

 

[briantonkinson]

Just tried taking one card out and it performs exactly the same as with both cards in (but without the SLi bridge). The only way I seem to get a performance increase is using the bridge but that causes graphical glitches (lots of people have reportied this if you google it and nvidia have done nothing about it).

Full specs are:

ASUS M2N SLi Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2GB GEIL DDR2 800 (4-4-4-12 latency)
2X Gainward GeForce 8600 GT 256MB
Maxtor Diomandmax 10 300GB SATA HDD
Tagen 480W PSU
Windows XP Professional SP2

BIOS revision 1302
NVIDIA Forceware version 169.21

Open to suggestions

 

[briantonkinson]

When I decided to put the 2nd card back in I swapped them round at the same time. It appears to be a bit better now. No glitches in Trackmania and only minor ones in Quake3 (and I can run that single GPU if need be). I am downloading Crysis demo now to try that out.

Also noiced that after re-inserting the SLi birdge there was a rythmic interference running down the screen - the SLI bridge (the plastic part) was touching the heat sinc on the GCard. I pulled it away and this stopped.

Might see if I can get hold of a rigid SLi bridge instead of this flimsy one ASUS have given me.

 

[briantonkinson]

These sound like the problems I was getting but I am running XP SP2 not Vista. I can understand it with Q3 because it's an old game (although it is supposed to support SLi). I will post up how Crysis copes.

 

[briantonkinson]

My problems havn't gone but have reduced quite a lot and that was after I swapped the cards around (which of course involved re-seating the bridge) so perhaps it is something physical to do with the bridge? Very strange.

Simon, are you using a flexi or solid bridge?