• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

SLi enabled in driver, not taking effect

waveydave79

waveydave79

waveydave79

Associate
Joined
4 Feb 2006
Posts
544
Location
nottingham
I recently built a new system

Asus sli32, 2 x 6800 Oc xxx XFX (Clocked at 485/1100)
I am using Windows xp Pro X64 Edition
81.98 Nvidia driver

My problem is when I go into the advanced settings for the display driver, enable the SLI and load balancing, the screen goes blank comes back as expected. Then when going into 3d mark 2005, no green load line, and Fps remains odf that of single card. Its as if I havent enabled it.

I can confirm this as the tempreture of card two is still that of 2d operation staying aroun 45c where as card one is over 55c.

I know that the card works ok, becuase on 1 instance of removing and reinstalling the driver it fixed the problem and when I run 3d mark the green load balancing lines where there. Now I cannot seem to get it back working again, runniing a driver cleaner does not help. I dont know whats been changed. I did run coolbits but this is now removed the cards are at the default speed.

When I restart the system it detects that the system is SLI caperble and tells me in the ballon popup, even after restarting it says `SLI has been enabled'

I think there are 2 possiblities either these drivers are very poor and x64 has poor SLI support, or I am overlooking a setting in the driver. This is my first time building an SLI system so Im hoping its something simple ive overlooked.

Hopefully someone who is alittle more expierenced with SLi can point me in the general direction if this doesnt help then I guess I will try going back to 32 bit version of xp.
 
Strange one,

Can you check in the nvidia control panel for me - performance & quality settings, there should be an option in the advanced settings menu entitled SLI Rendering Method.

If it is set to Single GPU Rendering then I suspect that would be the cause of your issue - change it to Alternate Frame Rendering, or use coolbits for a few more options to play about with
 
Have you enabled SLI in the motherboard bios and fitted the SLI bridge on top of cards.

Plus choose the 3dmark 05 profile in the driver control panel settings.
 
Last edited:
chaparral said:
Have you enabled SLI in the motherboard bios and fitted the SLI bridge on top of cards.
Click to expand...

Don't think there is an option for this in the A8N32 bios, from memory the baloon popup advises that it has detected that the system is correctly configured to use SLI.

One more question - did you use the EZ-Plug in the mobo? (Don't know how much that would have an effect though, as I've heard conflicting reports of it's merit...)
 
If there is an SLI "key" on the mobo, have you made sure its in SLI mode?

Apart from that, I had major issues with SLI and 81.xx drivers (some wouldn't even use SLI), the 83.xx and 84.xx betas have been MUCH better for me.

/however I am using two 7800GT's so don't know if this effects the 6800 series.
 
The SLI bridge is fitted on top of the cards securly.

The ballon popup comes up so all bios settings are fine, I scouted the bios for anything to do with SLI and found nothing as Igidk stated. However I will check the performance and quality settings and rendering mode as stated.

What is strange now, after giving up at 7am in the morning for trying to fix this and a nights sleep, i ve just got out of bed to find the load balancing now working. :eek:

When I powered on it said `SLI has been enabled - you may notice one of youre displayed goes blank' I Immediately tested. Maybe it was powering off and restarting that did this as I never did this last night when I had the problem, I wouldnt imagine this would be needed after configuring display settings.

Im still sceptical about the whole thing, just hope that the hardware is ok. If it continues im downgrading to 32 bit version of windows, going for other drivers and also updating the bios.
 
Problem has returned.

after doing some futher investagations the option for Alternate Frame Rendering, is not there, I only seem to have 3 options , single GPU rendering , Multi GPU rendering and SLI AntiAA.

after doing a google on rendering modes I see that there should be at least 6 options here. My conclusiion is that the driver is the problem, I am biting the bullet and putting windows xp 32 bit back on, so i can change drivers.

I think Windows x64 is way ahead of its time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom