GTX760Ti and GTX670 SLi

[eXistenZ]

Hi everybody,

Is there a possibility to SLi these cards together?

The 760Ti is reporting in the system as a 670 with DEV_1189 (exactly as 670, it should be DEV_1193 for 760Ti OEM but it's not) and even when newest drivers from nVidia are installed, in Device Manager the card is still GTX670. The only place it's actually named right is in nVidia Control Panel (GTX760Ti OEM)

These two cards are completely identical, the only difference is in GPU and MEM frequencies. I currently don't have a PC to try it on (although when i will i'll post findings) so i was wondering if someone else tried this as well.

(Yes, ive seen the SLi with different cards forum and it will be the next best thing for this)

Also, would it be possible to flash GTX670 with BIOS from this GTX760Ti OEM? I'm kinda sorta afraid i'll brick the card.

Last question! Is there any reason that nForce 680i SLi (that is on a motherboard i will have available for testing, along with QX6700 processor) wouldn't take modern GeForce cards to SLi?

That should be all. Thanks for all responses!

 

[GhostRyder]

Hi everybody,

Is there a possibility to SLi these cards together?

The 760Ti is reporting in the system as a 670 with DEV_1189 (exactly as 670, it should be DEV_1193 for 760Ti OEM but it's not) and even when newest drivers from nVidia are installed, in Device Manager the card is still GTX670. The only place it's actually named right is in nVidia Control Panel (GTX760Ti OEM)

These two cards are completely identical, the only difference is in GPU and MEM frequencies. I currently don't have a PC to try it on (although when i will i'll post findings) so i was wondering if someone else tried this as well.

(Yes, ive seen the SLi with different cards forum and it will be the next best thing for this)

Also, would it be possible to flash GTX670 with BIOS from this GTX760Ti OEM? I'm kinda sorta afraid i'll brick the card.

Last question! Is there any reason that nForce 680i SLi (that is on a motherboard i will have available for testing, along with QX6700 processor) wouldn't take modern GeForce cards to SLi?

That should be all. Thanks for all responses!

According to everything I have read the card in question (GTX 760ti) is just a rebranded GTX 670 for OEMS with no discernible differences between them (Core clocks aside). That being said you cannot SLI cards that are in any way different (Not speaking brands or clock speeds, specifically different models even if they are just re-badged) because NVidia blocks it (IE the GTX 770 cannot SLI with a GTX 680 even though they are the same card).

You can use the Hybrid-SLI program which to me would be your best option to SLI the two cards together instead of trying to flash a bios version mostly because it can brick the card which unless you have a dual bios switch on the card would be a hard fix without sending it in and hoping they will fix it.

As far as the board goes, its old but it should work with two GPU's if I am looking at the right one it should be just fine since it has two that will run at 16x speeds (8x being minimum).

 

[Law-II]

Hi

As intended by Nvidia GTX 670 & GTX 670 =SLi Yes
As intended by Nvidia GTX 760Ti & GTX760Ti = SLi Yes
or
As intended by Nvidia GTX760Ti primary video out & GTX 670 dedicated PhysX =SLi No [may improve game performance if dev included PhysX support for game]

Also, would it be possible to flash GTX670 with BIOS from this GTX760Ti OEM? I'm kinda sorta afraid i'll brick the card.

That will kill/brick the card, [Never flash a different vga card Vbios image to a card from a different series]

Look here

Note: nForce 680i SLi is very old, pointless against other modern options available

TBH: sell one or both of the vga cards and get a better single vga card solution. just my two cents

atb

Law-II

 

[eXistenZ]

Thanks both,

I know the old mobo is pointless to have two GTX670 SLi'd (especially with QX6700 in it, although OCed to 3.47GHz), it's just something I have laying around for testing. Ultimately this combo will be paired either with 2500K OCed to 4.3GHz or i7 4770 stock (cannot really OC the latter).

Normally I would sell both and buy one better because of SLi/CF drawbacks but this time it's a bit more complicated. I have the 760Ti only borrowed for testing (although for a long time - a couple of months, maybe more) and the GTX670 is mine, that's why I wanted to pair these two together.

I will try the patch that will allow me to SLi these cards together, hopefully it will work without issues.

I'm also going to power the two cards with 550W PSU (if tomorrow's test will be a success) - and I know it's a "little" tight, but it should be doable (~2x170W for the cards + 90W for i7 4770 + 80W for everything else).

I'm gonna test it tomorrow and will post findings, if anybody is interested.

Btw I read on another forum that 760Ti OEM BIOS can be used on a GTX670 so yeah, it's probably good that I asked here as well. But the 760Ti OEM is so effortlessly rebranded that I thought they really only changed BIOS and the green strip on default cooler.

 

[Law-II]

Hi

I'm gonna test it tomorrow and will post findings, if anybody is interested.

I will continue to follow this thread, will be interesting to see if this can be achived

Btw I read on another forum that 760Ti OEM BIOS can be used on a GTX670 so yeah, it's probably good that I asked here as well. But the 760Ti OEM is so effortlessly rebranded that I thought they really only changed BIOS and the green strip on default cooler.

Just make sure to backup the Vbios images from both vga card and ensure recovery skills are up to par before attempting any flash; good luck [PCB's must match]

atb

Law-II

 

[eXistenZ]

Guys, I wouldn't believe it if i didn't try it but the two cards actually work together without tinkering with patches or BIOS flash.

Because of the old processor it's actually not as obvious in 3DMark Vantage, but it's pretty obvious in Heaven benchmark. I will post more test results but the internet sucks today, badly, so i cannot dl some more recent games/benchmarks.



Test PC is quite old so I'm thinking there is a big problem with CPU, which cannot supply the two GPUs with enough data, so sometimes during 3DMark Vantage benchmark the two cards were super-bored, only 35% utilization for both, but through intensive scenes there was full 100% utilization for both cards.
But this test seems like a success so the two cards will be running under i7 4770 i have laying around somewhere and that should be a considerable upgrade.

I will post more benchmark results and findings when i'll have everything in a case (that will be some time next week).

//edit: I've found Unreal Engine 4 techdemo on the disk, it is roughly 70% faster than with one card.

Test PC:

QX6700 OCed to 3.47GHz
4x2GB DDR2
nForce 680i SLi
1.1kW PSU

Pics:

 

[GhostRyder]

Guys, I wouldn't believe it if i didn't try it but the two cards actually work together without tinkering with patches or BIOS flash.

Because of the old processor it's actually not as obvious in 3DMark Vantage, but it's pretty obvious in Heaven benchmark. I will post more test results but the internet sucks today, badly, so i cannot dl some more recent games/benchmarks.

View attachment 61646 View attachment 61645

Test PC is quite old so I'm thinking there is a big problem with CPU, which cannot supply the two GPUs with enough data, so sometimes during 3DMark Vantage benchmark the two cards were super-bored, only 35% utilization for both, but through intensive scenes there was full 100% utilization for both cards.
But this test seems like a success so the two cards will be running under i7 4770 i have laying around somewhere and that should be a considerable upgrade.

I will post more benchmark results and findings when i'll have everything in a case (that will be some time next week).

//edit: I've found Unreal Engine 4 techdemo on the disk, it is roughly 70% faster than with one card.

Test PC:

QX6700 OCed to 3.47GHz
4x2GB DDR2
nForce 680i SLi
1.1kW PSU

Pics:
View attachment 61643 View attachment 61644 View attachment 61647 View attachment 61648

Great findings as I had heard the opposite which really shocks me that it works. Maybe the other people I was speaking with were incorrect or had something setup wrong about the same card.

 

[Law-II]

Hi

Nice find ; this goes against everything I have learnt about Nvidia vga cards and drivers; [in the back of my mind; I do wonder if this is due to the nForce chipset] that was the primary SLi controller chip in it's day.
Will be interesting to see if SLi is crippled by newer chipsets or it is just the fact the cards are one in the same just a rebadge

atb

Law-II

 

[eXistenZ]

That's what I'm actually a little afraid of, maybe it's really the chipset's "fault" that these two cards are working together.

I'll probably take this board (cheapest Z97 with SLi support I could find, should be sufficient for everything)
Gigabyte Z97X-SLi (107€)

Or should I get this one? Somebody returned it so it's cheaper (Decisions, decisions...)
MSI Z97 Gaming 3 (115€ new, 107€ new but returned)

Anyways I'm actually quite curious if this will work with no problems on a modern board.

 

[Law-II]

Hi

I'll probably take this board (cheapest Z97 with SLi support I could find, should be sufficient for everything)
Gigabyte Z97X-SLi (107€)

Look O.K just double check that it has the features U require and warranty options

Note: the MSI Z97-GAMING-3 board only has AMD Crossfire Support for that model

atb

Law-II

 

[eXistenZ]

Right! Didn't catch that (it has two PCIe 3.0 x16 in Specs directly on MSI site, one would think it has SLi support) thanks for that.

I'll take the SLi one from Gigabyte and see if it's going to work out.

 

[eXistenZ]

Hi guys,

The motherboard I wanted was out of stock, so I took my old one and crammed everything into it.

Right after I've installed newest drivers, nVidia Control Panel greeted me with "Your PC is SLi compatible" so I was really happy with that.
I went directly to the Control Panel and set up SLi properly.
Installed 3DMark and ran classic Fire Strike test.
Installed MSI Afterburner and OCed the cards to +100/+300 with Power Limit to +122%
Ran classic Fire Strike test again.

Test PC:

i5 2500K @ 4.3GHz
4x4GB DDR3 1333 CL10
MSI P67A-GD65-B3
550W Fortron Black Power + Fanmod (really afraid it's going to make a *puff* noise soon enough, I'll probably revert to stock fan on this one)

Power peak is with OCed CPU and OCed GPUs 500W during 3DMark, which means if we have efficiency about 87% the actual power draw of all components combined is about 435W (but considering that CPU may not be fully stressed during FireStrike test, this number may be a bit higher, which worries me slightly).

Nevertheless, this was a surprising success, I was expecting that it won't work but it is actually working flawlessly, so the conclusion is:
GTX670 and GTX760Ti OEM can run in SLI!
And according to the scores in 3DMark (I know I should not draw conclusions from benchmarks, but...) the two cards are as fast as OCed GTX970, with better processor maybe as fast as stock GTX980 (IF SLi is actually working).

Here's how 3DMark HW analysis sees the cards (notice the "Driver name"):


Power output (peak) during 3DMark and OCed graphics:


Here is the first and second pass:

 

[Law-II]

Hi

Nevertheless, this was a surprising success, I was expecting that it won't work but it is actually working flawlessly, so the conclusion is:
GTX670 and GTX760Ti OEM can run in SLI!

They say you learn something new each day that goe's past; that's true for today

Job well done, thanks for sharing results

atb

Law-II