Help - Enable Quadro SLI

[minuteman]

I need help to enable Quadro SLI

Motherboard: eVGA SR2, Intel 5520 Chipset (Geforce 4 way SLI Certified)
Graphics Cards: Nvidia Quadro 5000

Nvidia states on their website that there are only ~10 Workstation Systems that are Quadro SLI Certified. We'll screw that! I paid $4000 for these Quadro 5000 cards and I want to run them in SLI. The HP Z800 workstation is one of the certified systems and it has the same freaking Intel 5520 chipset that my eVGA motherboard has, so what's the secret? How can I inject a DSDT Quadro SLI Cert String?

Who can help me with this? Will the Gefore SLI hack (sticky post) enable Quadro SLI on my motherboard? I couldn't find any post within that thread that provided an answer.

 

[Slizzo]

You could certainly try the SLI patch, won't hurt anything to do so.

Are the Quadros supported by the same drivers as the standard consumer products?

 

[minuteman]

I tried the patch, it only works to enable SLI Geforce and not SLI Quadro

Before Patch:
Here is the DSDT / Hal output for my eVGA SR2
nVIDIA SLI:
SLI Certification 987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for EVGA 270-WS-W555 FABE-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
PCI 0-0-0-0 (Direct I/O) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)
PCI 0-0-0-0 (HAL) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)


After Patch:
Here is the DSDT / Hal output for my eVGA SR2
nVIDIA SLI:
SLI Certification 987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for EVGA 270-WS-W555 FABE-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
PCI 0-0-0-0 (Direct I/O) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)
PCI 0-0-0-0 (HAL) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)

The system BIOS on this motherboard already has the cert injected because the eVGA SR2 motherboard is factory certified for Geforce SLI, so even after the patch is applied the motherboard cert is overriding the patch cert. Same difference though, both are only Geforce SLI certs.

This really makes my wonder how the hell Nvidia is certifing motherboards for Quadro SLI. Here is what the DSDT values looks like for the HP Z800 system which is Quadro SLI Certified:
nVIDIA SLI:
SLI Certification Not Present
PCI 0-0-0-0 (Direct I/O) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)
PCI 0-0-0-0 (HAL) 8086-3406 (Intel i5520)


Not present? WTH? If anyone knows what the limiting factor is which determines Quadro SLI Certification/Enablement please share! I am stumped!

 

[mohrens]

I have the same problem, did you make any progress ?

 

[minuteman]

No, nothing works and the hal.dll file from the HP Z800 has nothing entered in the line for Nvidia SLI Cert. It's blank totally blank. We still haven't been able to figure out how nvidia is certifing those motherboards. What makes it appear to be certified when the graphics cards or drivers check for certification?

No luck so far.

 

[mohrens]

No, nothing works and the hal.dll file from the ha has nothing entered in the line for Nvidia SLI Cert. It's blank totally blank. We still haven't been able to figure out how nvidia is certifing those motherboards. What makes it appear to be certified when the graphics cards or drivers check for certification?

No luck so far.

I tried the same thing, I had a full HP Z800 hal dump and did not find anything, I suspect that the nvidia driver is actually looking at the machine type it runs on, but I could not find this either.
BUt same thing here, I have 6 of these cards and can only use 3 at the moment. We are just evaluating and other motherboard which is supposed work even it is not on the NVIDIA quadro cert list.

 

[dorsetknob]

"ello"
there is the possibility that the drivers are looking at the oem info stored in the DMI
Such info is used by OEM's as when restoring a pre=installed O/S.
Maybe the drivers are accessing the DMI and not finding the correct motherboard info thus refusing to install.
if this is the case you might fool the drivers by editing the DMI

( """ WARNING THIS COULD ALSO BRICK YOUR SYSTEM DO NOT UNDERTAKE TO DO THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING """ )

 

[johnspack]

Just so you know, when you apply the Slipatch, you will not see a cert in the dsdt table. The cert info is passed from the sli cert loader osloadw7.exe, to the modified hal and kernel dlls. So a dsdt dump won't be any use for info. And it seems quadro cards require a different kind of cert, but I have no idea how that's done.