GTX 970 SLI not working (for a reason...)

[Bjørgersson]

A couple of days ago my buddy and I decided to pair up our GTX 970s (his EVGA SSC ACX2.0+ and my MSI Gaming 100ME) to see what they're capable of together. This morning we set up the everything and then we've got surprised; SLI was enabled in the nVidia Control Panel, yet it wasn't working, most of the games were glitching. We had the driver reinstalled with a clean installation, checked the cables, read a couple of threads, and then a random EVGA-related one came across. Apparently, based on this page, certain EVGA graphics cards work only with certain EVGA graphics cards in SLI, so as you can see not even every EVGA graphics card is compatible with each other. Honestly, I never would've thought that EVGA would be the one making a büllsh!t move like this.

Oh, and as it turns out, Zotac graphics cards work just like EVGA.

Finally, here's a picture of its box, it could / should be their new motto.

 

[jboydgolfer]

that sucks.

I bought a 970 reference last year, and due to some "creative" phone calls, got a 2nd , so i tried SLI out, and they Really are nice in SLI....it was Close to 100% increase in Perf, atleast in unigine heaven, valley, etc... Had a real hard time finding an SLI bridge though, but they ran nice....hope you get to try it someday.

 

[Tomgang]

This is why i al ways sli with identical cards. That saves you from tons of problems with performence aswell as when you overclock cards running in sli

I have two zotax GTX 970 running sli and have zero problem with them. And that is even on an old X58 based system.

Dit you remember the sli brigde?

You said you have made a clean driver install, but is it the newest driver from nvidia home page and not one of the cd-roms that properly came with the cards?

And made a clean install directly from the driver by going in the custom menu and put a tick where are "perform a clean install" or something like that.

Else normal these cards shut be working since all cards run together just ass long its the same type of GPU, in this case GTX 970.

 

[jboydgolfer]

I wonder if the thread SLI with different cards would help the situation?

And also I'm with @Tomgang .....
That's why I mentioned it ....I was hoping to bring it up without sounding like an insult (since its so obvious)but did you use an SLI bridge because you didn't mention it .

That's tantamount to not turning the on switch on your power supply.

 

[Bjørgersson]

This is why i al ways sli with identical cards. That saves you from tons of problems with performence aswell as when you overclock cards running in sli

I have two zotax GTX 970 running sli and have zero problem with them. And that is even on an old X58 based system.

Dit you remember the sli brigde?

You said you have made a clean driver install, but is it the newest driver from nvidia home page and not one of the cd-roms that properly came with the cards?

And made a clean install directly from the driver by going in the custom menu and put a tick where are "perform a clean install" or something like that.

Else normal these cards shut be working since all cards run together just ass long its the same type of GPU, in this case GTX 970.

368.39 from geforce.com, never have I used a driver CD, any yes, performed a clean install in the advanced options. Read the link, EVGAs don't work together in spite of being the same GPU.

I wonder if the thread SLI with different cards would help the situation?

And also I'm with @Tomgang .....
That's why I mentioned it ....I was hoping to bring it up without sounding like an insult (since its so obvious)but did you use an SLI bridge because you didn't mention it .

That's tantamount to not turning the on switch on your power supply.

Yes, we did, the one my buddy got with his MSI Z87-GD55 mobo.

 

[Recon-UK]

K...................

As for the topic, that sucks

 

[Tomgang]

368.39 from geforce.com, never have I used a driver CD, any yes, performed a clean install in the advanced options. Read the link, EVGAs don't work together in spite of being the same GPU.


Yes, we did, the one my buddy got with his MSI Z87-GD55 mobo.

368.39 is still an older driver non the less. There have been 8 newer driver versions after 368.39. The latest official driver version is 375.70 and there is even a hot fix for that driver version 375.76.

I would try the latest driver before giving up.

https://www.techpowerup.com/227487/nvidia-issues-the-geforce-hotfix-driver-version-375-76

 

[Bjørgersson]

368.39 is still an older driver non the less. There have been 8 newer driver versions after 368.39. The latest official driver version is 375.70 and there is even a hot fix for that driver version 375.76.

I would try the latest driver before giving up.

https://www.techpowerup.com/227487/nvidia-issues-the-geforce-hotfix-driver-version-375-76

Dude, just read the EVGA support page. It has nothing to do with the drivers.

 

[Assimilator]

That's really interesting, and weird. @seggbizo could you maybe contact EVGA directly and ask them why their cards can only SLI with certain others? Also, I would contact nVIDIA as well, because I don't think they ever intended for SLI to (not) work like this.

 

[Bjørgersson]

That's really interesting, and weird. @seggbizo could you maybe contact EVGA directly and ask them why their cards can only SLI with certain others? Also, I would contact nVIDIA as well, because I don't think they ever intended for SLI to (not) work like this.

Well, that's a pretty good idea.

 

[Caring1]

Pretty sure this was discussed a while ago here and is a know issue.
Not that I'm going to look it up.

 

[R00kie]

As far as I remember, and reading about this when I was getting my pair of 970's, they need to be the same model, say for example an EVGA SC and FTW will not work in tandem, that is just the case with EVGA cards, same goes for the cards from any other vendor, SC and FTW cards need to be paired to their respective models.