How To: Enable SLI on pre-i7/i5 hardware

[sveetsnelda]

I think TheWolf is saying that he's getting an error while trying to run equus to dump his current DSDT. The error he is getting is probably the application crashing since .NET isnt installed by default on WinXP.

Go download .NET 3.5 and give it a shot.

 

[anatolymik]

I think TheWolf is saying that he's getting an error while trying to run equus to dump his current DSDT. The error he is getting is probably the application crashing since .NET isnt installed by default on WinXP.

Go download .NET 3.5 and give it a shot.

Got it.

 

[TheWolf]

I think TheWolf is saying that he's getting an error while trying to run equus to dump his current DSDT. The error he is getting is probably the application crashing since .NET isnt installed by default on WinXP.

Go download .NET 3.5 and give it a shot.

Yes, I'm sure that is my problem, getting it now.

thanks!

 

[TheWolf]

here is the dsdt.ASL: http://www.mediafire.com/?utmywnutm3v

 

[TiN]

Tested modded SLI drivers on P5B Deluxe (P965 chipset) with two 6600LE DDR3.

To compare posting my own old single-card results:

3D'01: single card, QX9650 @ 4210MHz, 6600LE DDR3 640/640 : 33298
3D'01: SLI two cards, Q6700 @ 3000MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/522 : 23650
3D'03: single card, QX9650 @ 4200MHz, 6600LE DDR3 660/670 : 10044
3D'03: SLI two cards, Q6700 @ 3000MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/522 : 11087
3D'05: single card, QX9650 @ 4213MHz, 6600LE DDR3 646/660 : 3729
3D'05: SLI two cards, Q6700 @ 3000MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/522 : 4975
3D'06: single card, Q6700 @ 3600MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/585 : 1510
3D'06: SLI two cards, Q6700 @ 3000MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/522 : 1808
Aqua: single card, QX9650 @ 4200MHz, 6600LE DDR3 670/670 : 71435
Aqua: SLI two cards, Q6700 @ 3000MHz, 6600LE DDR3 580/522 : 88185

01 result is poor because of lowclock CPU and low GPU clock, but others just nice for such CPU/GPU clock difference, as for me.

Will continue tests, when I can get more powerful cards, now only have single 9800GX2 and 8800GS

So, It WORKS

 

[sveetsnelda]

My Crysis benchmark results:

Q6600 G0 @ 3.6ghz
Asus Maximus II (P45)
2 x PNY 9800GTX+

1680x1050 High detail AA off
Average FPS on Run 3:

SLI off - 35.13 FPS
SLI ON - 53.61 FPS

 

[TheWolf]

Nice scores guys! I'm working on trying to get mine going right now.

 

[sveetsnelda]

AFAIK, Aquamark doesn't support SLI. I ran it and got almost the same result with SLI on and off.

 

[TiN]

TheWolf

You have ABIT, yeah?

Find

OperationRegion(TEMM, SystemMemory, 0xff810, 0xc)
Field(TEMM, WordAcc, NoLock, Preserve)

in you DSDT and insert BEFORE it SLIC block.
I don't have SLIC block for ABIT yet, you need to extract DSDT from any ABIT X58 board BIOS, to get correct string.

All i have is:

443817712091Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for GIGABYTE P55 UD6 3287-Copyright 2009 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-876112936219(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for GIGABYTE GA EX58-UD38432-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for ASUS RAMPAGE II EXT 3287-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for ASUS P6T Deluxe 0101-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for GIGABYTE GA EX58-UD38432-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for GIGABYTE GA EX58UD4P3287-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for DFI LP UT X58 T3EH8 0101-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for MSI X58 PLATINUM 0101-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)
987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for FOXCONN BLOODRAGE 3287-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)

AFAIK, Aquamark doesn't support SLI. I ran it and got almost the same result with SLI on and off.

I've got much more It's quite crazy benchmark. I love it

 

[sveetsnelda]

Yeah... I wondered how things would go with his Abit board. I'm not sure that Abit is written in the driver as a valid manufacturer (did they make an X58 board). I'll have to do some digging when I get back from work... and after I sleep a bit. Heh. I could hardly sleep. I was excited to finally make some solid progress on this.

 

[TheWolf]

Is this what you were talking about TiN?

}
        Device(\_SB_.PCI0.PX40.FWH_)
        {
            Name(_HID, 0x8d425)
            Method(_CRS, 0x0, NotSerialized)
            {
                Name(FWH0, Buffer(0xe)
                {
	0x86, 0x09, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0xb8, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x08, 0x00,
	0x79, 0x00
                })
                Return(FWH0)
            }
        }
        Device(\_SB_.PCI0.EXPL)
        {
            Name(_HID, 0x20cd041)
            Name(_UID, 0x4)
            Method(_CRS, 0x0, NotSerialized)
            {
                Name(BUF0, Buffer(0xe)
                {
	0x86, 0x09, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xe0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x10,
	0x79, 0x00
                })
                Return(BUF0)
            }
        }
    }
    OperationRegion(TEMM, SystemMemory, 0xff810, 0xc)
    Field(TEMM, WordAcc, NoLock, Preserve)

That is what mine looks like after the mod.

Edit: BTW would it matter if the name is uabit since the name of the Co. was changed when sold to Universal Scientific Industrial Co., Ltd. they remaned some stuff? Could this be my problem with the mod?

 

[JrRacinFan]

Yes, with this mod that would be a problem. Abit closed their doors little bit before X58 and Core i7 hit shelves. I beleive they werent planning on an X58 .

You may want to wait and not give up though, He was talking about being able to bypass the SLIC check.

 

[TheWolf]

Yea I knew there was no abit x58, but I was hoping I could still get lucky.
Never know someone may find something to make it work.
Maybe something about the way the mod was setup is just not quite right.
I sure hope so because I been waiting a long time for this to happen.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Yea I knew there was no abit x58, but I was hoping I could still get lucky.
Never know someone may find something to make it work.
Maybe something about the way the mod was setup is just not quite right.
I sure hope so because I been waiting a long time for this to happen.

Yeah it is a total bummer.

LOL now that I read my previous post I sounded like an ass. Sorry!

 

[derGhostrider]

Hi! i'm pretty new here and just registered because of this thread.

I own a Supermicro X8DAH+ dual Xeon Mainboard (Intel 5520 IOH-36D chipset) and two NVidia Quadro FX 4800 graphic cards. The cards work fine but not as SLI-setup, just as plain single cards.
- There is a SLI-Certified X58 Mainboard from Supermicro.


I read the last few pages of this thread but really don't know how to start as I never did something like reverse engineering/driver hacking (except editing an inf-file).

As far as I understood your postings the first step would be to retrieve the manufacturer string of Supermicro.
=> HOW do I do that exactly?

It would be very kind if someone could give me a step by step how-to. (PN?) I'm neither dumb nor a computer newbie. I just never did this before and therefore don't even know the software.


BTW: How is the progress for Windows Vista? I will certainly not use Windows XP 32bit as my system has 24GB of RAM... Server 2008 64bit or Vista 64bit are the targets of my approach.
Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance!

 

[TiN]

derGhostrider

Currently you should have to wait, coz we have only XP32 drivers right now. But work will continue to simplify modding and making it just easy as installing drivers.

 

[derGhostrider]

Well, I would do some work for you if you can tell me what to do.

Some posts earlier you mentioned that you only have "a few" SLIC blocks. Maybe I can give you another one... As i said: I have some Supermicro (Serverclass) Mainboards.

 

[sveetsnelda]

Yea I knew there was no abit x58, but I was hoping I could still get lucky.
Never know someone may find something to make it work.
Maybe something about the way the mod was setup is just not quite right.
I sure hope so because I been waiting a long time for this to happen.

Don't worry, it'll work. I know where the subsys ID is pulled and checked (the part of the function that looks at your motherboard's manufacturer). I can hard-code this also. I'll bet Abit just isn't in the driver. That's easy to get around. It'll have to wait until I'm off work though.

 

[TheWolf]

Up all night, just awoke from a 3 hour nap. lol
Once I get better awake & a clear head I'll be ready to roll again.
Thanks for not giving up on me, I haven't and I'll be reading up on it
more to try and help were I can. I'm willing to kill the board trying to
get this to work and my self somewhat as well. lol
I was pretty tiered last night so I may have made a few mistakes along the way.
I'll go back threw everything real close as soon as I've had my shower.

 

[TiN]

derGhostrider

Ok, here you are
You need to have your X58 SLI supported systems running Windows, got this tool:

http://www.xdevs.com/sli/iasl.exe (it's Intel ASL co/decompiler) and run it with -g key.

If everything ok , you will get next:

c:\ACPI>iasl -g

Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL Optimizing Compiler version 20090730 [Jul 30 2009]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2009 Intel Corporation
Supports ACPI Specification Revision 4.0

Table RSDT obtained from registry, 60 bytes
Table [RSDT] written to "RSDT_GBTUACPI.dat"
There are 6 tables defined in the RSDT
Table FACP obtained from registry, 116 bytes
Table [FACP] written to "FACP_GBTUACPI.dat"
Table DSDT obtained from registry, 19253 bytes
Table [DSDT] written to "DSDT_GBTUACPI.dat"

Disassembly of DSDT
Pass 1 parse of [DSDT]
Pass 2 parse of [DSDT]
Parsing Deferred Opcodes (Methods/Buffers/Packages/Regions)
................................................................................
................................................................................
................................................................................
................................................................................
............................................................................
Parsing completed
Disassembly completed, written to "dsdt_GBTUACPI.dsl"

(example for Gigabyte board).
Then you need to open dsdt_GBTUACPI.dsl with notepad and find SLIC block there, or just send file to me.

It's ONLY for boards which support SLI offically. That way we will get SLI certificate stings for Supermicro.

 

[TiN]

sveetsnelda

When you get back from work, can you test SLI/single setup just in 3dmarks on default settings. and post scored and screenies. Just like mine 6600LE tests. I'm writing a howto, and will include this into it.

 

[EGOvoruhk]

Dang, I came back to 4 pages in only a few hours

I notice that the current way to get SLI working is via hacked drivers. Are we ever going to be able to get them working with just a patched BIOS or loader?

 

[TiN]

Full driver package with modded part.
http://www.xdevs.com/sli/Forceware_XP32_19062_SLImod.rar - 80MB

Backup server, if NVIDIA come to me and kill my server
http://xtremelabs.org/downloads/Drivers/graphics/nvidia/Forceware_XP32_19062_SLImod.rar

 

[TheWolf]

I just ran 3D-03 in XP & got a score of 56211.
Is this a normal score for single 260GTX?

Edit: removed links, they were dead.

 

[TiN]

DeDaL tested mod under my guide, with his Gigabyte X48 motherboard and two GTX 260's, everything worked so far.

EDIT:

03 mark done, everything is ok

E8600 @ 4GHz, Gigabyte X48T-DQ6, two 260GTX 216sp

SLI - Disabled
51627

SLI - Enabled
82421

http://xtremelabs.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=6168#p6168