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

[Mussels]

nicely done guys

 

[Supel]

3dmark06 is heavily influenced with your cpu score, if you havent changed cpu then you wont see much differance in score,

for instance my GTX260 gave me 16000, my 2 x 470 (SLI) gimme 17000, as i havent changed my cpu, there is no real change in score.

just for referance 100MHZ speed incrase in CPU with give you around 200 points in 3dmark

Hm...
Ok, i run 3dmark Vantage and EVGA precision and... it says that GPU1 isn't doing anythink and GPU2 load is full ... temperature of GPU1 is 53, GPU2 73 so... SLI enabled but don't working

 

[gameboy116]

Good news​

looks we got lift off with the 260.52 drivers

complete fresh instal Win 7 X64 (updates to 13 september)
SLI Patch 8.0b
Nvidia 260.52 Drivers
2 x referance GTX470
AMD 790FX/750 chipsets
M4A79 Deluxe Mobo

status:
no benches of yet, thought i would share the news first, benches to come

edit 1: just tried uniengine bench, got black screen half way through, also got a black screen on reboot in 2d mods, not convinced this is driver issue, tweaking windows to see

edit 2: managed full run of uniengine, was saving score and got grey screen, i suspect my SLI bridge is playing up, gave it a wiggle and will run bench again

edit 3: looks like were getting stable, screeny below, no major performance increase with 260 drivers but it seems to work, moving on to some other benches, will report back later
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/4800/testsliunienginebench.jpg

edit 4: another grey screen soon after uni bench, seems odd. going to play detective back later


http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/685/15676420.jpg

cool. waiting fro more game test

 

[Supel]

Lol... At least EVGA Precision shows two GPUs working, but they are working in 60-80%, and 3dmark vantage performance points are 20600 where one GTX 280 gets 15800points , for E8400 @ 4,25GHz; 2x 2GB 1150Mhz and 2x GTX 280 in SLI I think that's something is wrong with it. For example, in Mafia II benchmark all max out without AA AF I've got 28FPS!! :/ IN SLI! but when I use 1 card to rendering and second for Physix I've got 30 FPS ... LOL :|

Tomorrow I'll do tests with SLI bridge

 

[gameboy116]

Lol... At least EVGA Precision shows two GPUs working, but they are working in 60-80%, and 3dmark vantage performance points are 20600 where one GTX 280 gets 15800points , for E8400 @ 4,25GHz; 2x 2GB 1150Mhz and 2x GTX 280 in SLI I think that's something is wrong with it. For example, in Mafia II benchmark all max out without AA AF I've got 28FPS!! :/ IN SLI! but when I use 1 card to rendering and second for Physix I've got 30 FPS ... LOL :|

Tomorrow I'll do tests with SLI bridge

definitely something wrong...........

 

[Supel]

definitely something wrong...........

But what... I will try on windows xp sp3 my second OS

 

[whitesedan]

New "Official Beta" Drivers from nvidia 260.62 and hopefully it will fix some of your problems. This will probably be my last post for a while since i have moved on to a 1156 i7 + P55 SLI board (got both for a hell of a deal and couldnt pass up!)


Good luck to all!

 

[sammarbella]

GeForce/ION Release 260 BETA 260.63 September 14, 2010

 

[Supel]

New "Official Beta" Drivers from nvidia 260.62 and hopefully it will fix some of your problems. This will probably be my last post for a while since i have moved on to a 1156 i7 + P55 SLI board (got both for a hell of a deal and couldnt pass up!)


Good luck to all!

Why 206.62 should help me with my problems?

 

[soundood]

it seems that the 260.52 drivers are a headache for legit sli users too, so i think it has nothing to do with the sli hack.

i will try these new ones today, see if i get a result. ill keep you all posted

@Supel stay with the 257 drivers for now matey, there is no need right now for you to try, i suspect you will just end up thread crapping trying to get it fixed with any drivers above that.

if your new to this sit back and let us sort it out then jump on the new drivers, no point all of us having headaches

 

[Supel]

hehe OK, but I've got new info. I replaced GTX and now first PCI-E is for GTX 280 from LEADTEK and second PCI-E for GTX 280 Gainward. Drivers BETA 260.63 and 3dmark Vantage above 22 000 points, Aliens Vs Predator all maxed out and non-stop 60FPS on 1680x1050, the same with COD4. Crysis Warhead all max without AF 30FPS:/ what the f...

I will try again 257 because of repleaced GTXs

 

[soundood]

hehe OK, but I've got new info. I replaced GTX and now first PCI-E is for GTX 280 from LEADTEK and second PCI-E for GTX 280 Gainward. Drivers BETA 260.63 and 3dmark Vantage above 22 000 points, Aliens Vs Predator all maxed out and non-stop 60FPS on 1680x1050, the same with COD4. Crysis Warhead all max without AF 30FPS:/ what the f...

I will try again 257 because of repleaced GTXs

now funny you should say that cause im just testing the 260.63 drivers win 7 64bit and they seem to be very smooth, much better than that other garbage.

i will keep testing, but this looks promising ,

if the 260.63 drivers work for you, then stick with it

 

[Glendor]

Just catching up with the issue. So, from reading back, it looks like nVidia has released two new drivers: 260.52 and 260.63, right?

I'll check back later to see if anybody reports success before I begin making changes (aka breaking) my working system.

Glendor...

 

[Supel]

now funny you should say that cause im just testing the 260.63 drivers win 7 64bit and they seem to be very smooth, much better than that other garbage.

i will keep testing, but this looks promising ,

if the 260.63 drivers work for you, then stick with it

Yea, they are working but sometimes I get black screen in Windows or games for example COD4 but when I do all+tab and get back to game it seems to be OK Wired...

I don't know, if performace of 2x GTX280 on my board is the real performance of 2gtx If I get f... up with this mod I will buy motherborad on 790i

 

[soundood]

im getting black screens also, after just 5 or so minutes, going to try the last WHQL driver 258.96, see if i can get batman installed and running for a while.

anyone tried these drivers already?

any issues/comflicts i should watch out for?

go i so need this to work with the 258 drivers or later for my Nvidia surround gaming, i got another 2 24" Dells comming tommorow

will report back soon

 

[soundood]

yeah ive got blue screens so far with the 258.96 drivers, in batman, batman also seems to have trouble with SLI itself with the patch, causing the blue screens,

although it could be physics driver ehh?

any ideas anatolymik? looks like we need the experts here. you and Sveetsnelda are our only hope.

please tell us Nvidia hasnt given you a bag of cash to disappear?

 

[Supel]

please tell us Nvidia hasnt given you a bag of cash to disappear?

Ehh I reinstalled 257.21 and now all is OK, NFS SHIFT maxed out 8x 16x and... race with 10 opponents 35-40fps, when driving in first place or race without opponents 50-60FPS

Getting ready for testing Crysis, not Warhead

 

[johnspack]

Running Mafia II in sli right now using the 257.21 drivers. I just updated the physx software, and applied the newest evga sli enhancement patch just to be sure. So I guess the old driver still has some life in it, and we can still run the newer games in sli! I'll have to do more testing to make sure it's running okay, but so far it's good.

 

[Supel]

Could You share link to the newest physix software with me?

 

[johnspack]

Latest physx software right from nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html I'm not sure if the sli enhancement patch is needed, I installed it anyway. The game is still working for me!

 

[anatolymik]

definitely something wrong...........

For example Nvidia tries to make all of us think it's instabillity issues on non-sli cert mobos

 

[anatolymik]

yeah ive got blue screens so far with the 258.96 drivers, in batman, batman also seems to have trouble with SLI itself with the patch, causing the blue screens,

although it could be physics driver ehh?

any ideas anatolymik? looks like we need the experts here. you and Sveetsnelda are our only hope.

please tell us Nvidia hasnt given you a bag of cash to disappear?

now news for now. i patched kernel to examine something. today after work i'll take a look to it

 

[Supel]

Latest physx software right from nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html I'm not sure if the sli enhancement patch is needed, I installed it anyway. The game is still working for me!

I've got 0514 can't find newer. I'm a little depressed, bought GTX 280 with 2,5 year warranty for about 150 euro and Mafia 2 can't work with SLI on. 34 fps and in bulid-in benchmark I get rang D :/ BTW: yeasterday I done unigine heaven on DX10:

Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 32bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
CPU flags: 4230MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 8.17.12.5721 1024Mb

Render: direct3d10
Mode: 1680x1050 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation:disabled

FPS: 68.0
Scores: 1713
Min FPS: 6.7
Max FPS: 143.3

I realised that SLI sometimes turns itself off, for exmaple in Heaven benchmark, once I get 30fps but EVGA Precision shows that works only first GPU, so I turned off second GPU in system manager and... SLI works 60 FPS :wired:


EDIT:

What do you think about EVGA Nforce 790i Ultra SLI ??

 

[johnspack]

Supel, are you using the .08 patch or the .07? Make sure to use the .08 with 257.21. Oh and thanks for the heads up on the .514 physx driver, will install and see if it helps with performance in Mafia II.

 

[Supel]

Supel, are you using the .08 patch or the .07? Make sure to use the .08 with 257.21. Oh and thanks for the heads up on the .514 physx driver, will install and see if it helps with performance in Mafia II.

yyy....I use 0.7 from here http://xdevs.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.30 there ISN'T 0.8 for Windows 7 32bits, only for 64bits... so?