SLI prob?

[Solaris17]

ok so i got another 9600 for my b-day....and i hook up the sli cable and i start to game artifacts all over the F$% place so i google it some say driver some say bridge....so i take the bridge off sli works great only prob is it hits performance because it runs off of bus for communication. so i try again same problem so i try each card indavidually they work fine at this point i am all sorts of um wtf? so i talk to a bfg freind of mine and he says he will grab some cards and test them to try and replicate my prob...and he goes on to say if it cant be fixed he will personally test 2 cards to make sure they work and pa for shipping both ways. thats cool but i wanted to try a few more tweaks in my bios so i do no dice, so then i try each card indavidually again..the new one my girl got me artifacts instantly. so im like damn ok so i look at it than i take it apart one of the ram chips didnt have tim..bingo..ok she gets home from work and we go back to BB and get a new one no probs right? so i plug it all in and boot...intresting the icon doesnt pop up saying i have a sli capable system but i go into control panel and their it is so i hit enable...screen goes black(normal) but it doesnt come back....so i hard boot...still no icon so i try to uninstall drivers it freezes...ok fione so i reboot and try agian...it uninstalles askes me to reboot....so i reboot windows installs 174.74's ok sure...than tells me to reboot...and i do she gets back to the desktop and i think iv struck gold you have an sli capable system w0ot!! so i click on it and hit enable...screen goes black than comes back yay o no aero is disabled nvidia CP is locked up i wait and it jus closes......um ok i run gpu-z sli disabled and i get totally the wrong readings....any idea whats up guys? im excited but i cant figure it out!!

iv tried

checkdisk
reg clean
driver cleaner
disk clean up
installing 174.88's
174.93's
reseating cards
switching bridge around
switching card slots

still no go im so F$% confused

 

[Squirrely]

So it freaks out when you try SLI? Strange...

Hmm, maybe try the first release drivers. Also can your PSU handle the load? Can you tell if which PCI-E power cable is on which rail? (If your PSU has multi rails) If a lot of things are on the first rail, might be too much of a power draw. I think Nvidia has the notification which says your card is underpowered, but it doesn't work sometimes, lol (From what I have seen).

So each card works fine individually after you got the new one?

Hope it gets fixed, as 9600gt's have great SLI scalability.

 

[Solaris17]

So it freaks out when you try SLI? Strange...

Hmm, maybe try the first release drivers. Also can your PSU handle the load? Can you tell if which PCI-E power cable is on which rail? (If your PSU has multi rails) If a lot of things are on the first rail, might be too much of a power draw. I think Nvidia has the notification which says your card is underpowered, but it doesn't work sometimes, lol (From what I have seen).

So each card works fine individually after you got the new one?

Hope it gets fixed, as 9600gt's have great SLI scalability.

the 6pin connectors arent spliced off of anything their their own wires. i have a 700w OCZ gamexstream 4x +12v rails 18A on each pretty sure it will power these beasts..it powered the first 2 fine except one was defective.

 

[Cold Storm]

Well, I think it might be the board itself... but you'll find that out when you get the other board... the p5n board...

 

[Solaris17]

ok so im still having the same prob and i still need some help im totally stuck and im having such a hard time


iv tried


safe mod booting(installing uninstalling driver cleaner)

tried booting with driver signing enforcement off

tried enabling sli with sidebar closed and in windows classic theme

tried pulling out a stick of ram so i only ran 2 gigs since alot of ppl r having probs with 4

tried my sli apeture size in my bios (off/auto)

tried 174.74whql
174.74 beta
175.12
175.16
175.64
175.70's

all were an epic fail

tried 5 diff 9600GT's
treid 3 diff mobos
treid 2 diff bridges with and without bridge still the same

treid updating windows after a format b4 trying to enable sli this includes SP1

formatted 4 times

and in the end...only works when i run xp x64

 

[newtekie1]

Have you tried a new SLI bridge? Perhaps your SLI bridge is bad?

Edit:Nevermind, I see you did. Tried a fresh install of Vista?

 

[Solaris17]

tried 2 bridges..both of which work fine in xp and i tried it without a bridge still same thing.

and yes sli will work without a bridge incase anyone reads this and doesnt know

 

[JrRacinFan]

Is that Vista 64, Sol?

 

[Dia01]

Is the system detecting both of your cards, device manager, temp readings etc? Might be a silly question though?

 

[hat]

Imma email my uncle real quick and ask him what driver version he uses for his SLI setup, I'll have you try those

 

[Solaris17]

yup vista x64


vista reads both cards...and b4 i enable sli both are working correctly gpu-z detects both and i can get clock/temp readings from each one


mobo drivers are upto date

if treid switching the cards around


both work fine by themselves

when i hit enable screen goes black(supposed to happen) screen comes back nvCP is frozen and when right clicking on the desktop i have no option to re open it..it also dissapears form the control panel

only option is reinstalling


iv
1.cleaned the reg manualy
deleted stray .dll's manually

reinstalled drivers

rebooted

made sure they were installed correctly rebooted again

than i try to enable
and its a never ending loop im not sure what to do...i mean iv done it b4 fine no problems...and i dont think im that dumb..i mean im doing EVERY trouble shooting step available to figure it out on my own...but i had to post it up..because i must be missing something.

 

[Dia01]

yup vista x64


vista reads both cards...and b4 i enable sli both are working correctly gpu-z detects both and i can get clock/temp readings from each one


mobo drivers are upto date

if treid switching the cards around


both work fine by themselves

when i hit enable screen goes black(supposed to happen) screen comes back nvCP is frozen and when right clicking on the desktop i have no option to re open it..it also dissapears form the control panel

only option is reinstalling


iv
1.cleaned the reg manualy
deleted stray .dll's manually

reinstalled drivers

rebooted

made sure they were installed correctly rebooted again

than i try to enable
and its a never ending loop im not sure what to do...i mean iv done it b4 fine no problems...and i dont think im that dumb..i mean im doing EVERY trouble shooting step available to figure it out on my own...but i had to post it up..because i must be missing something.

How long have you waited while the control panel is frozen?

 

[newtekie1]

Try it on a clean install of Vista.

 

[Solaris17]

Try it on a clean install of Vista.

this is a clean install not 2 hours old.

How long have you waited while the control panel is frozen?

like 2 min it goes away by itself

list of stuff iv tried and facts


safe mod booting(installing uninstalling driver cleaner)

tried booting with driver signing enforcement off

tried enabling sli with sidebar closed and in windows classic theme

tried pulling out a stick of ram so i only ran 2 gigs since alot of ppl r having probs with 4

tried my sli apeture size in my bios (off/auto)

tried 174.74whql
174.74 beta
174.88's
174.93's
175.12
175.16
175.64
175.70's

all were an epic fail

tried 5 diff 9600GT's
treid 3 diff mobos
treid 2 diff bridges with and without bridge still the same
reseating cards
switching bridge around
switching card slots
checkdisk
reg clean
driver cleaner
disk clean up

treid updating windows after a format b4 trying to enable sli this includes SP1

formatted 4 times

cards are proven to work

both have their respected power plugs plugged in

both power cables are on a seperate rail

i have an OCZ gamerxstream 4 rails 18amps each 74amps total my psu pools the amps and delivers were needed my rail voltaes are stable and above regulation ie 3.3v is 3.35 etc..

 

[warhammer]

Are they the same brand cards? and are you running std bios.

 

[Solaris17]

all BFG 9600GT OC ED iv flashed tham with all sorts of bioses

both original gen 1 bios's both with my veryown modded ones and GEN2 bios files.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Well, I have heard of driver problems with Crossfire in Vista x64 but have not read up on much with SLi in it though. I beleive its just a driver issue.

 

[warhammer]

That is a very weird problem have you tried SLI zone http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?

 

[Mussels]

are you running vista SP1? it may be helpful to go to SP1 and get all winupdates before installing the driver.

 

[Solaris17]

yup i fully updated b4 even trying to install the drivers as that was reccomended in the slizone forums

 

[Solaris17]

anyone?

 

[newtekie1]

Is your PCI-E frequency set to 100? Are both cards installed in the machine with the SLI bridge connected when you first load the drivers?

 

[Solaris17]

yup pci freq set at 100 bridge is connected when first installing drivers iv even tried it the other way without the drivers

and iv treid force enabling sli in the registry

iv disabled uac iv even tried it with it on all combinations of driver signing enforcement

uac on<DSF off
uacon<DSF on
UAC off<DSF on
UAC off< DSF off


still no go

 

[newtekie1]

The card on the motherboard is set to SLI? Perhaps there is just an conflict between BFG cards, ASUS motherboards, and Vista. Something we just aren't seeing.

 

[Solaris17]

nope sli worked fine on thi set up with xp x64 and x32 their are no sli options in the bios other than apeture size which is auto and off and iv ried both...now te selecter card i have to enable sli is in the right opt its set to dual card mode (sli)


and a problem i found is ppl have trouble with 4gb ram so i treid oly 2

and iv not only flashed both cards with gen1 and gen2 bios's but iv also tried a bios lash to make them oem nvidia card (non bgf) and xfx models