Alright so I know this will be kind of long... but please bear with me with some of my back story so you guys know what's been going on.
First, my system specs:
Motherboard:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Processor:
Core i7 3930k
Cooled by a Zalman Heatsink
PSU:
Rosewill LIGHTNING 1300W Continuous Modular Power Supply
RAM:
Crucial Ballistix Elite 4 GB x 8 (32GB Total) @ 1866 MHz
Graphics: SLI Setup 2014
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 780ti K|NGP|N in SLI
Sound:
Soundblaster Fatality Professional
Case:
Thermaltake Armor+
Mouse:
Logitech g500
Monitor:
Asus VG278HE @ 144hz
Recently I upgraded my video cards from two XFX Radeon HD 6970s in crossfire to two EVGA GTX 780ti K|NGP|Ns in SLI. My system ran pretty much everything graphically cranked up in every game at 100+ FPS except Elder Scrolls Online and in rare instances on some servers Battlefield 4. I decided to end my waiting streak on waiting for the supposed GTX 790 in April and ended up getting two kingpin cards for SLI.
I got the cards April 7th and immediately noticed I was having issues so I posted a thread on EVGA's forum. You will probably gain a better understanding of reading my troubleshooting process here: http://forums.evga.com/So-the-kingpins-are-set-up-Pics-inside-and-a-question-for-you-m2146550.aspx If you go to this link pictures of my benchmarks will be there.
Long story short if you DON'T want to read the thread:
I benchmarked the cards in Unigen and Firestrike and got pretty bad (terrible, really) scores in both. I tested my FPS in games and it was also terrible. People on EVGA's forum noticed something was wrong but no one could seem to figure anything out; that was, until, I noticed that one of the LED indicators on my motherboard that shows PCI-E lane activity wasn't showing green. This meant that the second K|NGP|N card wasn't jiving with the system. I ended up chalking this up to a south bridge problem on the motherboard because #1 My system worked fine just a few hours earlier than my install of these new cards. #2, My south bridge fan wasn't spinning as it had before and #3, the cards were both auto-OCing themselves as they should and getting hot during testing. They were also both recognized as being configured in SLI from the NVidia control panel, from PrecisionX, and from the overlay on my G19s keyboard showing details about the cards speeds, loads, and temps. Updating to the latest BIOS, chipset drivers, video card drivers (I tested a bunch of different versions), LAN drivers, and even audio drivers didn't help me at all). I tested the cards in SLI with each other's power cables, swapped lanes, and ran each card individually. Same problem. I also had bad boot times (5-6 mins on average) but this had been the case since about February so that wasn't unusual.
I submitted an RMA in to Asus a few days later. MAN was that the WORST experience I have ever had with an RMA in my entire life. It took about ten phone calls (including one with a manager), 3 submissions to get approved for an advanced RMA, many emails back-and-forth to their stocking department, and filling out RMA request forms about 5 times because of something being supposedly "wrong" on my form or the 30 day wait period expiring.
Fast forward 3 1/2 months of me playing on a single K|NGP|n with crappy FPS the entire time... A few days ago I finally got my new board. Immediately I noticed that in SLI my GPUs were both lighting up green on my PCI-E switch board. Activity on the lanes is definitely a good thing. Long story short I had the same issues with the cards as I did before... only this time it seemed to be worse. Here is a snapshot of my unigen benchmark with my CPU clocked at an easily achievable 4.0 GHz:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-PDzvRKMBubc/U9lcaj5uWlI/AAAAAAAAA5U/wevqONOpQr8/w503-h894-no/unigen.jpg
Not only should ONE of these cards get a better score (in my opinion), it's absolutely mind-boggling that two in SLI would get this terrible of a score. Especially with a minimum FPS of TEN.
After testing with no avail in firestrike and a few games I decided it was time for a format, especially since there COULD be a possible driver conflict and my boot times were still about 5-6 minutes. Even driver sweeper could miss something when you are trying to get rid of AMD drivers and put on Nvidia ones I assumed. So I installed Windows 7 Ultimate again. Same issues but this time around I noticed that my chipset driver wouldn't install at all. I, (along with a friend from the EVGA forums named Sajin) tried to diagnose a problem. I was getting bings (!) in device manager shown here:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-K2QwzDMDpPo/U9nreZsx5zI/AAAAAAAAA9k/8nNiy-N5aCs/w753-h894-no/wtf9.jpg
This meant that something wasn't agreeing with me installing my chipset driver. Windows wouldn't do it by itself either. I uninstalled each one of these devices from my machine, used driver sweeper to get rid of anything related to my motherboard, rebooted, and tried to install the chipset driver again. Not only did it NOT work, it also cut out my internet. I pulled out my sound card just to see if that could possibly be the problem. It wasn't. I checked my voltages... Sajin suggested they were normal.
Yesterday I put on Windows 8 Professional to see if there was a problem with the OS I used (I was out of ideas at this point) and that didn't work either. While I didn't have any more blips in the task manager I still had issues with the chipset not installing correctly. I decided to take both Kingpin cards out. I put in my old 6970 and... voila! Instantly I had the ability to install my chipset driver. Even with the old Nvidia graphics driver installed I tested it in team fortress 2 and came up with 200 FPS (in an empty server which isn't a great test but I just wanted to see if there was any change). I thought the issue was fixed.
An EVGA tech told me to try each K|NGP|N card individually to make sure they were the problem. I did. It didn't work well with either card in either lane with either sets of power plugs. I had 25-50 FPS in TF2 on average with VERY random spikes to 200-300 for a second or two.
Now at this point you'd probably assume that my issue would be solved... and you would be wrong. Last night I submitted an RMA request for both K|NGP|N cards. When I'd asked if they'd be refurbished his answer to me was "We prefer to call them FACTORY RECERTIFIED cards". I said "oh so you mean refurbished then, right?" His response was "Uh.. yeah I guess". He said if I had submitted my request within the 30 day period I would have gotten two brand new ones no questions asked. I said "I bought these brand new for almost 2 thousand dollars. When I got them and had problems with them I saved you guys money by troubleshooting other parts of my system and taking the time to make sure (being the I.T. person I am) that I was 100% certain it was the cards. I could have just lied and told you it was and gotten what I wanted from the very beginning. So technically you're punishing me for doing the right thing". They told me to call back Monday.
Naturally, tonight, I expected to be able to remove the NVidia drivers (for now until the new cards got here) and install the AMD ones and game on a stable machine for a few weeks. Wrong. I joined the game today with people actually in the server and my FPS goes from 120 or so (when no ones on my screen) to about 18-25 when anything is on my screen. Something else is definitely wrong here and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.
Maybe you can! I hope so. I've been out of a stable machine without the ability to game properly since April. I start my third year of college August 25th and I need to be able to do work on my machine running stable and to game in my down time properly.
Here is my SPECCY snapshot. Tell me if you notice something odd:
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/o7XT3tONrN6UqoEbsdKitL0
Much love for anyone who tries to lend a hand. This is not a software issue to the best of my knowledge. This is something internal.
First, my system specs:
Motherboard:
Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Processor:
Core i7 3930k
Cooled by a Zalman Heatsink
PSU:
Rosewill LIGHTNING 1300W Continuous Modular Power Supply
RAM:
Crucial Ballistix Elite 4 GB x 8 (32GB Total) @ 1866 MHz
Graphics: SLI Setup 2014
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 780ti K|NGP|N in SLI
Sound:
Soundblaster Fatality Professional
Case:
Thermaltake Armor+
Mouse:
Logitech g500
Monitor:
Asus VG278HE @ 144hz
Recently I upgraded my video cards from two XFX Radeon HD 6970s in crossfire to two EVGA GTX 780ti K|NGP|Ns in SLI. My system ran pretty much everything graphically cranked up in every game at 100+ FPS except Elder Scrolls Online and in rare instances on some servers Battlefield 4. I decided to end my waiting streak on waiting for the supposed GTX 790 in April and ended up getting two kingpin cards for SLI.
I got the cards April 7th and immediately noticed I was having issues so I posted a thread on EVGA's forum. You will probably gain a better understanding of reading my troubleshooting process here: http://forums.evga.com/So-the-kingpins-are-set-up-Pics-inside-and-a-question-for-you-m2146550.aspx If you go to this link pictures of my benchmarks will be there.
Long story short if you DON'T want to read the thread:
I benchmarked the cards in Unigen and Firestrike and got pretty bad (terrible, really) scores in both. I tested my FPS in games and it was also terrible. People on EVGA's forum noticed something was wrong but no one could seem to figure anything out; that was, until, I noticed that one of the LED indicators on my motherboard that shows PCI-E lane activity wasn't showing green. This meant that the second K|NGP|N card wasn't jiving with the system. I ended up chalking this up to a south bridge problem on the motherboard because #1 My system worked fine just a few hours earlier than my install of these new cards. #2, My south bridge fan wasn't spinning as it had before and #3, the cards were both auto-OCing themselves as they should and getting hot during testing. They were also both recognized as being configured in SLI from the NVidia control panel, from PrecisionX, and from the overlay on my G19s keyboard showing details about the cards speeds, loads, and temps. Updating to the latest BIOS, chipset drivers, video card drivers (I tested a bunch of different versions), LAN drivers, and even audio drivers didn't help me at all). I tested the cards in SLI with each other's power cables, swapped lanes, and ran each card individually. Same problem. I also had bad boot times (5-6 mins on average) but this had been the case since about February so that wasn't unusual.
I submitted an RMA in to Asus a few days later. MAN was that the WORST experience I have ever had with an RMA in my entire life. It took about ten phone calls (including one with a manager), 3 submissions to get approved for an advanced RMA, many emails back-and-forth to their stocking department, and filling out RMA request forms about 5 times because of something being supposedly "wrong" on my form or the 30 day wait period expiring.
Fast forward 3 1/2 months of me playing on a single K|NGP|n with crappy FPS the entire time... A few days ago I finally got my new board. Immediately I noticed that in SLI my GPUs were both lighting up green on my PCI-E switch board. Activity on the lanes is definitely a good thing. Long story short I had the same issues with the cards as I did before... only this time it seemed to be worse. Here is a snapshot of my unigen benchmark with my CPU clocked at an easily achievable 4.0 GHz:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-PDzvRKMBubc/U9lcaj5uWlI/AAAAAAAAA5U/wevqONOpQr8/w503-h894-no/unigen.jpg
Not only should ONE of these cards get a better score (in my opinion), it's absolutely mind-boggling that two in SLI would get this terrible of a score. Especially with a minimum FPS of TEN.
After testing with no avail in firestrike and a few games I decided it was time for a format, especially since there COULD be a possible driver conflict and my boot times were still about 5-6 minutes. Even driver sweeper could miss something when you are trying to get rid of AMD drivers and put on Nvidia ones I assumed. So I installed Windows 7 Ultimate again. Same issues but this time around I noticed that my chipset driver wouldn't install at all. I, (along with a friend from the EVGA forums named Sajin) tried to diagnose a problem. I was getting bings (!) in device manager shown here:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-K2QwzDMDpPo/U9nreZsx5zI/AAAAAAAAA9k/8nNiy-N5aCs/w753-h894-no/wtf9.jpg
This meant that something wasn't agreeing with me installing my chipset driver. Windows wouldn't do it by itself either. I uninstalled each one of these devices from my machine, used driver sweeper to get rid of anything related to my motherboard, rebooted, and tried to install the chipset driver again. Not only did it NOT work, it also cut out my internet. I pulled out my sound card just to see if that could possibly be the problem. It wasn't. I checked my voltages... Sajin suggested they were normal.
Yesterday I put on Windows 8 Professional to see if there was a problem with the OS I used (I was out of ideas at this point) and that didn't work either. While I didn't have any more blips in the task manager I still had issues with the chipset not installing correctly. I decided to take both Kingpin cards out. I put in my old 6970 and... voila! Instantly I had the ability to install my chipset driver. Even with the old Nvidia graphics driver installed I tested it in team fortress 2 and came up with 200 FPS (in an empty server which isn't a great test but I just wanted to see if there was any change). I thought the issue was fixed.
An EVGA tech told me to try each K|NGP|N card individually to make sure they were the problem. I did. It didn't work well with either card in either lane with either sets of power plugs. I had 25-50 FPS in TF2 on average with VERY random spikes to 200-300 for a second or two.
Now at this point you'd probably assume that my issue would be solved... and you would be wrong. Last night I submitted an RMA request for both K|NGP|N cards. When I'd asked if they'd be refurbished his answer to me was "We prefer to call them FACTORY RECERTIFIED cards". I said "oh so you mean refurbished then, right?" His response was "Uh.. yeah I guess". He said if I had submitted my request within the 30 day period I would have gotten two brand new ones no questions asked. I said "I bought these brand new for almost 2 thousand dollars. When I got them and had problems with them I saved you guys money by troubleshooting other parts of my system and taking the time to make sure (being the I.T. person I am) that I was 100% certain it was the cards. I could have just lied and told you it was and gotten what I wanted from the very beginning. So technically you're punishing me for doing the right thing". They told me to call back Monday.
Naturally, tonight, I expected to be able to remove the NVidia drivers (for now until the new cards got here) and install the AMD ones and game on a stable machine for a few weeks. Wrong. I joined the game today with people actually in the server and my FPS goes from 120 or so (when no ones on my screen) to about 18-25 when anything is on my screen. Something else is definitely wrong here and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.
Maybe you can! I hope so. I've been out of a stable machine without the ability to game properly since April. I start my third year of college August 25th and I need to be able to do work on my machine running stable and to game in my down time properly.
Here is my SPECCY snapshot. Tell me if you notice something odd:
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/o7XT3tONrN6UqoEbsdKitL0
Much love for anyone who tries to lend a hand. This is not a software issue to the best of my knowledge. This is something internal.