SLi problems

Steve-O-

New member
Hey I just got in some new hardware but am having doubts about SLi now. :(

I now have 2x eVGA 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition GPUs. I tried in SLi but everything ran the same if not slightly worse... I have a Corsair 750w PSU and the ASUS P5N-D 750i SLi mobo.

I did a driver sweep for a clean install and everything. Ran both cards to make sure they both ran ok and everything is fine. I don't think my CPU would bottleneck them at 1920x1080 so I'm not sure whats going on.

If anyone has heard anything about this mobo or anything having problems with SLi can you lend a hand? I've searched all over with no results. :(
 
hmmm,what games are you playing in SLi have you made sure the SLi ribbon is ok and that its securly connected to both cards,check nvids website for any new driver issiues,i no that they had some issues with the drivers abit ago there was like a message on the right hand side telling you not to DL the drivers.

what is your full system spec fella?

also make sure its enabled in the control panel lol
 
Thanks for the response. My specs are in my profile. ;)

It is turned on in CP and Windows 7 recognized there was another card. Ribbon has been put in every configuration possible with no changes. It's the ribbon that came with the board.

Games tested were: Crysis Warhead, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Bioshock

I'm using latest NV drivers 197.45 and I did a full reinstall of the drivers including using Driver Sweeper. I also checked to see if it was working by using the "Display SLi Badge" thing that shows up as a green bar when playing SLi games. Although to be honest I didn't do that with Crysis and BFBC2 if I remember correctly.

I did underclock my CPU last night just for testing purposes and am planning on overclocking it back up since I have my new cooler in. But even then I was expecting to be getting better FPS in games when I was actually getting a little worse but not much worse. I can't imagine it being the PSU as I've heard Corsair understates the actually wattage and I've heard people getting 900w out of it. And with the 60a rail I'm more than positive I'm getting enough power.
 
The PSU is definitely not the problem. 750W is more than sufficient for your system, and corsair PSU's are rock solid. Furthermore, your CPU is good enough. It's not like you have a P4 or anything near that.

That's all I can tell you for now as I've had no experience with SLi so far.
 
Yea that's my problem. This is my first SLi experience and so far I'm disappointed... :( I'm no hardware newbie though so I know everything is hooked up just fine. the SLi bridge provided didn't have any arrows to line up with the SLi connector so that's why I've tried every which way. And the manual doesn't tell me anything either.

I figured it would be plug in the card, connect them with the bridge, hook up the monitor to the top card, dl drivers and install them, and then play with awesome new performance gains up to 40% at least... Unfortunately that isn't happening. :/

I noticed in Just Cause 2 the second card wasn't even doing anything. Couldn't find a solution for that though.

Oh and in BFBC2 I noticed after a few minutes of gameplay both cards underclocked at speeds closer to their idle power saving clocks. :(
 
You haven't got any asus power saving rubbish on have you? Otherwise try using rivatuner to set the clock speeds of the chips.

Run 3dmark06/vantage, once with one chip, once with both. If you have paid for either do the fillrate tests, with one then both, if the both test doesn't have almost double the score something is wrong.
 
Thanks for the tip. I'm not home right now but I will post up BIOS settings to maybe see if I'm missing something with that.
 
I've been diving into this all day.

After reading I've heard that it might be a faulty bridge. But when that happens people usually get more problems (IE screen flickering, tearing and etc). Could I have a faulty bridge and just lose performance without these other problems?
 
i have a p5nd and two asus engtx260s in my rig and they are working fine i did have to tern my sli brige upside down tho as i was getting screen tearing after that i havent had a problem since
 
What do you mean upside down? There are no aligning arrows on my bridge... Also did you put them in the front most connector or the back ones?
 
So read some more where OC'ing, especially with this CPU is needed to really take advantage of SLi. I'm not sure if it's true but I got over 17k on 3DMark Vantage when I Oc'ed to 3.33ghz. But in 3DMark 06 I only got 15k. Is the 17k an alright score? I'm not sure because I've never used it except a while back and don't remember what I got. I think it was like 9k lol.

I figured I'd get a lower score than 06 in Vantage... Is this maybe because 06 isn't really using SLi?
 
I reinstalled nForce drivers and display drivers again and OC'ed again to 3.5ghz. This time my 3DMark Vantage score was about 19,700... As I really have no experience with this program till recently I have no idea if this score is any good... I saw other scores on the futuremark website and I searched through for people that had the same processor and graphics card and the highest I saw was 16k. The only thing is, I have no idea what their CPU was running at or if they were stock.

I'm still trying to figure out if I'm actually running SLi or not. I did the SLi Club registry on the NVIDIA website and it recognized that I was in fact running SLi but I'm still a little confused as to why I wouldn't get better FPS in games like BFBC2... Were my expectations too high for SLi?
 
19700 is pretty good, so I would assume SLI was working. Try the fillrate tests, with SLI enabled and without. The 260s are good, but they aren't top of the range so perhaps that is why your not getting the results you want.

You haven't got any of the nvidia antaliasing options turned on have you (leave them to application controls), as these can seriously impact on frames.
 
I'll try that out tonight. I can just remove the SLi bridge and be good right? I don't feel like removing a card. :P Like I said before no experience with dual cards. :/ Hopefully I'll be able to do this tonight. I have some client work to rush. :P
 
No removing the bridge isn't the same, it will hamper performance, but not be the same as removing SLi completely. If you don't want to remove the card, disable SLi from the control panel.
 
Well a single Core 216 is great in most games. I just want more FPS. :P And you telling me that just removing the SLi bridge will hamper performance leads me to believe that if in fact they aren't running SLi for real then the bridge might be bad. I have a friend that has a couple that he will let me try out if I don't figure this out. Will both cards show up even though the bridge is bad?
 
Yeah, the SLi bridge only helps with intercard data transfer. The more powerful cards need the bridge whereas older, less powerful cards (e.g. 7300) didn't show any difference. Its worth a shot to see if the bridge is bad.

Both cards should show up if the bridge is bad, as they are both connected to the PC, the only difference would be that the second card wouldn't be feeding in the data its contributing fast enough.
 
Thanks for the tip. I'll try turning off SLi tonight and doing tests that way. If nothing changes then I'll borrow a bridge and do the tests again. If it is the bridge I will be very happy!
 
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