New 91.37 QUAD SLi Drivers - post problems

J

jtking

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I originally posted about the problems with the beta drivers and this is an update on the post below.

Falcon Northwest has maintained that the majority of my problems were driver related and it seems in some part they were right. The new 91.45 drivers eliminated the screen vibration and the blackline problems. But there are still complete system power-offs that seem power supply related. I have a call into Falcon NW to address these issues now that the release drivers have been published.

I have a final response from FNW. They identify the problems as being load-balancing issues due to overclocked CPU running on the same rail as both graphics cards. They are sending me an adapter to move one graphics card to the other rail (as all new systems currently ship) but at my insistence they will also swap out my power supply for the as-yet-unreleased modular silverstone 750watt in a couple months.

08-16-2006 -- I have installed the adapter to move the second card tothe other rail and it *has eliminated* power related system shut downs. The corruption and occasional system locks coming out of world of warcraft still remain, as does a screwey problem where setting AA settings from the WoW override screen results in tremendous loss of frame rate as compared to setting a global setting.

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NOTE: This is crossposted to http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5625

Nvidia just released their beta drivers for my BFG 7950GX2's in order to implement Quad SLi. I am very excited about this as I am yearning to play Oblivion at maxed settings outdoors at 1920x1200. Unfortunately it is not a seamless introduction yet. When it works (so far *only* in Oblivion) it does give me over 50% more frame rate outside, sometimes closing in on double the frame rate. When it doesn't work, it is causing complete power-downs in the system or horrible screen vibration that does not go away until reboot.

The following information I posted to the Nvidia boards concerning the new quad sli driver:

System:
Falcon Northwest FX-62
Corsair PC6400C4 2Gb
BFG 7950GX2 x 2
ASUS MN32-SLi Deluxe (Nforce 590 rev 0404)
Silverstone SST-ST60F
Philips Brilliance 230WP7NS 23" LCD at 1920x1200 native

Problems:
Computer powers off
Black-line bisects screen in 3d mode
Screen vibrates rapidly up and down by several pixels

Games:
Eve Online (black line, vibration)
World of Warcraft (black line, vibration)
Civilization IV (black line, vibration)
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (black line, vibration, power-off)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (power-off)

Details:
Once entering a 3d mode, the screen begins to vibrate up and down by several pixels, several times per second in GRAW, Civ IV, Eve Online and World of Warcraft. Once this has begun to occur, it will persist after leaving the games to the desktop. a reboot occurs. This happens every time one of these games is loaded. This did *not* happen in 800x600 mode in GRAW. I have not fully tested each scaling mode as my interest is strictly in running 1920x1200 native resolution.

In GRAW, WoW and Civ IV, sporadically a one or two pixel black horizontal line appears bisecting the screen about midway up. This line jumps around (up and down) traveling the center half of the screen, returning to the middle of the screen. This line is accompanied with the screen vibration as noted above. This line does not persist into windows desktop, however it does take a reboot to eliminate the screen vibration.

The machine has powerd off several times in the middle of play of both Eve Online and Oblivion. In both, when I installed these drivers over the old drivers, any attempt to start the game would shut down the computer as soon as a 3d screen was about to be drawn (the screen never drew). After removing all drivers and doing a clean install, eve no longer crashed but developed the vibration problem noted above.

Once reinstalled, Oblivion at the highest 1920x1200 settings except the following:
Self Shadows Off
Shadows on Grass Off
Tree distance one notch down
Anti-Aliasing 4x
Bloom Lighting On
HDL Off

At these settings the game was stable and frame rate improved by over 50%. No vibration noticed, no line artifacts noticed. However, when changing the remaining settings to max (Self and Grass Shadows on, Tree distance maxxed), the system powered down in less than 2 seconds.

The other game to power down was GRAW which also had all the black line and vibration symptoms as the other games. I ran it on all settings maxed, 1920x1200, 16xASF, and it ran for several seconds until it began to load a "video feed" at which time it powered off the system.


Anyone got any ideas?

JT
 
leSLle: Yes it is and I typed it all! :p

HeavyH20: You may be right. I would liek to note that the suppply in question, the Silverstone SSST60F is on the Nvidia Quad SLi approved list. That being said, Falcon Northwest confirmed today that my system is running BOTH cards on a single rail. Seeing how all my powerdowns involved maxed out settings on demanding games (GRAW and Oblivion) I am thinking that the power issues might be causing the power-downs. That being said, I am not so sure that the screen vibration is power related... seems more like a dirver issue.

But what do I know? :p

JT
 
The older Silverstones did not distribute the power very well. The newer revs have resolved that. Most of the them power the CPU and video card on the same rail, starving the RAM and CPU. Then, reboot. If the cards are underpowered, it is usually a blue screen.

Here is a list of NVIDIA quad SLI certified PSUs:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_build.html#certified_powersupplies


BTW, Falcon Northwest advertises on this site. So,they should know ;)
 
The ST60F is on the list, but for all other SLI configurations*, when you go furhter down the list you see this for what the one star means:

*SLI-Ready power supply certification is based on a typical PC configuration. If your PC exceeds this typical configuration, your system may require additional power. The configurations used to test the SLI-Ready power supplies can be found here (The word "here" is linked. Follow the link and you get this:

STEP TWO Determine your power needs

When building an SLI PC, NVIDIA recommends using an SLI-Ready certified power supply. Check here for the complete list of certified power supplies. As an additional recommendation, NVIDIA provides the following power supply guidelines for SLI PCs:

Ultra High-End SLI PC*:
You must have a power supply that can provide a minimum of +12V @ 22A of dedicated power for the two graphics cards. Of this 22A requirement, +12V @ 5.5A must be available to each of the two PCI Express 6-pin auxiliary power supply connectors. The remaining 11A must be supplied to the motherboard for dedicated graphics card use.

High-End SLI PC*:
Minimum of 500-600W Power Supply with a minimum of +12V @ 30A for all PC components.

Mid-Range SLI PC*:
Minimum of 450-500W Power Supply with a minimum of +12V @ 26A for all PC components.

Low-End SLI PC*:
Minimum of 400-450W Power Supply with a minimum of +12V @ 22A for all PC components.

*Note: These power supply recommendations are based on the following test configurations using standard component clock speeds:

Ultra High-End SLI PC Configuration:
Dual GeForce 7900 GTX or Dual GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6 GHz or Intel Pentium EE 955 3.46 GHz
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 motherboard with 2GB system memory
Two HDDs in Raid 0 configuration
Two optical drives
PCI Sound Card
LCD at 1600x1200 resolution

High-End SLI PC Configuration:
Dual GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB or Dual GeForce 6800 Ultra
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 2.8 GHz or Intel Pentium EE 840 3.2 GHz
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 motherboard with 2GB system memory
Two HDDs in Raid 0 configuration
Two optical drives
PCI sound card
LCD at 1600x1200 resolution

Mid-Range SLI PC Configuration:
Dual GeForce 7900 GT or Dual GeForce 6800 GT or Dual GeForce 6800
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI motherboard with 1GB system memory
Single HDD
Two optical drives
PCI sound card

Entry-Level SLI PC Configuration:
Dual GeForce 7600GT or Dual GeForce 6600 GT or Dual GeForce 6600
AMD Athlon 64 4000+
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI motherboard with 1GB system memory
Single HDD
One optical drive

Even though it does not mention the 7950GX2, I am going to assume it falls under their Ultra High-End SLI PC config.

And stated in that particular config:

Ultra High-End SLI PC*:
You must have a power supply that can provide a minimum of +12V @ 22A of dedicated power for the two graphics cards. Of this 22A requirement, +12V @ 5.5A must be available to each of the two PCI Express 6-pin auxiliary power supply connectors. The remaining 11A must be supplied to the motherboard for dedicated graphics card use

Silverstone's specs for the ST60F don't even come close, it has quad rails, but the strongest of the rails are only rated 18A.

Shame on Falcon Northwest for not catching that oversight, The person that I work for at a local build shop, If I built that computer and that problem existed, I would lose a weeks pay.

Research and Testing take me the longest for every build I do, because I'll tell you what, I'm definitly not losing money or my rep because of not paying attention to details.

It's better to exceed than just meet standards..................
 
I completely missed that my powersupply is certified for "all other" SLi applications and *not* for the 7950 Quad setup.

I think FNW will get a call from me tomorrow!

JT
 
So the new drivers are out. I snstaleld them last night and sdid a quick run through of WoW, Ghost Recon, Oblivion.

The main issues which I posted at Nvidia's web site:

Problems:
Computer powers off
Alt-Tab produces extremely corrupted screen
Alt-Tab produces machine lock-up

Games:
World of Warcraft (corrupted screen, lock-up)
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (power-off)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (power-off)

Details:
In World of Warcraft, the machine performs well, showing a significant pick-up in FPS at full detail and 8xAntiAliasing, however, when the game is shut down or Alt-tab from it, I receive an extremely corrupted screen that is completely unreadable (nothing but horizontal multi-colored lines). If I Alt-tab back to WoW, and then back again to the desktop, sometimes I can make it to an uncorrupted desktop. Unfortunately, over half the time the machine will then lock-up within 30 seconds.

In both Ghost Recon and Oblivion the entire machine powers off after entering 3D mode. I do get a screen render (which looks good) but the entire machine powers off within 2 seconds. This does not happen with SLi disabled (i.e. one card).

I have not tested other games yet.

Performance:
At 1920x1200 with full detail and 8xAA WoW shows a 70% increase in framerate! With only one card active, WoW at 8xAA runs inthe 30+FPS range. With both cards it runs high 40's-50+ FPS. Huzzah! This is why I have this setup. The corruption issues are a problem and speak to this release driver being a bit premature, but oh well.

FNW has maintained that my problems are driver related, which was true about the screen jitter and black line, but not so true about power-downs. I suspect a power-supply problem there. I have a call in and we will see how they respond.

JT
 
I have one 7950GX2 and I get the same corrupted screen when I alt-tab out of World of Warcraft. So I don't think that's necessarily a Quad issue, but a 7950 issue in general.

And like you, if I alt tab back and forth a few times, I can get the non-crazy desktop.

Also, where are you testing your framerates in WoW? With one 7950 I get 60 FPS pretty much anywhere with max settings and 8xAA. Sometimes that dips to like 45 in say, Ironforge, but that's to be expected. Also, I am running at 1920x1200.
 
jtking said:
I completely missed that my powersupply is certified for "all other" SLi applications and *not* for the 7950 Quad setup.

I think FNW will get a call from me tomorrow!

JT
Click to expand...

Post their response, I'm interested in how they respond to the mistake they made
 
First on framerates:
Most of my "testing" is done from griffon-back. I can turn to face the sky and turn to face the ground which is rapidly moving by with lots of critters, polygons and textures. My current setup is all in-game maxxed with the WoW specific controls overriding card defaults as follows: Anitaliasing Settings 8xS, Gamma Correct antialiasing off, Image settings Best Quality, Transparancy antialiasing off. My global changes to the default drivers are as follows: Hardware Acceleration Single display performance mode, Vertical synch Force On.

Again, no scientific analysis, but one anecdotal bit... When I first tested with these settings and immediately loaded WoW I didnt seem to get the full anti-aliasing. My framerates remained around 50-60+fps. I rebooted the machine and checkedthe settigns (which were set properly) then restarted WoW and gotthe full AA, but with the reduced frame rates. My machine above is runnign 2Gb PC6400, and overclocked to ~2.95Ghz per core.

What does this mean? who knows, but seems consistent in that it is a 70% increase in frame rate for almost any set of settings over one card.

Falcon Northwest Response:
I received a call from Matthew, my "case worker" who indicated taht they had identified the problem. Apparently, Nvidia's power person only 'certifies' power supplies that have 18amp on every 12v rail. Now the power supply that I have has an 18amp rail, aand a few others of lesser amperage. The problem comes in when the load is unbalanced., i.e. there is too much draw from one side and not en ough draw from the other. In the case of my system, it is overclocked from the factory, and coupled with both graphics cards on the same rail with the CPU creates a power un-balanced state which shuts down the power supply.

FNW told me that they have experienced the problem on relatively few machines because msot of them are not over clocked or have enough other powered peripherals on the other rails that it does not create the unbalanced state. The unbalanced problem is created because of the way that the power supply manufacturers power the PCIE plugs; namely, they put both PCIE plugs on the same rail, sharing a side withthe CPU power plugs.

So what's the resolution? In my case there are a couple of choices. Oddly enough, I can resolve this by putting MORE draw on the other rail (counterintuitive) to balance the load. Also, a larger powersupply can be put in which "might" have enough extra capacity to handle the load imbalance wihtout triggering the shut down. This is not a desireable resolutiuon for otehr reasons as well, mainly that there is not another power supply which is modular with the proper dimensions to fit this case so all wiring would have to be redone and run - messy and time consuming most likely requiring a return of the box to FNW. The other option is that I can simply use a pcie 6prong power adapter to take it to a molex connector on the other rail, balancing the load. This is the way all current FNW systems of this configuration are currently shipping.

I bithced about being unhappy where all this was concerned, however, because to my mind this is a short-cut by FNW to use a lower powered powersupply by carefulyl balancing load on the rails. This is a problem for someone like me (who usually builds my own systems) for future upgrades. The whole reason that I spent the extra opn the AM2 board was to preserve an upgrade path (typically memory, cpu and 2 sets of graphics cards over the life of the system), so a borderline powersupply was not what I was looking for.

Hearing my complaint, Matthew put me on hold and talked with his GM and offered me this: Silverstone is coming out with a new 750W modular power supply in about 2 months. They will swap my powersupply for that one. In the mean time I wil lget the adapter to wire the second card over to the other rail.

I am happy so far with this resolution and will report again as needed.

JT
 
I don't trust nV's "SLI Certification" for PSUs based on all that I hear about "certified" PSUs not being up to the task...heard a 510 from PCPandC would be enough for my 7900GTXs but when you play the "enough" game you generally lose....so I bought (and spent a half-hour installing) a PCPandC 850SSI. Overkill FTW!

Slightly off topic, but the 850 should run Quad SLI fine if I wanted that correct? I don't care what nV says about needing 1000w PSUs...it's a PCPandC!!!!
 
Yeah that does sound like a good resoultion...especaially since they will powerswap...that's what should be done

P.S. I think you should post pictures of your system... :D
 
system.jpg


o.o

JT
 
I love the backgroun..............link? or did it come with the Laser Etched Falcon?
 
I ahve now instaleld the power adapter to move one of the pcie power cords to the other rail. This HAS WORKED to eliminate all power related shut downs in Oblivion. FNW was apparently right in their diagnosis of the power load problem. That being said, there are still driver related corruption and occasional system locks coming out of world of warcraft via alt-tab or exit game.

JT
 
WoW gives a problem in SLI or the Single GX2 when you alt tab to desktop and back into the game..i played WoW and i know that alt/tab happens alot..but untill nvidia fix the driver issue there is nothing we can do..you can run window mode/maximized..I dont have this problem in CS:S when i alt tab though..
 
jtking said:
system.jpg


o.o

JT
Click to expand...


By the way i downloaded that background. Did you know that it changes color with your desktop background color? It looks great with a grey background and realy shows the deep black my Dell 30 can provide
 
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