SLI more trouble than it's worth.

C

Cheezwiz

n00b
Joined
May 12, 2008
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Just received my order of two eVGA 9600 GT Superclocked GPUs.

Should be a simple and straightforward swap from my 8800GTX, WRONG.

It works fine, but only one device is showing. I can't activate SLI, or see a second adapter in device manager.

I've taken every step in the SLI guide here, to no avail.

Any help appreciated.

I'm running a CROSSHAIR motherboard.
 
Are you running Vista by any chance? After swapping motherboards / lots of hardware I often find the only way to get things to work properly again is format and reinstall. Unfortunate, but not the end of the world.

Also, please tell us the exact model of motherboard you are using, and your PSU as well.
 
You probably need to go into the BIOS and enable multi-GPU.
Should be under advanced.

Then, make sure you download the latest drivers.
Clean out the old ones with the add/remove tool from nvidia and driver cleaner.
Install the SLI bridge.
Connect both cards to 6 pin PCI-e power.

If SLi is recognized in the BIOS a bubble will come from the taskbar letting you know you are SLI-capable and asking you to click into the control panel to enable SLI.

Update: Your BIOS doesnt need attention, I read your manual.
You need to update the drivers, if you havent. 8 series and 9 series drivers may be different if you haven't updated in a while, the drivers probably dont recognize your 9600 cards.
You need at least 174.xx drivers for the 9600 GT series of cards.
 
Yeah... I'm running Vista. It's a DX10 card, afterall.

Yeah, that's the crosshair.
 
I picked the wrong day to quit smoking.

Just ran Driver Cleaner, cleaned up everything nvidia related. Restarting and going to install nForce drivers, rebooting, then installing nvidia drivers.
 
Do you mean a crossfire mobo? As in X38 or X48?

If so, you can't do SLI on it, only crossfire.
 
No dice, still. I was just taking the second card out, and noticed it's cold. The one that is actually functioning is warm. I've already tested it in a different computer and it worked just fine.
 
maybe you did what i did on my crossfire setup, if your power supply is modular, make sure you remembered to plug the second card into the power supply.

also, did you try switching the 2 cards around?

take the top card out of the motherboard and see if you get a screen in your second PCI-e slot.
 
See if you can boot and get video on a card in the second slot alone. It should give you some error and refuse to go any farther, saying it's in the wrong slot, but you should at least get video, confirming the slot isn't dead.
 
I'm going to try startup without connecting the SLI adapter.

It should at least show in device manager.
 
It's detecting the second card as "Microsoft Away Mode System"

I can't update driver's with nVidia's. It says "The best driver software for your device is already installed."
 
Reformatting would be an easy way out. But I've lost my Vista disc. and the case that has the key on it.
 
Well driver installed but with an Exclamation icon on it.
"This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31).

Windows doesn't know what it's talking about.....
 
Right click on both cards in device manager, choose uninstall driver, then choose delete driver. Then reboot and run Guru3d's driver sweeper with the Nvidia option. (make sure you do this) Reboot again.

Then reinstall drivers.

Windows does know what it's talking about -- you forced drivers on to the wrong device more than likely.
 
silent-circuit said:
Spending $400+ on a SLI setup with DX10 capable cards and then not using DX10 is way up there on my list of "stupid things to do".
Click to expand...

Why?

how many game use DX10, just because they are DX10 compatible doesnt mean they are suddenly useless in every other game, making statements like that are what makes things stupid....

i am sure a large survey may find many people with dx10 capable SLI cards run XP....Send it back as DOA wont work, you will get charged a re-stocking fee, obvioulsy the card work..... use jelly bean and find the CD key for vista http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ , then go borrow a disk from someone for your version...
 
reformat, sometimes its the only way.

Strip the system down and disable any devices in the bios(audio, raid, etc...), sounds like a H/W conflict with the PCI-E slots.
 
Don't know why anyone's bothering, honestly, when the guy has done nothing suggested to him up until now.
 
Here's the verdict.

I had a DOA card. It never worked. In all the swapping I got confused which one was bad.

I'm going to RMA them both to NewEgg, pay the 15% restock fee, buy a single 9800GTX (Like I should have in the first place) and live on.
 
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