8500GT not equal to 8500GT :P

[Zetoss]

Here's a little something for you to figure out now that I already wasted my money on this ugly mistake;

ASUS 8500GT Silent (1 SLI card)
+
ASUS 8500GT Silent Magic (1 SLI card)
=
"WTF?" (0 SLI function, 1 unhappy dude)

The only two things that are different between the cards as far as I can tell are memory speeds and BIOS... Using that handy overclocking utility ASUS always put on the drivers CD the memory speeds could be adjusted to fit "kinda good", but the BIOS for these cards are still slightly different and the SLI won't activate no matter how I try adjusting mhz or sacrificing cute fluffy animals to the dark gods of computer issues... Anyone know if the BIOS absolutely has to be identical? If it does, where can I get one? Already been all over the ASUS download area without any luck, maybe the BIOS doesn't need to be from ASUS but can come from Nvidia instead?

Not like I'm gonna cry my eyes out if anything goes wrong because just about everything already did, so I will gladly attempt dangerous experiments if anyone would suggest such things...

 

[radnor]

I really dont want to crash your party, and add more misery but...

First: Why the hell you want to SLI 8500GT ?
Second :What is your board ?
Third: have you tried to activate it in the drivers ? If i recall correctly ofc.

 

[Zetoss]

Let's see....

1: Because I can? Got those cards pretty cheap, bought one and useed it until I figured I'd waste even more money on another... (they can be overclocked INSANELY much too, and hardly even get hot enough to need extra cooling!)
2: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (should work great says everybody)
3: I've been crawling all over every setting, cirquit, driver and forum everywhere I could think of, and tried everything including what you suggested...

I may be an idiot, but I'm a happy idiot, ok?

 

[Zetoss]

Well, now I can safely say that I'm not as big an idiot as previously assumed, after some mailing it turns out even the support staff at ASUS thought the two cards should work if they were simply forced to use the same BIOS... but ofcourse they Could not use the same BIOS. Can't even override the flashing process to forcefeed a compatible one because the mismatch is so widespread, and without matching BIOS all attempts are futile, all my base are belong to error.

Forget this thread everyone, or let it serve as a warning that you will need EXACTLY the same GeForces if you ever go SLI... Now I'm gonna go begging my local vendor to sell me a discount 8500GT that DOES match one of the two I already have. *sigh*