Help, Cant use GTX 570 in SLI due to BSOD nvlddmkm.sys issue

[louno]

Hey Everyone,
I have 2 X Asus DirectCu II GTX 570 . Both of them work fine individually, they initially were in 2 separate computer, but one of these computer is getting upgraded so I moved 1 of the 2 cards in my computer and connected it with the sli wire connection bridge.

I didn't notice any performance increase that much, so after doing a bit of research I found out that SLI was disabled, I had to go in the Nvidia Control Panel / Configure SLI / Maximize 3d Performance to enable SLI.

As soon as I press "Apply" after choosing "Maximize 3d performance" the screen goes black and then a Blue Screen Of Death appears with an error mentioning the file nvlddmkm.sys.

I tried many different things.

First, I tried this solution here which didnt work : http://en.kioskea.net/faq/6210-nvidia-nvlddmkm-sys-error-message

I tried connecting the SLI wire that connect the 2 cards in different positions.

I Tried installing all the latest windows updates.

I tried installing multiple time various different versions of nvidia drivers, from the latest one to the old ones up to 1 year back.

The graphic cards are not overclocked.

I used NVIDIA Inspector to check that both cards are being recognized. One thing I noticed though is that, initially, when I boot and get into windows, if I look at NVIDIA Inspector, both cards have exactly the same specs/settings... However, for some reason, if I close Inspector and check later I see that the specs are not identical anymore, typically, 1 card will have lower specs than the default. I think that this happens when I launch an application that uses the GPU... Like if I boot into windows, check inspector and see both cards match, then I launch BF4 or photoshop and check inspector again and that is when a discrepancy will happen ((for example, currently, I have photoshop open, the Card #2 has a "Current Clock 742mhz" while Card #1 has "Current Clock 405mhz" ... however, if I go in photoshop and start zooming in / out on some files i'm working on to try to stress the video card a little, I notice that the Card#1 "Current Clock" goes up to 742mhz sometimes, then when i stop messing around in photoshop it goes back down, it goes as low as 51Mhz, while the Card#2 is always constant 742Mhz)

If I plug both my monitors into Card #1 and look into Nvidia Inspector sensor monitoring, I will see that the second card is always at 0% usage. However if I plug 1 monitor into Card #1 and the other monitor into Card #2, I will see GPU usage activity on both cards.

Anyone has any idea what else I could try?

Here are my system specs:

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64bit
Asus P8P67 Deluxe (B3)
Intel Core i5 2500k
16gb Ram (Gskill Ripjaws X DDR3-1600 CL8-8-8-24 1.5V)
2 X ASUS GeForce 570 GTX DirectCU II
Corsair Professional Series AX750 80PLUS Gold
Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB
2 X 1tb Western Digital

 

[rolli59]

Have you tried un installing the drivers and install them with both cards installed?

 

[louno]

Have you tried un installing the drivers and install them with both cards installed?

Yes of course, as I mentionned, I uninstalled and re-installed drivers many many times, including past/previous driver versions. I always use the "clean install" option.

 

[cirdecus]

replaced the SLI Bridge connector?

 

[louno]

replaced the SLI Bridge connector?

I dont have a spare SLI Bridge connector to try that. Is there a way to test the one I have somehow to rule this out?

 

[louno]

Ok, I found another SLI Bridge connector and tried it, I still get the same issue.

Also, I tried uninstalling Realtek High Definition Audio drivers and installing the latest version. Apparently some ppl reported that this had fixed their nvlddmkm.sys issues, but no luck for me.

Any other ideas?

 

[louno]

Ok, I found the solution... I had to flash my bios to the latest version... now I can enable SLI, however... it's not perfect...

Although I get much higher framerates in BF4, the framerate is not consitent... At Ultra I can go from 70fps to 10fps while playing, so it's unplayable.

I lowered the video settings, mostly set everything to high and generally I get very good FPS (50 min to 120 max) but still, something is not right... it feels like mouse input lag, turning left/right quickly is just horrible, it's almost impossible to aim, it just stutters / skips frames all the time...

I've tried reducing the video settings even further, I put them to the same settings I used when I had only 1 GTX 570 (mixture of high / medium / low) and although my average FPS is much much higher, the game doesnt feel smooth at all!

I tried with Vsync On and Off.

As per some suggestions I found online, I also tried changing the "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" Settings to "1" , in the Nvidia Control Panel / Manage 3d Settings panel.

Pretty much all my system is up to date, windows, graphic drivers, motherboard bios etc...