MSI Big Bang SLI issues

[slapdashzero]

So I put together a new i7 system yesterday, with fresh Win7x64Ultimate, and had no problems. Inside looks like:

MB: MSI Big Bang X-Power
CPU: i7 930 OC'd to 4.1
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master V8
RAM: 6GB A-Data DDR3 Triple Channel @ 1880
GPU: 2 x Gigabyte GTX460s 1GB SLI
HDD: 2 x Kingston SSDNow VPlus+ 64GB RAID0 & 500GB HDD
PSU: ABS Majesty 1100W
Stuffed in an Antec 900 2.

Now, yesterday, after I OC'd it, I of course ran some bench and stress tests to make sure everything was dandy. It was. Ran FurMark for nearly 30 minutes (which I realize isn't all that long, but should bring out any issues) on max settings, Prime95, even the Windows Experience benchmarker thing. Everything was cool. I installed Sims 3, as a hard drive and CPU intensive game to test it out. Worked cool. So what's the problem, you ask? Today, I installed StarCraft II and noticed when I started the game that there was massive tearing in the lower half of the screen. Thinking it was a refresh rate or resolution issue, I set everything to monitor native, 1920x1200 and restarted the game. The tearing only got worse. Now, whenever something is being rendered, it tears, like a wicked bad case of refresh rate mismatch. I quit SC, and noticed that even IE and the nVidia control panel were doing it.

So I shut down the machine, removed the SLI bridge, and replaced it with a new one, and fired it up. Windows had no problem. I disabled SLI and tried hooking the monitor to either card, and they both seemed fine. Enabling SLI seems to progressively make the tearing issue worse the longer it is on. Temps are good, no more than 50C on average for the graphics, 42C for the CPU.

Soo... short story long, does anyone have any ideas? I suspect it is some sort of "these GPU cards Vs. this motherboard" issue, but I hope not. Others don't seem to have a problem, and I could not even find a reference to anyone else having SLI issues, besides DOA and complete failure type; not really blurry and choppy type.

Someone on here's gotta be smarter than I am, think of something I haven't or perhaps even had this problem? They (the MB and GPUs) are popular parts, so there should be plenty of experienced users out there.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

 

[notty22]

Make sure you have the latest m/b bios installed.
Thats noted many times as being addressed, in various bios updates. Dual gpu, pci-e ,performance.

 

[slapdashzero]

I checked drivers and BIOSes this afternoon. All up to snuff. I'm thinking/worried that it's fairly new hardware, and there may be some issue that WILL be fixed in a BIOS patch but currently isn't. I hope not, but at the same time, it beats an RMA.

 

[notty22]

Before anything drastic, I would go back and reset bios. Set your ram voltage . Run the cpu at stock speed and memory at 1066 or 1333.
Save your current bios settings , if you want you can just reload them.

 

[slapdashzero]

Yeah, that occured to me as I was writing the OP; that I didn't try it at back at stock. That may well relieve some pressure on the PCI bus. I'll give that a try when I get home. Thanks.

 

[slapdashzero]

Got it figured out. Just had to eliminate all the things it could be.. one of those was the SLI bridge. Even though I had tried two, neither were confirmed good. I threw the known good one from my old machine on, and viola, works like a charm. If anyone else has the MSI Big Bang-XPower, know that your SLI issues may be related to the SLI bridge that came with the board. Others have reported the same issue.

Case closed.

Thanks for your input, notty.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey