Second SLI card gets detected but has no load on it

[Mitoza123]

I am totally new to the forums. So here is the problem. For a few years already I have a SLI configuration of two GeForce 9800 GT graphic cards in my desktop at home. I started to play Crysis 2 and I noticed that after about ten to fifteen minutes the screen starts tearing and artefacts start appearing. Then I leave the computer, come back after about ten minutes and everything is fine again. After ten to fifteen minutes the same problem starts again.

I logically concluded that my GPU was overheating because I see no other situation with that particular symptom. I downloaded nVidia Inspector. Next, I opened it up and I saw one of my cards selected and everything seemed fine. When I selected the second card, it was showing that the load was 0%, which was fine considering that nothing was running. The temperature of the first was 60 and second 50 degrees Celsius.

Then I ran Crysis 2 and watched the load of the cards change. Pretty quickly the first card was maxed out at 100% and the second one was constantly at 0% load. The temperature of the first was 92 and second was 54 degrees Celsius. Probably the second one got heated a bit because it is so close to the first one. Just so it is clear, this problem is not happening solely with Crysis 2, it is happening with any graphics intensive application which seems to heat the cards up.

The strangest thing is that the card gets detected but is not doing any work. I would like it to do something too instead of just idling in the case. Can anybody give me some guidance to solving this problem? It would be greatly appreciated. I have checked with other hardware monitors already and they all give the same result.

 

[i7Baby]

Try swapping them over. Maybe its your pcie slot that's the problem.

 

[Alex Kelly]

Sounds like the second card could be DOA. Try using it in the first slot without the original card, and see if any problems come up.

 

[Mitoza123]

Ok guys, thank you for your efforts. Sorry for my late reply. The problem turned out to be quite a trivial one indeed. It was my mistake that I forgot to mention my PC specs before. I have also tried all of your suggestions.

So, I had a company build a custom PC for me. I was certain that they had done a great job. Moreover, I have a good friend who is working there. Let's get to the point. They installed Asus P6T-SE as my motherboard. Everything would be fine if they just installed the P6T instead, for it is compatible with both Crossfire and SLI. P6T-SE, on the other hand, is not compatible with SLI. It is only compatible with Crossfire.

I would like to encourage everybody to check their custom PC builders jobs. Nobody is perfect. Thanks to everybody who gave me advice.