SLI faulty??

[jhoelzler]

Hi forum, i hope you can help me with this bugging fault;
My nvidia driver keeps crashing, i've been through the 296, 306, 310 and the newest 314 drivers, but it still crashes or blue screens when i try to run something as simple as google chrome or even a monitoring windows gadget.... I run with two PNY GTX580s in SLI... It even happens if i shut off the SLI function... It works properly if i shut off the system and remove one card though... But that kind of makes me feel like i wasted a lot of money on an extra GPU...

I updated all my other drivers and firmware on essential parts like mobo, harddrives and OS...

My rig is as following:
Coolermaster Storm Trooper
Asus sabertooth P67
Corsair vengeance 16gb 1600mhz memory
i7 2600k clocked to 4,4ghz
Corsair AX1200 PSU (lots of juice!)
Corsair h100i

"Help me obi-wan kenobi, you're my only hope"

 

[bystander]

Try both cards individually, and make sure both cards work. If they do, try each card in each PCIe slot, and make sure they work. If they do, it may be the SLI bridge or motherboard not supporting SLI. If not, you'll find out if one of the PCIe slots aren't working or if one of the cards have an issue.

 

[jhoelzler]

Both cards work individually in both slots, i've tried two SLI bridges, one from Asus and one from MSI.... The motherboard supports SLI and has worked fine with both cards for a couple of weeks, this happened recently and i have no idea what the it could be

 

[bystander]

Download GPU-Z, make sure both cards, when in their slots at the same time, read the bus interface is x8 or better. You might have to press the ? next to the reading to make sure it reads it correctly.

 

[jhoelzler]

I tried that, they both read x8, i noticed though, that when the GPU-Z rendering test started, it said that both GPU's were in a PCI-E 2.0 slot, then after a few seconds the 2nd GPU went to PCI-E 1.1?

 

[jhoelzler]

And furthermore GPU-Z does not recognize the subvendor on the card that only runs in 1.1 PCI

 

[bystander]

That is a lower power state when it isn't being used. That is normal, and why the ? exists.

The only thing I can think to try at this point is a fresh install. However, I would not do that to your current HDD. If you happen to have an old HDD laying around, try pulling out your current one (or just unplug it) and install a fresh Windows install on an unused HDD, and start fresh. Other than that, there must be something wrong with the SLI capabilities of one of the cards.

Did you try the bridge on both bridge connectors to make sure it isn't one of those having an issue? Someone last week had that problem.

 

[jhoelzler]

I have not yet tried to use a new HDD, but i think i have an old 500gb somewhere, i'll format and install windows 8 x64 on it tomrrow to see if if makes any difference... it's somehow working now atm, dont know if its because i plugged the bridge onto the other sli connector... i noticed that the two GPU's dont run with the same BIOS version though, one of them is 70.10.49.00.51, the other is 70.10.49.00.01, could that be the reason why there was a problem? Because all my games run fine, Crysis, GTA IV and so on.... i only experienced lower fps with SLI than with one card in Hitman Absolution, which is probably because nVidia has not yet released a driver that makes Hitman run as it should in SLI

 

[bystander]

It sounds like one of the SLI connections was faulty, or maybe dirty (check to make sure it's clean). This is the 2nd times I've heard this problem in a week.

There is no need to do a fresh Windows install, this seems to be the issue.

If you are able to exchange the cards, you might consider it, but if you never plan to add any more, then it probably doesn't matter.