SLI flicker GTX 980s

[DrDinger]

Hi Community,

I am having a problem with my display flickering when running full-screen applications. It also freezes eventually and needs to be hard-reset, because the keyboard becomes completely unresponsive.

PC:
Gigabyte Z97x-gaming 5
Intel i7440 at 4.2Ghz
16gb ram at 1600mhz
2 x gtx 980s:
-One is MSI
-Other is EVGA
1 x SSD, 4 x HDD
Blueray
1200W PSU (coolermaster 90+)
Logitech anywhere mouse
Coolermast Mech keyboard
Samsung 28" UHD monitor w Displayport connection to the MSI graphics card in slot 1
2 x SLI bridges
Onboard sound
Windows 10 pro

I have been having endless problems with Nvidia. Every time I needed to install updated drivers it would give an error and I would need to run DDU, sometimes multiple times. Today I manually removed all of the nv*.* from windows\system32. I was able to actually install the graphics card drivers for the first time in months, but now I have that well described display flicker green / clear when SLI is enabled in a fullscreen app.

I've tried uninstalling the drivers and rolling back(again needing to manually delete the nv*.* files from windows\system32, but this did not solve the problem.

I don't think it's hardware because it was working pretty well before I updated the drivers, nothing like what I'm getting now. Unilever Valley works fine in full screen windows, but it gets this green/picture flicker even if the display configurations are set to 1024/786 full screen.

I have tried quite a few different settings in the Nvidia control panel. I've also adjusted my computer power settings. I've read a whole lot of reports of this problem, most of them are quite old and there doesn't seem to be a clear solution.

I've tried to remove one of the SLI bridges, each one at a time and to manipulate them while in full screen.

Subsequently I have rolled back 2 version of drivers.

In unigene Valley it runs without flicker at 4k resolution 8xaa, but when it is run in its "ultra" present at 1920x1080 it crashes the computer with green and black flashing, requiring hard restart.

Does anyone have any advice? Does Nvidia have a solution to this problem, which seems to be ongoing for years?

I'd really appreciate some help?

Thanks

 

[DrDinger]

Although it seems really unlikely that SLI would suddenly stop working at the exact time of an upgrade because of hardware, it seems that in my instances one of my SLI bridges was not working properly. While running Valley I removed 1 SLI bridge, than the 2nd bridge, then put one bridge only on both of the SLI locations closer to the front of the case. Seems like it's dangerous to remove and change hardware while the system is running, but it didn't cause any issues for me.