SLI not working

[pfirepfox]

Hi everyone,

I have read the forums and tried everything i have come across but nothing has worked so far.

I have got:
- two asus gtx 970 turbo
- GA-Z97X-SOC mobo

I have checked both gpus individually and both work. I have also reinstalled drivers and flashed the bios. I installed one card first then the other followed by the sli bridge and no option is coming up to enable sli in nvidia control panel (only comes up with configure surround, PhysX).

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks

 

[bignastyid]

Which slots are the cards installed in? Im thinking the 2nd card is installed in one of the 4x slots and SLI requires atleast 8x.

So according to the manual you need to install the cards in the top pci-e 16 slot and the 2nd card in the 3rd pci-e 16x port so that both cards will run at 8x speeds.

 

[Dom_79]

Does the OS actually acknowledge that the second 970 is installed? If so can you try another SLI bridge? It may be defective

I should also ask, What OS are you using?

 

[pfirepfox]

Both cards are acknowledged in device manager and when i run a bench mark one is at idle and the other is at full load. windows 10 pro is the OS. the cards are in the 2nd and 3rd slot due to water cooling. But i thought that the top 3 lanes were x16 slots but i must be wrong.

 

[Dom_79]

bignastyid has the answer I believe.

You'll need to pick between your water cooling solution (so that you can use the first PCIE slot), SLI 970s (want to keep everything the same = no SLI) or a new motherboard that allows you to keep your water cooling and still have space for your GPU in the first PCIE slot or does not require the first PCIE slot to be populated for proper lane/SLI configuration

 

[bignastyid]

Both cards are acknowledged in device manager and when i run a bench mark one is at idle and the other is at full load. windows 10 pro is the OS. the cards are in the 2nd and 3rd slot due to water cooling. But i thought that the top 3 lanes were x16 slots but i must be wrong.

According to the manual
1st slot is 16x(8x when 3rd slot is populated),
2nd slot is 4x
3rd slot is 8x
4th slot is 4x
So for SLI you would need to use the 1st and 3rd slot.