SLI poor performace

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currently my rig is setup as it was befor i started,SLI both cards.I have only seen a 5 fps increase with anything I try.Im at a loss with this other than reinstalling drivers, besides I rather then be in the rig then get damaged somewhere else. I also dont see an performance increase using 4gb of ram or 2gb.there is all 8gb in now for same reason as the cards.however when swaping all this hardware around my ram score in vista experience rating bull program went from 5.5 with 8gb to 5.7 with 8gb.....i dont know either.

I need to find a new approach or a new set of things to try. again the goal is to get the rig at top performance...or as close as possible.
 
Unless those posters come back with a genius one post solution I will give them less credence than I give WEI, which gives marks out of seven on Windows 7 by the way and it still means ah heck all. That aside, back on topic.

At this point I am the kind of person who would strip the rig down to the bare minimum required I.E. CPU@2.4, 1 graphic card, 2 sticks of RAM and a clean hard drive, after checking RAM voltage is @2.0v I would then install the OS followed by chipset and audio drivers and then a graphic driver version that I know works with whatever card I have in the system, and this is where the fun starts as I don't know what driver you started out with or what kind of performance you got with it. Once I get the rig running in a 'base mode' as it where I tend to run a few benchies to establish stability and set a baseline to work from and compare to, only then do I start adding secondary cards more RAM and OC's. Whilst I am aware that you may not be able or willing to do this I would hope that you can see some methodology in my madness.
 
I am willing to take your suggestion and can do so with ease. you said check to see that ram is @2.0v....? my ram is rated 1.9 but says 1.8 on the stick...? everything else will take time and that I have.If you dont mind I will post my progress and what I have done and found during this process.
 
By the way nice web link I will have to use that :)

Ohhh! what benchmarks do you run to check your stability if you dont mind me asking? I would like to do the same.
 
The JDEC standard for DDR2 RAM was 1.8v but not all RAM likes to run at that and some boards do not even go that low, I've had OCZ Platinum sticks that wouldn't run on less than 1.95v and were a bit flaky even then but at 2.0v they were solid and the Corsair XMS sticks that I am using in the Quad rig now run well @1.94v, whilst in the SLi rig I use OCZ Reapers and they are quite stable @1.85v which is the lowest the settings go down to. Most if not all DDR2 can run @2.0v - 2,2v so I like to start at 2.0v and once I'm happy that things are stable I will back the voltage off until I hit instability or run out of adjustment.

The obligatory 3d '06 & Vantage because they spit numbers at the end and if you run the full suite of tests the GPU can get quite toasty without getting to the near melting point that something like Furmark takes it to and recently I've started using the Terran Conflict demo as it too spits out numbers which can be used later for baseline comparisons. Orthos and super PI take care of stress and speed testing on the CPU.

And by web link I'm assuming you are referring to my suggestion[:mousemonkey] to Google.
 


Sometimes nvidia boards have troubles with CPU overclocking while running four sticks of RAM.

OP: Did you try running the 2nd card by itself to verify that it's not damaged? Another quick fix you could try is downloading rivatuner and resetting your game profiles back to default. I had my crysis profile corrupt before and SLI would not bring any performance increase until I reset the profile. Reinstalling drivers did not fix my problem, but fixing the profile did.
 
While it's true he is playing at a res that doesn't take full advantage of 2 GTX 285's, he should not be having worse performance with two if them. I have suffered this problem with various SLI setups and have just had to experiment with various drivers and driver installation methods. Sometimes it required me to disable then re-enable sli. ETQW was such a headache in that regard, FC2 as well. A motherboard upgrade also aided me. So, there are two separate problems. One, I think is driver related. As others have pointed out, the second problem is more of a bang for buck problem, as in, why are you using two GTX 285's for such a small res? Processor is at decent settings.
 
3.0ghz isnt that fast to feed 2 GTX 285. but for the RES he is using ... man you dont need a SLI GTX285.

I had SLI setup in the past ( last one was SLI 9800GTX+ ) and i had few driver and mobo ISSUE, had to tweek with drivers few times. Sometimes an older one is better for a game, and the newer for the other one ...

I give a point for using 2x2gb ( 8gb is USELESS for gaming, plz read some test about it folks ). + its true that some Nvidia chipset dont like having 4 dimm installed.

A 750I chipset is 8x-8x right ? The last 8x vs 16x test ive read was using 8800gt ... but well maybe 8x isnt enough for a SLI GTX285 ?

Can run a 3Dmark06 with ONE GTX285, then SLI, and post score, or in game FPS, as you wish.
 


Rivatuner has an options to restore your game profiles to default settings, evga precision does not. While it probably won't solve your problem, it's such an easy and simple process it's worth trying. You never know, you might get lucky and everything will get fixed!
 
I kind of leaning toward the system bottlenecking.what are your thoughts on this. the cpu is 65 nano meter and the gpu is 45 nano meter will this make a difference.

Will running the cpu at 3.0ghz with 4gb ram with one card (in your opinion better a better approach)
 
When I transcoded a DVD with my Q6600 @3.0 it took longer to complete than when @2.4 :??: and that was on a P35 mobo, and when I tried it in the SLi rig I was so impressed :sarcastic: that I sold it and bought an E8400. IMHO the Q6600 was/is the most overhyped CPU in recent memory.
 
well i will continue to test different configes but I agree the q6600 was cheap at the time,now I have no choice but to stick with it for now. Transcoding a dvd is different then playing game though, isn't it? your friend google told me I was bottlenecking with the gtx 285 and the q6600 at stock. they recommended to overclock it to at least 3.0ghz and that it would help.

So to end a lengthy thread I ask you all of you. " What would you do with this that has been said and if this was your rig?

all sugestions are welcome. the reason I ask is that I am at a loss at this point. cant upgrade for a while and will be testing different setups for a while. If you have a configuration that you think would work, let me know and I will try it and provide feedback. q6600 owners could get alot of info from this thread,along with SLI user.

 





well i fugured that after testing, but is 3.0 ghz fast enough for one gtx 285?
 


I agree with a lot of your stuff mousemonkey, but not this one.

The Q6600 is the best cpu intel ever released and is probably the best cpu ever released period. I know people still buy it at an inflated price today but that doesn't stop it from being an incredible cpu. We're talking almost 30 months now since the Q6600 was released and since then there really haven't been all that many better than it really, certainly not on price/performance.

The one I have in my 2nd pc is 14 months old and cost me $201. Overclocked by 50% and never going above 56C even when stressed to the maximum. It's about the only cpu I've ever had that I truly cannot fault, too bad it's an intel. 😉
 
ok we have 2 different answers here about the q6600....so which is it? I'm still wondering what you guys think about q6600 oc'ed to 3.0 with 1 gpu and 4gb ram.
 
Oh I wouldn't buy a Q6600 now. Like I said, they are being sold at inflated prices (especially second hand).

They were awesome 1-2 years ago, almost untouchable. Now they are sorta being sold on reputation - they are still good cpu's but you can get better for your money, ie a q9450 or a phenom II 940 if you go AMD.

As you already have a Q6600, I wouldn't dream of upgrading to any other non-nehalem cpu however.
 
Q6600 @ 3.0
GOOD MOBO ????
2x2gb of good ram
GTX285
GOOD PSU ????

Can yeld in the 16-18k 3Dmark06. and give some Very nice FPS with qiite high res ( 19x12) and 2x-4xAA or even more, It really depand on the game.
 


Apparantly you dont understand what a GTX295 is...
 
Perhaps I don't understand but I thought a GTX 295 is just 2 GTX 260s on one card. Kicks butt on the GTX 285 but gets slightly less framerates than 2 GTX 285s in SLI but with one card there's no SLI problems and you save about $350 that I would put towards a 26" monitor.
Besides, the OP's resolutions seems like overkill with SLI'd GTX 285s.

Apparently, you forgot to offer help or any type of input to the OP.

 


A gtx 295 is basically a pair of gtx 275 GPUs on one card. Even though it's one physical card, it's logically two GPUs working together, which is known as SLI. In other words, a gtx 295 is SLI on one card.

OP: Your cpu is fine for gaming. The main reason it's suggested to overclock is because a lot of games can't use 4 cores and are usually limited to 2 at most. For those games, it's like you're running a 2.4 ghz dual core, which isn't exactly blazing fast. O/Cing to 3.0 will help immensely in these cases.

As for your SLI problems, I can't help you. I've been using SLI 8800 GTs for a year now, but they've always worked correctly so I don't have much experience diagnosing and fixing them.
 
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