- Dec 23, 2014
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Howdy all! I wanted to pick your brains a bit.
My custom rig is at my house, which means I don't use it as often as I used to (apartment and such, etc.). It's equipped with two GeForce 9800 GT graphics cards, which alone might be a bit dated but together linked through SLI is powerful enough to run pretty much whatever at decent settings. Here's the problem I'm witnessing today:
I've been trying to run a game with known issues about using multiple graphics cards. I checked my control panel device list and noticed only one Graphics Card was listed. I thought to myself, oh that's neat maybe SLI combines them even in that. But the more I thought about it, the more I think that's not an accurate assumption. So, I opened up the rig. Here's what I found:
(1) Error Code FF on the motherboard, an EVGA motherboard. Everything seems to work and my computer has been running just fine so that indicates to me maybe it's having an issue with one of the two graphics cards.
(2) I initially noticed that only one fan was spinning on the two graphics cards. So, I figured one wasn't getting power. I unplugged and replugged all the wiring to the power supply. Then the fan came back on. However, I noticed it was a noisy fan. I also noticed in this process that the graphics card was warm, meaning that perhaps it was running before but the fan was broken (and my jiggling happened to help it spin again somewhat noisily).
(3) I removed the SLI. Now I have a spinning fan (noisy) on the second 9800, it seems to be running. Going to the Device manager I still only see one 9800 under Display adapters and again in the NVidia Control Panel under "Items" of system information, only one 9800. This tells me the SLI wasn't influencing how the computer saw the two cards or anything, and one of them might just be nonfunctioning.
Question: Do you guys think this is beyond repair, or am I missing something? I tried to make sure all the connections were in, the power supply was connected, the fans were spinning, etc. Maybe I'm even misdiagnosing. Any recommendations for further troubleshooting?
Sub-question: If you think it's broken, do you have suggestions for newer SLI graphics cards I should replace the two 9800s with? I think it's about time for an upgrade anyway, if one of the 9800s is dead. Preferably ones that will cleanly fit in the same SLI slots now for compatibility sake.
Thanks so much everyone! My apologies for a lengthy post.
My custom rig is at my house, which means I don't use it as often as I used to (apartment and such, etc.). It's equipped with two GeForce 9800 GT graphics cards, which alone might be a bit dated but together linked through SLI is powerful enough to run pretty much whatever at decent settings. Here's the problem I'm witnessing today:
I've been trying to run a game with known issues about using multiple graphics cards. I checked my control panel device list and noticed only one Graphics Card was listed. I thought to myself, oh that's neat maybe SLI combines them even in that. But the more I thought about it, the more I think that's not an accurate assumption. So, I opened up the rig. Here's what I found:
(1) Error Code FF on the motherboard, an EVGA motherboard. Everything seems to work and my computer has been running just fine so that indicates to me maybe it's having an issue with one of the two graphics cards.
(2) I initially noticed that only one fan was spinning on the two graphics cards. So, I figured one wasn't getting power. I unplugged and replugged all the wiring to the power supply. Then the fan came back on. However, I noticed it was a noisy fan. I also noticed in this process that the graphics card was warm, meaning that perhaps it was running before but the fan was broken (and my jiggling happened to help it spin again somewhat noisily).
(3) I removed the SLI. Now I have a spinning fan (noisy) on the second 9800, it seems to be running. Going to the Device manager I still only see one 9800 under Display adapters and again in the NVidia Control Panel under "Items" of system information, only one 9800. This tells me the SLI wasn't influencing how the computer saw the two cards or anything, and one of them might just be nonfunctioning.
Question: Do you guys think this is beyond repair, or am I missing something? I tried to make sure all the connections were in, the power supply was connected, the fans were spinning, etc. Maybe I'm even misdiagnosing. Any recommendations for further troubleshooting?
Sub-question: If you think it's broken, do you have suggestions for newer SLI graphics cards I should replace the two 9800s with? I think it's about time for an upgrade anyway, if one of the 9800s is dead. Preferably ones that will cleanly fit in the same SLI slots now for compatibility sake.
Thanks so much everyone! My apologies for a lengthy post.
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