unusual SLI problem

[foxmobouser]

I'm having a strange problem with SLI.

Most of the time everything runs fine. The problem starts after the comp sits idle for some time and when I sit down to run say 3dmark or play a game it starts to act up. While loading the application I get this fuzzy picture like turning to a not to well tuned TV channel. This also seems to happen after watching a dvd on my comp with Cyberlinks Power DVD 8. After going into the the nvidia control panel and turning sli off then on again everything seems to be back to normal and games and 3dmark run fine.

Any ideas?

[FunkZ]

Could one card be overheating? Is this with the 9600GSO/8800GS in your sig? Are they running the same core/memory speeds and are you doing any overclocking?

[foxmobouser]

Could one card be overheating? Is this with the 9600GSO/8800GS in your sig? Are they running the same core/memory speeds and are you doing any overclocking?

The cards run arround 62-70C load. Yea its the ones from my sig. Both cards are running on a 9600 GSO bios and I did try different clock settings for them.

My guess is that its some software, bad driver or perhaps even somthing with a video codec.

Problem only showes when comp is idle for some time or after watching a DVD.
It all go's away after turning on/of sli in nvidia control pannel. I can then play a game for hours and hours.

[FunkZ]

You say they're both running the same BIOS, but could one card be doing some kind of throttling or going into a powersave mode? My guess is this has something to do with being different hardware, despite the obvious similarities between the models.

[foxmobouser]

Well that is a possibility althou i examined the cards very well aside from cosmetic differences they have the same layout and chips etc on them.
Also from what i gathered other ppl running these card are not having any issues.

I think I have pinpointed the problem, trying to see if I can get it to do ita again after the changes.

I only noticed this after installing 2x2gb memory. My OC would not stick and I could not get the mem to run at its rated speed 1066.

As it turned out my nforce spp was set to auto and at 1.25V, after upping it to 1.4-1.5 I got perfect stability with the memory and alot of the slowness in many of the aplications that I run went away, so trying to see if this also took care of the SLI issue.

Since The MCP is pretty much responsible for memory and graphics its a logical that this was the case.

Thx

[Pablo 54]

What resolution are you running? Also, while your computer sits idle, are you busy drinking “adult” beverages? :ahhhhh:

[FunkZ]

As it turned out my nforce spp was set to auto and at 1.25V, after upping it to 1.4-1.5 I got perfect stability
Wow that seems like a big increase for the chipset, what's the max?

[Pablo 54]

I agree. That's a lot of juice running there.

[foxmobouser]

What resolution are you running? Also, while your computer sits idle, are you busy drinking “adult” beverages? :ahhhhh:


I run 1680x1050 resolution on a 22" monitor :help::givebeer:

[foxmobouser]

Wow that seems like a big increase for the chipset, what's the max?

1.25 is the voltage the bios boots into after it resets itself I think it was arround 1.3-1.4 ish before with 2x1gb sticks. Max is 1.5 in bios.

Havent seen the problem in 24hours even when playing Fallout 3 i use to get the nv driver stopped responding and has recovered msg, that is gone as well. When the game crashes now its with a regular msg that is a well known save/load bug in this game.

I was hoping of getting this new memory to 1396Mhz but thats gonna prove challanging if not imposible with this board.

[FunkZ]

I was hoping of getting this new memory to 1396Mhz but thats gonna prove challanging if not imposible with this board.

Anything over 1200 is challenging with DDR2. I had some of their 1066 SLI that did 11xx for a few weeks, then it took a crap... didn't like the voltage I guess.

[foxmobouser]

Day 2 no problems so far.

I havent messd with memory speeds yet that much but I got it to boot a 1140 or something.

I've read a few review claims on newegg where ppl claimed they got this model to 139x and one claimed it can do 2000 but that was on the 750i board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?SID=862098-2-0-ARTICLE-0&Item=N82E16820227298&nm_mc=AFC-DealNews&cm_mmc=AFC-DealNews-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

Even it it cant do that much I'm happy.

Overall everest write read times improved
Boot times improved
3Dmark score bumped up 300ish

compared to the 4x1GB I had

[Pablo 54]

Let sleeping dogs lie but it seems like you are putting a significant strain on your chipset. I am guessing that is native resolution you are running on your 22inch monitor. The resolution does not change on its own every two weeks or so does it?

[foxmobouser]

I have a max resolution of 1680 x 1050 that I run on my 22 inch monitor.

The 3DMark Score is for the default resolution that the trial 3D Mark comes with.

I had 17358 score ish with my sli cards overclocked 700/1000/1750

The score in my sig atm is after I downclocked them, for troubleshooting the issue that I had.