9800GX2 PROBLEM--issues

[TehMac]

My friend got the 9800GX2, and he was having issues with it. He only got 12,000 marks on 3dmark and CoH was not running smoothly, even with the AA off. He was running it in DX9 mode too.

A couple of things sounded suspicious; he only got 12,000 marks, and when he viewed his cards settings, it only said 512MB. That for sure tipped me off that he was only using 1 of his 2 cards in the 9800GX2.

I asked him to go into his nVidia Control Panel and enable dual GPUs. He said it was already "checked" and that it had been that way all along, I guess it's fair to assume that anyway.

He decided to send it back, and is using his 8800GTS right now.


What is extremely odd now is that his 8800GTS which was a 320MB version appears to only have 256MB in his Display Settings.

His motherboard is an msi p6n platinum which makes me wonder, and I don't want to say MSI is bad, but I have heard their motherboards do have issues. But this is all hearsay.


Any comments?


Cliffs:
-Friend has 9800GX2 which doesn't seem to have SLI enabled
-Box was "Checked" for Dual GPUs
-Display only said 512MB was avaliable for 9800GX (1 GB in reality)
-Friend returns 9800GX2
-Friend uses 8800GTS 320MB but Display says 256MB
-Friend uses a msi p6n platinum

 

[imported_wired247]

Have him download the LATEST version of GPU-Z and post up a screenshot.

Also, there are fairly new drivers out. (April 1) Make sure he has them.

 

[TehMac]

Ok thanks, I'll contact him soon as I can. What are you suspecting?

 

[imported_wired247]

GPU-Z will tell you whether SLI is enabled or not. At the bottom of the screen in GPU-Z there is a drop down box to switch between the 2 GPU's.

It will also list the clock speeds of the GPU, shader, and memory. It will show whether the PCI express all 16 lanes are being used. It will show the idle temperature as well, which is different for the 2 cores.

If everything looks correct and he has the latest drivers, there are 2 possibilities:

1. your friend might just be picky or he isn't getting the performance he thought he was paying for. 3Dmarks are a crap measure of performance and heavily CPU dependent, I'm not going to comment on what I think the scores should be because I never use this as a benchmarking tool.

2. one or both GPUs could be overheating. If this happens, the card will still work, but the frame rate for everything will slow down dramatically. It is a possibility. In this case, the problem could be investigated by downloading RivaTuner and looking at the fan speed of the card. If the fan speed is maxxed out and it's still overheating, then the card needs to get RMA'd