Considering sli,how much hassle is involved?

[skipsneeky2]

Woah, all makes sense now, didn't catch the death of that hardware that must have been a heart breaker . I'll be sure and check back for the updates .

LOL bad luck year for me,during the BF3 beta a buddy of mine was on the pc and i had just built a 2500k rig with a hand me down 9800gtx and my gf sold off a i7 950 machine i handed over to her and he knocked a glass of water into the antec 900 basically ruining that machine.

So i had no pc till like 2 weeks after BF3 was retailed i think till i got the psu on sale,the antec 300 on sale and a radeon 6750 from Best Buy to match up to a old e8200 and x48 motherboard sitting in the closet and while i'm not a avid shopper there i was just pissed i had to wait almost 2 weeks and the store was like 10 mins away and just wanted to play that evening so i raced home like Dale Earnhardt Jr LOL.

 

[skipsneeky2]

A couple posts back, Ieat mentioned the SLI option not appearing after a certain driver revision install. He's referring to 290.xx and above conflicting with certain mobo ethernet drivers. nV's drivers install fine, cards show up fine, just no SLI option in nV control panel.

It just happend to me using latest drivers for everything and ethernet driver from mobo CD. I checked mobo manual to find the specific Broadcom chip used and downloaded a newer driver from Broadcom's website. Problem solved. nV's aware of the issue, it'll hopefully be solved in future driver releases. Have the latest drivers for everything that requires a driver install, mobo ethernet chip included. This was the first issue I've ever had running multi-gpu and was easily solved. Hopefully no issue for you, good luck!

Good info,thank you.:thumbsup:

yeah till i got this gigabyte h67m-d2-b3 usually i never had issues installing using cd drivers for the motherboard and never encountering issues.

The realtek ethernet controller as a whole and the drivers are garbage for this motherboard,the initial drivers i was forced to install as windows 7 wouldn't find them had this bug where files over like 80mb would 9 out of 10 times stall in in the middle of the download sometimes a few seconds before it finished or a sec after it started like a test of psychological torture in basically all the browsers and i formated later on with the same result but after like 4 attempts i got the latest and after installing them,the bug goes away so basically now i toss the disc if the motherboard has one,or consider it a cup coaster for coffee LOL.

 

[MrK6]

1. It works or it does not work. You don't "need" a profile for lots of games. I've yet to find a game you can't force it to work with the profile with just like to .exe. Yes some games don't , but most do.

2. How do they waste power when they idle when not in use? GPU idle like CPU when not in use.

3. You mean system ram? Because i don't know a game that would use all the GPU ram and have problems..

4. IT works or it does not work. The speed up/slowdown you said can apply to single GPU cards.

5. Tweak what settings..SLI works or flat out does not work. No tweaking needed.

You realize you contradicted yourself several times in your post, right? See 5 contradicting 1, for example. Also, 3 is a common occurrence, especially when only 1GB cards are used. In regards to 4, if SLI does not work, or work properly, then yes, it's a stuttering mess.

 

[Ieat]

A couple posts back, Ieat mentioned the SLI option not appearing after a certain driver revision install. He's referring to 290.xx and above conflicting with certain mobo ethernet drivers. nV's drivers install fine, cards show up fine, just no SLI option in nV control panel.

It just happend to me using latest drivers for everything and ethernet driver from mobo CD. I checked mobo manual to find the specific Broadcom chip used and downloaded a newer driver from Broadcom's website. Problem solved. nV's aware of the issue, it'll hopefully be solved in future driver releases. Have the latest drivers for everything that requires a driver install, mobo ethernet chip included. This was the first issue I've ever had running multi-gpu and was easily solved. Hopefully no issue for you, good luck!

Actually it was way before that. It was when nvidia first switched to the new install interface. I think it was 260.xx. It was a while ago. And I did try the latest drivers for the ethernet and audio. I also tried removing drivers for both completely. I spent about 2 days trying various methods before giving up. If I was faced with the same problem today though I would just say screw it and user hypersli. I've tried that on a non-sli board and it seems to work fairly well.

 

[Hauk]

Actually it was way before that. It was when nvidia first switched to the new install interface. I think it was 260.xx. It was a while ago. And I did try the latest drivers for the ethernet and audio. I also tried removing drivers for both completely. I spent about 2 days trying various methods before giving up. If I was faced with the same problem today though I would just say screw it and user hypersli. I've tried that on a non-sli board and it seems to work fairly well.

Yea the posts I was finding talked mainly about 290.xx drivers and later conflicting with ethernet drivers. My fix went smoothly, yours not so much! I guess I've been lucky; I've run multi-gpu for years now and that was my first issue.

 

[imaheadcase]

You realize you contradicted yourself several times in your post, right? See 5 contradicting 1, for example. Also, 3 is a common occurrence, especially when only 1GB cards are used. In regards to 4, if SLI does not work, or work properly, then yes, it's a stuttering mess.

Umm i was answering his questions. I did not contradict myself. I said SLI just works in both answers. lol

As for the ram issue never had that problem 1.5gig ram. Never heard of this "stuttering mess" you speak of to.

 

[skipsneeky2]

As promised my update to the kind folks who made plenty of suggestions and helpful tips.

Went to frys yesterday evening and by luck i saw a freaking msi oc edition 7970 sitting on the shelf the last one in fact unopened and new and i decided to bite the bullet on it instead of going sli on the gtx560.

I am very freaking excited about the purchase lol i haven't slept a wink yet i loaded up both my favorite games BC2 and BF3 and i got BC2 as maxed as much as it can be for 1080p with vsync enabled and its basically bored out of its mind at 53-70% gpu usage with 8x msaa enabled as well.

BF3 well 2x msaa enabled post aa at low motion blur off its perfectly playable and i haven't even bothered to oc the damn thing yet its simply out of this world.

I even purchased Crysis 2 and GTA4 to put the 7970 to work and not to sure how tough GTA4 is anymore,i remember it being the Crysis of benchmarking for a while and i quit playing it when my old gtx295 ran the game like crap due to lack of sli at the time.

Sorry for the long post lol just excited

 

[MrK6]

Congrats! Glad you're elated, keep us posted :thumbsup:

 

[skipsneeky2]

Congrats! Glad you're elated, keep us posted :thumbsup:

BF3 and Crysis 2 run like a dream picking up the new gpu and adjusting performance accordingly,BC2 needs to be reinstalled cause i just shut off vsync and put msaa at 1x and its pulling the same exact fps and it kept dipping into the low 40s like my old gtx560 did and gpu usage is just sitting into the high 50's to the lower 70s so its almost thinking the gtx560 is in there still.

Drivers seem relatively stable for version 12.2 so it was worth it.

 

[Termie]

As promised my update to the kind folks who made plenty of suggestions and helpful tips.

Went to frys yesterday evening and by luck i saw a freaking msi oc edition 7970 sitting on the shelf the last one in fact unopened and new and i decided to bite the bullet on it instead of going sli on the gtx560.
...

Ah, you're the kind of shopper Fry's likes...impulse buyer!

Have fun with that rig...after many upgrades, it's now a serious beast!

 

[skipsneeky2]

Ah, you're the kind of shopper Fry's likes...impulse buyer!

Have fun with that rig...after many upgrades, it's now a serious beast!

LOL if it wasn't for my birthday coming up soon,i wouldn't have gotten it seriously.

My gf usually has to approve the purchase and i sat looking at the 2 gb gtx560 and this 7970 like sob,give me a break lol as i had searched their online inventory for availiablity in store for the 7970 for like 3 weeks with it being sold out and that card was a surprise to me and i must have looked at the two cards for about 20 mins like a idiot before my gf is like you could still get the motherboard,the new psu and the case later and thats all she had to say.

this old case in a couple weeks will house this current psu my old dfi x48,e8200 which i retired to my closet and the gtx560 and it will be the dedicated BLOPS gaming machine and facebook machine for her so my upgrades def benefit her as well so nothing goes to waste.

 

[SZLiao214]

Since you have a use for the single 560 i really would just get the 1 higher end card to stop from needing a bunch of new parts. That would be the economical way.

The fun way would be to get 2 7970 to sli

Why do you need to let your girlfriend approve?