SLI 9800GTXs crashing in Vista.

[jawknee530]

I just helped my brother in law built a new computer. Specs:

QX9650
OCZ Mod extreme 900
2 GB ocz ddr3 1333 (we got 4GB but one stick was bad)
asus extreme striker II
2 evga 9800GTX in sli
2 samsung spinpoint t 500GB HDD in Raid 0

He spent way too much on this machine and he won't even let me over-clock it. Anyway, we got it all up and running with vista (32 bit). When it's playing games the system will lock up and not respond and sometimes will crash all toghether and restart. It does this in all games we have tried except for Supreme Commander which it seems to like fine. We have the latest April 1st drivers installed and we have tried it with sli on and off with same results. It has not had any problems in any other scenario other than in gaming. Any ideas?

 

[nitromullet]

My guess is the power supply....

The OCZ ModXStream 900 has four 12V rails:

+3.3V(30A), +5V(30A), +12V1(20A), +12V2(20A), +12V3(20A), +12V4(20A)

each 12V rail can only supply a theoretical maximum of 240W, which is 192W @ 80% efficiency. He's probably just overloading one of the rails with those dual 9800GTXes...

Since the PSU is modular, he can try running his cabling differently in an attempt to balance the load more evenly across the rails (trial and error) to see if that helps. He should also try running the system with only one card at a time, swapping the cards out to make sure they both work properly independently.

 

[jawknee530]

thanks. we already tried running each card independently. it's late now but ill go over there tomorrow and try playing around with the psu rails and see what happens. ill post my results. i really wish he would let me overclock that system though. all of that potential going to waste.

 

[bfdd]

Those cards are power hungry, not as much as the older 8800 GTXs, but still. Also nitro I thought efficiency was what it pulls from the wall so it pulls 300w from the wall and converts it into 240w's of DC. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I thought it meant?

 

[Hauk]

My 850w Toughpower is working fine for 9800 GTX SLI / Q6600 / 8GB / 780i. I did make sure modulars were split evenly though. Hotfixes? I'm thinking power should be fine..

 

[Keysplayr]

900W OCZ PSU should be way more than enough to run that rig. I agree with Nitromullet here. Check to see that you have the rails evenly balanced for those four PCI-e power connectors.
Also make sure your Striker extreme's BIOS fully supports that 45nm quad core CPU. Make sure you have the latest BIOS from ASUS.

You need BIOS 0402 or later for QX9650 support. Just FYI.

And there is a newer 0508 BIOS available;

Striker II Extreme Beta BIOS 0508
1. Fix AI Tuner item will disappear when SLI Memory is enabled with certain CPU installed.
2. Support AI-GEAR3 Vcore adjustment for P4 CPU.
3. Support new CPUs, please refer to our website at: http://support.asus.com/downlo...II%20Extreme&type=bios

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: jawknee530
thanks. we already tried running each card independently. it's late now but ill go over there tomorrow and try playing around with the psu rails and see what happens. ill post my results. i really wish he would let me overclock that system though. all of that potential going to waste.

What were the results of running with a single card?

 

[jawknee530]

one of the cards runs by its self perfectly and the other is crashing by its self so it looks like a bad card. we're going to do some more testing to verify and i'll post our results. i'm gonna bug him about OCing too once we have it all up and then I'll be able to and i'll post some results and benches then.

 

[nitromullet]

You really need to let him run it at stock for a while before you pester him too much about OCing. I mean, he spent a decent chunk of cash, and so far it looks like the has one bad stick of RAM out of four and one out bad video card out of two. I don't think I'd be chomping at the bit to push the system too much either.

 

[Keysplayr]

Yes, getting running right before you go all willy-nilly with o/c'ing. hehe, I said willy-nilly. :shocked: