SLI BIOS & SP difference in 8800GTS

[Morbid666]

hi guys! i've just recently realised slight difference in my SLI set up. i have few questions that might tickle your brains a bit.

i have two ASUS 8800GTS 640MB cards. one i bought as soon as 8800 series came out, and another one about 4 months later.


in GPU-Z the differences are:

Slot 1:
BIOS: 60.80.0A.00.11
Shaders: 96

Slot 2:
BIOS: 60.80.20.00.01
Shader: 112

the rest is the same...

Questions:
1) is that some sort of glitch or the newer card has more Shader Processors?
2) will i gain any performance if i put newer card in Slot 1?
3) should i flash the 60.80.0A.00.11 card to newer 60.80.20.00.01 BIOS?
4) should i flash both cards to newest BIOS and will it make any difference?

thank you in advance!

it seems like a big pile of confusion came out from nVidia. they like to stick to model numbers aven though the parts are slightly different...

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: Morbid666
Questions:
1) is that some sort of glitch or the newer card has more Shader Processors?
2) will i gain any performance if i put newer card in Slot 1?
3) should i flash the 60.80.0A.00.11 card to newer 60.80.20.00.01 BIOS?
4) should i flash both cards to newest BIOS and will it make any difference?

thank you in advance!

it seems like a big pile of confusion came out from nVidia. they like to stick to model numbers aven though the parts are slightly different...

1) No, it's not a glitch, card 2 has more shaders. Right before the 8800GT launch, in order to help clear left over stock vendors were allowed to unlock a few more SP's and sell the cards or something like that.
2) I don't know.
3) No.
4). No

 

[Morbid666]

thx dude! but can i unlock my older card with BIOS flash and get them both on 112 SP?

the faster card will always match up the slower card, therefore as i assume both of my cards run on 96 SP now right?

anybody knows any way around it?

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Morbid666
thx dude! but can i unlock my older card with BIOS flash and get them both on 112 SP?

the faster card will always match up the slower card, therefore as i assume both of my cards run on 96 SP now right?

anybody knows any way around it?

I wouldn't assume that. IME, SLI doesn't even adjust clockspeeds if you pair two mismatched cards and don't try to OC them. The only thing you "lose" with mismatched cards would be any extra video RAM on a larger card, and that's only because you have to sync the framebuffers between the cards.

I'm pretty sure that other than validating that your configuration to decide if SLI can be enabled and sending the frames to the respective adapters(in AFR), the driver is fairly unaware about the underlying hardware capabilities in respect to SLI.

 

[Morbid666]

i've tested with 3d mark 06 both cards... results:
__________________
Slot 1:
BIOS: 60.80.0A.00.11
Shaders: 96

Slot 2:
BIOS: 60.80.20.00.01
Shader: 112
__________________
RESULT: ~10120


__________________
Slot 1:
BIOS: 60.80.20.00.01
Shader: 112

Slot 2:
BIOS: 60.80.0A.00.11
Shaders: 96
__________________
RESULT: ~9210

- so there is difference! its very interesting that the score is higher when the older card is master.

also i've tried flashing bios on older card to 60.80.20.00.01 version usin NVFLASH (5.67). but had no luck... the error is "ERROR: BOARD ID MISATCH". tried overriding the settings using -5 & -6 but no chances... looking for solutin now.

could anyone give me some advise to how i override BOARD ID MISMATCH error please!

 

[aka1nas]

You don't want to do this. You can't re-activate the disabled shaders on the 96SP card.

 

[Morbid666]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
You don't want to do this. You can't re-activate the disabled shaders on the 96SP card.

- you are right.

i managed to flash the bios on older card using hidden "-4" function in NVFLASH. it didnt reactivate the SPs like in 6 series cards - by now i didnt really expected them to, but at least the performance is balanced out.

after some testing my cards run equally regardless in what slots i install them. now in both variations i get ~10120 marks (i still ended up instaling newer card as master).

thanks anyway aka1nas