Sli Problems help!

**OrangeJuicey** · 29th January 2009

Hi, i've just gone out and bought 2 9800GTX+ 512mb ddr3 cards ones zotec ones xfx. I can use the pc fine play cod 5 for example i've been using both cards successfully on there own. First off after putting both cards in i was unable to uninstall nvidia drivers or install new ones the screen would just go black. Then i tried connecting the monitor with hdmi instead of dvi and it worked i could install and reinstall drivers. Thinking i'd solved it i installed the latest drivers and went to put on sli and it goes to black screen and then when i have to reset it, it says bios failed to boot reset bios or continue. Strange.

Specs:

Q6600 quad core 2.4
4 gig ocz 1066
asus p5n-d
zotec 9800GTX+ 512mb ddr 3
xfx 9800GTX+ 512mb ddr3
audigy xfi
hp w2228h monitor

**wakadoo** · 29th January 2009

i know some of these cards require 2 of the 6 pin power connectors for each card (mine does) so if you have 2 in then thats 4 connectors or 8 molex ones if you use adapters..

is the psu up to it m8...

**wakadoo** · 29th January 2009

req for my single 9800gtx....from the manufacturers site..

This graphics card requires a power supply unit: A minimum 500W power supply unit (with a minimum 36A current rate for 12V) and two 6-pin PCI-E supplementary power connector.

**OrangeJuicey** · 30th January 2009

I have an antec true power 650w sli ready power supply. I've tried with drivers 180.44 181.20 and 181.22 with no luck.

I have a problem where i struggle to get the 2nd pci card in becuase its so big and the 4 sata cables get the in the way. Therefore i had to take the bracket out from under the mobo so i could bend it down and get the gfx in the slot. So the mobo is slightly bent but i put foam under it so it didn't short out on the box. It could be that this card is not in the slot correctly.

I think i'm gonna try and return the mobo and get a better one.

**n00bz0rd2** · 30th January 2009

You may need to reset your BIOS. Most hardware changes don't require you to do this, but in some small cases you will have to.

**OrangeJuicey** · 30th January 2009

Ok, i'll check the bios and reset it. Thanks for the help

**Pegasus** · 30th January 2009

I'd be checking the BIOS first as already mentioned.
You should find an option to specify which graphics adapter is regarded as the primary when booting (you should set it to PEG/PCI), and (depending on which BIOS you have), you may well find an option to enable hardware level support for running SLI mode.

**OrangeJuicey** · 2nd February 2009

Ok I had an antec 650w power supply but i've changed it out for a ozc 1000w power supply and problem is solved. I still have problems with installing the latest drivers.

Driver version 178.48 works fine but if i try to use any drivers above this e.g 180.44 181.20 or 181.22 i can't seem to install them, it'll install them restart the pc and the cards seem to fail becuase when i boot back up to windows its just a black screen which requires a hard reset. If i let windows install the drivers then i get a handle error?

lol all the expenses are starting to rack up now. I also replaced the motherboard from a asus p5n-d to a EVGA 780i so i can now plug the cards in properly.

**wakadoo** · 2nd February 2009

prob a daft question as i bet you already done it but have you tried nvidia page to detect the best driver for you..

one other thing is that a lot of boards will sli now without the bridge on.....try that.

**OrangeJuicey** · 3rd February 2009

I will have a look on the nvidia page later tonight but i doubt it'll make any difference. I was getting problems with these drivers with just a single card in or 2 cards it made no difference. Its strange

Going to try the driver cleaner from www.guru3d.com
And then reinstall the drivers after that.

**Pegasus** · 3rd February 2009

Now that you have changed the motherboard, have you done a clean install of Windows?

**OrangeJuicey** · 3rd February 2009

yeah, first thing i did was a clean install. I tried to do it with my existing install because the chipset was the same but it wasn't detecting the second card.

**OrangeJuicey** · 18th February 2009

Ok i fixed this problem for anyone interested. It was down to a faulty gfx card. As soon as i replaced my XFX 9800GTX+ it worked fine. The way that i pin pointed this was when installing drviers and getting a black screen it was failing in system device manager. I got to this in safe mode. When i used the XFX card in slot 1 and tried to enable sli again the XFX card was failing in device manager.

Thanks for all the posts.