1st Sli setup help

[Ratchet96]

Hey guys. First time I've ever posted anything but I'm desperate for help. This morning i just received my 2nd 980ti in the post and after spending the morning re-configuring all my cables and such I've hit a bit of a wall with my setup. I've plugged in my 2nd 980ti and connected the two with an sli bridge and when I boot my pc into windows and start up the nvidia control panel there's no option to configure sli. I have already disconnected both cards, swapped their positions, tried the sli bridge on the other 2 fingers and no luck whatsoever. I've never used sli before but i've looked it up and there doesn't seem to be anything totally obvious that I've done wrong. Hope you can help. Thanks for Your time  

[brendon1996]

I had to reinstall the driver in the geforce experience.

 

[stealth80]

are they identical cards? If not then they probably won't play together. Even if the are the same, one may have a different bios which can cause issues as well, I had similar things with my 970 SLI when I flashed the bios's 

[Ratchet96]

Both Cards are the exact same model. 2 G1 Gaming 980ti's from gigabyte

Also. Ive chedked and my mobo definitely supports sli (up to 4 way supposedly) its and Asrock Z(& extreme6

 

[Lurick]

Uninstall the drivers and all the Nvidia stuff

Download and run DDU

Reinstall the drivers and check again

[Ratchet96]

Sorry but what's "DDU"?

[Princess Luna]

5 minutes ago, Ratchet96 said:

Sorry but what's "DDU"?

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

 

download application and use it on SAFE MODE ONLY to wipe out (delete) every bit of old driver in the system, so you can reinstall them fresh new so they work properly again.

 

[Flevor]

Check your motherboard,i had that problem aswell if your motherboard doesn't support sli it will not show up in the Nvidia settings

[Mick Naughty]

Drivers, mobo bios, and correct pci connections. Will work once one of those issues is resolved. 

[Frankenburger]

Is your motherboard SLI certified? If so, how many PCI-E slots does your motherboard have? If more than 2, try changing the slots your cards are plugged into. It's possible one of the slots isn't the same gen or speed as the other.

[Ratchet96]

My mobo has 3 pcie slots. 2 of them run at 16x and on at 8x speeds. Its supposed to support 3 way sli so it shouldn't be that.  

here it is: http://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/z97 extreme6/

 

[Ratchet96]

I've wiped and reinstalled all my display drivers. still no luck

 

[Frankenburger]

5 minutes ago, Ratchet96 said:

Its supposed to support 3 way sli so it shouldn't be that.

 

You'd think.

 

I have an x99 Extreme 4, which also advertises 3-way SLI. However, when I tried putting my old pair of 1080's in the bottom two slots, the SLI flag didn't come up. I only managed to get it to work by placing the cards in the top and middle slots respectively.

[Ratchet96]

I also have my cards in the top and middle slot. but still nothing

 

[Ratchet96]

I've now tested both cards in both slots individually and Im getting the exact same framerates so the pcie lanes aren't bottlenecking

[Lurick]

Do you have JUST two GPUs or do you have other cards in the system?

[Ratchet96]

no just the gpu's. i had an old wifi pcie card in there but i removed it prior to installing the new card

 

[Lurick]

7 minutes ago, Ratchet96 said:

no just the gpu's. i had an old wifi pcie card in there but i removed it prior to installing the new card

 

What CPU do you have in the board?

Are you using an M.2 drive?

[Ratchet96]

I have a 4790k (not overclocked)

and i have a samsung 950 pro m.2 ssd

 

[Lurick]

9 minutes ago, Ratchet96 said:

I have a 4790k (not overclocked)

and i have a samsung 950 pro m.2 ssd

 

Install GPU-Z and check the Bus Interface section for both GPUs

Do either of them say PCIe 3.0 x4?

[Ratchet96]

Yes one of them says 4x

 

 

[Mick Naughty]

That's the issue, what does the other say?

[Ratchet96]

thats 8x

ive ordered a longer sli bridge and I'll see if changing to the lowest slot helps

thanks, I'll update if it works

[Lurick]

5 minutes ago, Ratchet96 said:

thats 8x

ive ordered a longer sli bridge and I'll see if changing to the lowest slot helps

thanks, I'll update if it works

SLI will ONLY work if both cards are 8x

 

The Z97 board only provides 16x PCIe slots and I have a feeling the PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe drive is pulling lanes from the CPU as well since the chipset only provides PCIe 2.0 lanes, if that's the case you won't get SLI to work without removing the M.2 drive.

[Ratchet96]

Okay. Lurick was right about the m.2 drive. i cloned my os onto my spare sata ssd and removed the m.2 ssd and now the option for sli is available! 

Although now my new problem is im seeing no performance gains whatsoever. i tested witcher 3 at 4k yesterday on one 980ti and i was getting 30-45 fps with maxed out settings. with sli enabled and both cards working im getting either the same of less performance. Any ideas?