SLI not working. Please help!

[lexidobe]

A friend just gave me a reference style GTX 970 after he upgraded. I tried to set up SLI with my EVGA GTX 970 FTW, but Nvidia control panel doesn't detect my SLI bridge. It says to connct the cards with an SLI bridge for better 3d performance. I tried 2 SLI bridges and it still won't detect it. Maybe SLI doesn't work because I have different cards? I know that it is supposed to, but I have heard that some graphics cards don't get along in SLI. Please help!

[shadowbyte]

I seem to recall that EVGA's 970 cards had some issues in SLI with pretty much any other card

https://www.evga.com/support/faq/afmmain.aspx?faqid=59534

[LyondellBasell]

Something you might try checking is the BIOS version of each card. If they're not the same, that could indeed be where your issue lies.

[lexidobe]

Just now, shadowbyte said:

I seem to recall that EVGA's 970 cards had some issues in SLI with pretty much any other card

https://www.evga.com/support/faq/afmmain.aspx?faqid=59534

WTF? So I spent more money for this fancy EVGA FTW edition of this card, and then I get piss poor ASIC quality of 67 percent and it won't even get to 1500 MHZ, but I knew that there was that possibility when I bought it since overclocking is not guaranteed. But then I now am losing out on a significant amount of performance because I paid MORE for a the best 970 on the market? I am disappointed in EVGA.

[lexidobe]

Just now, valdyrgramr said:

Just wondering, does your motherboard support SLI?  But, ya as mentioned above there's another known issue.

Yup, it's a Gigabyte X99 Designare EX.

[lexidobe]

UPDATE: I called EVGA and they said that it is impossible to run these two cards in SLI together because there is a compatibility issue. I think I am done with EVGA. I had one of their 1000 P2 power supplies fail spectacularly yesterday and kill my i7 6850K CPU and motherboard, and now this issue. The only good thing that I have to say about them is that their support ix excellent. Is there a way to do this?

[Mick Naughty]

Sounds like user error for the most part. Still sucks I guess. Low tier card issues.