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ASUS GTX 960s SLI troubles...

vannac
By vannac
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Go to solution Solved by DildorTheDecent,
1 minute ago, vannac said:

Actually, I just looked up the manual and it looks like all 4 of them are x16. Not sure why I thought they were different colors, but maybe I just couldn't see in the dim light. In any case, I moved them to the two middle slots - 2 & 3, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Physically it's a x16 slot, but electrically it's x4.

image.png.50dd4047d01f8872d2fe1c07414ecaa8.png

 

See how PCI-E 2.0 x16_2 is always x4? That's because it's wired to only utilize 4 lanes. You can put a full size GPU in there, but it won't run like one.

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Hey all,

Running out of steam trying to get these 2 960s to run in SLI for me...in before everyone tells me to upgrade to a 10 series card. So here's what I'm facing:

 

0.) The cards I have are ASUS GTX 960 4GB units. This: https://www.asus.com/us/Graphics-Cards/TURBOGTX960OC2GD5/

1.) As soon as I turn on the PC the fans go full speed and stay there (seriously sounds like I have a leaf blower next to me)

2.) I know the first card works because it was working before I installed the second card. They are both connected with a fancy SLI (ROG Enthusiast SLI bridge) because I'm fancy with my old junk).

3.) I know the second card works (on a hardware level) because right now I am running the Displayport outputs from that card.

4.) I have an older board (Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0) which I successfully used to run SLI with some older GTX cards on here with no issues in the past.

5.) I am running out of space on the board. As a result, I had to put the second card in a PCI slot that was a different color than the first cards slot. I'm guessing this is not great because I know the color difference probably means 8x vs 4x and the cards will throttle down to the slowest speed.

6.) I'm only seeing 1 card listed in Device manager.

7.) I downloaded the latest 960 drivers from nvidia, but still can't see the cards in device manager or enable sli options in Nvidia control panel > 3D settings

 

I'm sure there's a billion other details I should share but my brain is wiped. Please have good answers for me in the morning that aren't "sorry bruh, your card's dead"!

 

THANKS

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Thanks, I'll check that but I believe I had a wifi card in that slot previously, so it should be enabled.

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11 hours ago, vannac said:

5.) I am running out of space on the board. As a result, I had to put the second card in a PCI slot that was a different color than the first cards slot. I'm guessing this is not great because I know the color difference probably means 8x vs 4x and the cards will throttle down to the slowest speed.

This shouldn't be an issue as it won't really need the 4x bandwidth.

As to why they aren't recognised, try running them in a single card setup.

Unplug one, move it to the top slot & see if it works.

Same with the other.

If it does on both cards, do the same thing with the bottom slot and see if they get detected.

If its all hunkey dorey, try switching up the 8PIN/6PIN power cables. one of those could be malfunctioning.

 

Quite a lot of things you can try, I'm not out of steam yet ;)

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Are you still running the sabertooth board ? or did you get another one ? sorry , couldn't quite tell from the text

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2 hours ago, Sfekke said:

 

This shouldn't be an issue as it won't really need the 4x bandwidth.

As to why they aren't recognised, try running them in a single card setup.

Unplug one, move it to the top slot & see if it works.

Same with the other.

If it does on both cards, do the same thing with the bottom slot and see if they get detected.

If its all hunkey dorey, try switching up the 8PIN/6PIN power cables. one of those could be malfunctioning.

 

Quite a lot of things you can try, I'm not out of steam yet ;)

Thanks! Will give this a go...

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1 hour ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Are you still running the sabertooth board ? or did you get another one ? sorry , couldn't quite tell from the text

Still on the Sabertooth 990fx

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13 hours ago, vannac said:

 probably means 8x vs 4x and the cards will throttle down to the slowest speed.

SLi needs both slots to be at least 8x/8x. You cannot enable SLi if either slot is running at 4x.

 

Looking at your motherboard spec, only the black slot is 4x electrically. All other slots are 16x or 8x - use those.

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7 minutes ago, DildorTheDecent said:

SLi needs both slots to be at least 8x/8x. You cannot enable SLi if either slot is running at 4x.

 

Looking at your motherboard spec, only the black slot is 4x electrically. All other slots are 16x or 8x - use those.

Actually, I just looked up the manual and it looks like all 4 of them are x16. Not sure why I thought they were different colors, but maybe I just couldn't see in the dim light. In any case, I moved them to the two middle slots - 2 & 3, so that shouldn't be an issue. 

x16.PNG

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1 minute ago, vannac said:

Actually, I just looked up the manual and it looks like all 4 of them are x16. Not sure why I thought they were different colors, but maybe I just couldn't see in the dim light. In any case, I moved them to the two middle slots - 2 & 3, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Physically it's a x16 slot, but electrically it's x4.

image.png.50dd4047d01f8872d2fe1c07414ecaa8.png

 

See how PCI-E 2.0 x16_2 is always x4? That's because it's wired to only utilize 4 lanes. You can put a full size GPU in there, but it won't run like one.

Our Grace. The Feathered One. He shows us the way. His bob is majestic and shows us the path. Follow unto his guidance and His example. He knows the one true path. Our Saviour. Our Grace. Our Father Birb has taught us with His humble heart and gentle wing the way of the bob. Let us show Him our reverence and follow in His example. The True Path of the Feathered One. ~ Dimboble-dubabob III

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Thanks to you both for clarifying! Learned something new today! It's interesting that I hadn't run into this issue before when I was running some older GTX cards in slots 3 and 4 (it might have be 2 and 3, but I definitely never had them in 1 and 3 before).

 

So it looks like if I want these cards detected for SLI I have to use slots #1 and #3. I'll have to give this a try a little later to confirm. Thanks for all your due diligence!

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Well, got the cards installed in slots 1 and 3, but now the driver is somehow corrupted! I can only see 1 card in Device manager and it's got the little yellow warning symbol on it. The error given said windows could not load the driver. Go figure...I'm guessing it's a good sign though, as this is a software issue and not hardware related. I tried doing a system restore, but it didn't help. Really hoping I don't have to re-install windows, but I will there's no other option. Any suggestions on corrupt Nvidia drivers are appreciated!

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8 hours ago, vannac said:

Well, got the cards installed in slots 1 and 3, but now the driver is somehow corrupted! I can only see 1 card in Device manager and it's got the little yellow warning symbol on it. The error given said windows could not load the driver. Go figure...I'm guessing it's a good sign though, as this is a software issue and not hardware related. I tried doing a system restore, but it didn't help. Really hoping I don't have to re-install windows, but I will there's no other option. Any suggestions on corrupt Nvidia drivers are appreciated!

 

That can happen sometimes.

If the currently installed drivers are corrupted, then just uninstall / delete it, and install the same ones...or the latest stable version off the nVidia website.

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Thanks everyone for the help so far! After much frustration last week, I finally got both cards working on the hardware level, but the drivers are still all jacked up. If I should start a new thread for this, let me know.

 

I did swap the 1st card with the 2nd card in the first slot to make extra sure there's no issues with the card. I even swapped out the SLI bridge/cable for good measure. Sure enough, PC booted up and the card was recognized normally as a single card. However, when I install the second card in the 3rd slot on the mobo, I get a "could not install driver" message shortly after windows boots. Sure enough, I can only see 1 card recognized in Device Manager. I updated to the latest Nvidia drivers for this card (as of Jun 2018 from geforce.com), but still seeing the issue.

 

So any idea what's going on here? It seems odd to me that Windows would recognize the drivers of the first card, but not the second card of the exact same model. I am really hoping this doesn't mean the slot on my motherboard is bad (though if it were, I'd expect that the card wouldn't be detected at all at the OS level). Screenshot below...
 

2018-07-23.png

 

Based on previous experience, I never had to enable any BIOS settings for SLI to work. I also checked my motherboard documentation and there's no instructions in there for BIOS settings changes related to SLI.

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On 7/20/2018 at 2:48 PM, pas008 said:

did you try using ddu?

Tried this, ran it in safe mode to remove the drivers. When I booted back into Windows I got the same result, except this time the 1st card loaded up with the standard VGA driver, but the second card still shows up in Device Manager as an Unknown Device. I re-installed the latest Nvidia drivers, but still having the same issue.

 

Something is up with that second card/slot...never had this much trouble with an SLI setup before! Going to google around and see if there's similar known issues.

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I tend to just go a clean install of the drivers and it works. Even when I have issues with the cards popping up. 

 

Never really use ddu. Maybe twice since it was made. If the problem continues for me, I just take them out and put them back in again. 

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I'm starting to think there's something wrong with Windows installing drivers on my system. I just plugged in a Bluetooth adapter that should have installed drivers automatically, but it seems to be throwing the same error as I got with the GPU. Feeling like it might be time to upgrade to Win 10...

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4 hours ago, vannac said:

I'm starting to think there's something wrong with Windows installing drivers on my system. I just plugged in a Bluetooth adapter that should have installed drivers automatically, but it seems to be throwing the same error as I got with the GPU. Feeling like it might be time to upgrade to Win 10...

Its likely just that something has been screwing with the registry.  Clean install should fix things.

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