Widescreen Gaming Forum

also are you using the same pci rate for both slots, for instance dual x16 lanes or 8x8 for example? your board might only support 1x16 and 1x4 pcei speeds when 2 cards are installed, that might cause these problems.. you'll have to check.
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Oddly enough I have a PCIE v3 motherboard and should be running x16 x 16 but it isn't...

Once card is showing running at x16 and the other x8. Sometimes they say using PCIE V2 and sometimes V1.1
I would have thought it should be V3?

Also the bioses are different on each card. Odd.

_________________
Intel 3930k (stock speed), Asus P9X79 LE, 16GB of some ram. 240gb SSD and 1TB Raid 0. Silverstone Fortress FT02 case.

2 x Sapphire 7970 Dual-X OC/Boost

3 x Dell 2412 in 3P 3600x1920 (3880x1920 bezel corrected)

[quote]
also are you using the same pci rate for both slots, for instance dual x16 lanes or 8x8 for example? your board might only support 1x16 and 1x4 pcei speeds when 2 cards are installed, that might cause these problems.. you'll have to check.
.

Oddly enough I have a PCIE v3 motherboard and should be running x16 x 16 but it isn't...

Once card is showing running at x16 and the other x8. Sometimes they say using PCIE V2 and sometimes V1.1
I would have thought it should be V3?

Also the bioses are different on each card. Odd.

hmm, not sure what board you have... i can't really help if i can't see what you are having problems with :)

My motherboard is an Asus P9x79 Pro. It should be able to do 3 way sli at x16 and v3 PCIE

_________________
Intel 3930k (stock speed), Asus P9X79 LE, 16GB of some ram. 240gb SSD and 1TB Raid 0. Silverstone Fortress FT02 case.

2 x Sapphire 7970 Dual-X OC/Boost

3 x Dell 2412 in 3P 3600x1920 (3880x1920 bezel corrected)

My advice is to try the new beta driver from nvidia maybe that one will work. Just uninstall your currunt one and install this one.

If that does not work either then u maybe have a bad SLI bridge or something or maybe a bad card??

_________________
Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 ----- Intel Core i7 2700K ----- GTX 680 Twinn Frozer III ----- NVIDIA Geforce GT 520 1x Edition

My advice is to try the new beta driver from nvidia maybe that one will work. Just uninstall your currunt one and install this one.

If that does not work either then u maybe have a bad SLI bridge or something or maybe a bad card??

Already on the 304.48, they fixed quite a few issues.

I am pretty much done with DX:HR and Skyrim for the time being so this isn't a big deal. New drivers will probably fix it up.

The PCIE lanes is worrying so I'll do some benchmarking to track down the issue.

_________________
Intel 3930k (stock speed), Asus P9X79 LE, 16GB of some ram. 240gb SSD and 1TB Raid 0. Silverstone Fortress FT02 case.

2 x Sapphire 7970 Dual-X OC/Boost

3 x Dell 2412 in 3P 3600x1920 (3880x1920 bezel corrected)

This has happened before with SLi setups and it is generally attributable to inmature drivers on new cards.

Can also be faulty SLi bridge as I've encountered that issue myself. Easy to swap out if you have an extra laying around.

Also can be a card with faulty VRAM or a Power issue however I would say that since it IS running at 40-60fps and then drops, its not a power issue. If it was
a power issue it would most likely always have issues from game launch when both cards are drawing power which while playing is "always". Since the issue
you describe is intermittent I would say it is not power related and more likely one of the other issues described.

It sucks but the only way to be sure is extended testing.

Start with the easy stuff first:

(don't reinstall your OS, not sure why people do this but it usually never solves anything and is a PITA)
Verify both cards function ON THEIR OWN. E.g. remove your secondary card, remove drivers, install drivers latest WHQL!!!! DRIVERS not betas
Verify games run fine on ONE card on a single monitor.
Remove drivers, Uninstall Video card #1, Install video card #2, reinstall latest WHQL drivers.
Does everything run fine on the second video card on a single monitor with no issues?
If both cards function fine on their own you can cross off one of your cards being bad.
Move on to the SLi bridge, reinstall both your cards in SLi and clean driver install, replace the SLi bridge with a friends or a backup if you have it. Order another one if you don't, they're inexpensive.
Does everything function fine on one bridge and not the other? Then the bridge is the issue. If the problem persists its not the bridge.
And you're left with drivers.
When were the 670's released? Find drivers that were released first for these cards (I believe these started with the 3xx.xx nomenclature but correct me if I'm wrong)
In succession, install all WHQL approved drivers ONLY from the first to the present. Does each driver have the same issue? Is the behavior different accross different drivers? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?
If you've exhausted the WHQL drivers, start trying different 3xx.xx Beta drivers. Is the behavior the same across these? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?

As I say, this is typical when new hardware like the GTX6xx series is released. The driver team focuses on single monitor stability first in the opening driver releases as this is their core audience,
with SLix2 and SLix3-4 compatability issues getting rectified in later releases. It may take a couple months for a driver that does not produce the issue you describe and that is just the price we pay
for running semi-unsupported triple monitor setups on bleeding edge hardware. You're a beta tester!

I sometimes don't understand why people buy a video card that was just released, run it in an uncommon setup (read triple monitor (too expensive for 95% of people)) and then complain when it doesn't work "out of the box"

This is what we've all become accustomed to. If you're buying a single newly released video card and running it on a single 1920x1080 monitor you can expect the least amount of issues.

_________________
i7 sandy 4.4ghz with a snorkel
1080gtx
8gb RAM
Gigabyte P67-UD7 rev. B3
OS -Samsung 840pro 256GB ssd
Games -Samsung 840pro 500GB ssd
Pagefile -crucial 60GB ssd
Storage -2x 4TB WD
PWS -Seasonic Prime 1k Titanium

This has happened before with SLi setups and it is generally attributable to inmature drivers on new cards.

Can also be faulty SLi bridge as I've encountered that issue myself. Easy to swap out if you have an extra laying around.

Also can be a card with faulty VRAM or a Power issue however I would say that since it IS running at 40-60fps and then drops, its not a power issue. If it was
a power issue it would most likely always have issues from game launch when both cards are drawing power which while playing is "always". Since the issue
you describe is intermittent I would say it is not power related and more likely one of the other issues described.

It sucks but the only way to be sure is extended testing.

Start with the easy stuff first:

(don't reinstall your OS, not sure why people do this but it usually never solves anything and is a PITA)
Verify both cards function ON THEIR OWN. E.g. remove your secondary card, remove drivers, install drivers latest WHQL!!!! DRIVERS not betas
Verify games run fine on ONE card on a single monitor.
Remove drivers, Uninstall Video card #1, Install video card #2, reinstall latest WHQL drivers.
Does everything run fine on the second video card on a single monitor with no issues?
If both cards function fine on their own you can cross off one of your cards being bad.
Move on to the SLi bridge, reinstall both your cards in SLi and clean driver install, replace the SLi bridge with a friends or a backup if you have it. Order another one if you don't, they're inexpensive.
Does everything function fine on one bridge and not the other? Then the bridge is the issue. If the problem persists its not the bridge.
And you're left with drivers.
When were the 670's released? Find drivers that were released first for these cards (I believe these started with the 3xx.xx nomenclature but correct me if I'm wrong)
In succession, install all WHQL approved drivers ONLY from the first to the present. Does each driver have the same issue? Is the behavior different accross different drivers? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?
If you've exhausted the WHQL drivers, start trying different 3xx.xx Beta drivers. Is the behavior the same across these? Is the issue alleviated using any of them?

As I say, this is typical when new hardware like the GTX6xx series is released. The driver team focuses on single monitor stability first in the opening driver releases as this is their core audience,
with SLix2 and SLix3-4 compatability issues getting rectified in later releases. It may take a couple months for a driver that does not produce the issue you describe and that is just the price we pay
for running semi-unsupported triple monitor setups on bleeding edge hardware. You're a beta tester!

I sometimes don't understand why people buy a video card that was just released, run it in an uncommon setup (read triple monitor (too expensive for 95% of people)) and then complain when it doesn't work "out of the box"

This is what we've all become accustomed to. If you're buying a single newly released video card and running it on a single 1920x1080 monitor you can expect the least amount of issues.

my 670 works perfectly out of the box, but i'm sure we all know that running sli and surround at the same time causes even more compatibiity issues -.-

thats why i used to have a dual 6970 system using crossfire and eyefinity and it was causing more problems than it was worth unfortunately so i sold the parts and now i use a single 670 with 3 monitors in surround and it's working astoundingly well :)

do you have an other cards intalled? sound card etc as that will cause it to drop to 8x depending on which slot is used. check your manual to see what slots are shared

_________________
intel x79
2 way 780ti's under water
Intel 4760 extreme @ 4GHz
3 x 42 inch screens @5860x1080
16 gigs xmp ram @2200