I am beginning to think that SLI is really not worth the effort. I was playing Portal 2 the other day and suddenly screen went blank and I could not get back to the desktop. I did not give it much thought as a lot of games over the years have caused issues and Portal 2 more than most. Today I decide to bench my cards noting temps before moving to a V Gene board from my current Sniper. See here. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=270267 But lo and behold SLI has disappeared it is no longer shown in Nvida control panel neither is the card shown in Device manager. First I thought perhaps a card had failed but nope, swapped them about and they are both working. If I connect a monitor to the second card it is not being seen. Could it be the PCI-E slot? What can I try now? Should I just stick to simple and safe single card if so what would be a decent upgrade from 670 SLI to a single card?
Strange... I would go into device manager and uninstall both GPU's, and run driver sweeper. Delete all Nvidia folders in Userdata, ProgramData etc. Then run CCleaner to clear up any left over registry files. Then do a fresh install. I take it you are using WHQL approved drivers and not the Latest Beta drivers?
Yes, latest drivers and certainly not beta. I'll try what you suggest. Thanks. EDIT: PS I only see one GPU in device manager.
Sounds like one of the cards has either completely died, or the PCI-E socket it's plugged into has broken. What other issues did you have with SLI? The usual games not supporting/producing graphical errors, or was it something a bit less ordinary?
In my OP I did point out that I had swapped both cads about and they are working. At the moment I am going through true_gamer's suggestion. As for the PCI-E slot suddenly knackered. It is a possibility I suppose.
Yes, check the slot to make sure you haven't bent a pin like I did on my Rampage Extreme... Full thread here... Clicky
I recently did a rebuild and installed Windows 7 with 2 x 580GTX fitted. After a couple of weeks I then decided to fit an additional 580 and the system went from being completely stable to sluggish and juddery. It took me a couple of days to get it back to normal again. I did most of what TG has suggested and also found that installing an early driver (296.10) first seemed to help. If you don't have any luck I'd suggest reinstalling windows.
Why would I suddenly have a bent pin in a slot. It has been working fine up until the crash and I cannot imagine that would do any harm to a slot. Tried your earlier suggestion true_gamer but no joy. I assume you meant a fresh install of the drivers not Windows though.
I am doing a complete Windows install although I could just move over to the V Gene but then I would find the Sniper difficult to sell if it was faulty.
If you have something like Acronis True Image you could take a disk image before starting just in case you later find it's a hardware fault.
Others mention about checking your PCI-E slot, and if you take your cards in and out like you have to test them separately, then a bent pin is quite possible, like I did. Though it is very hard to see as the pins are so small. Hopefully your fresh install of windows will sort it. You haven't changes any setting in your BIOS recently?
No changes to BIOS. But I have not taken the cards in and out until today when I noticed the problem. It has something to to with the crash but I have no idea what. I knew in my heart of hearts that SLI was a mistake.
OK Windows installed, Nvidia driver installed card still not showing. Monitor not alive when plugged in to secondary card .
I had a PCI-E Socket that failed in some other way, still not quite sure how, it resulted in the card working, but latency was way, way up on the second socket, so the card would cause stutter and crash out drivers under load, (Identified as 16x@2.0 still, not dead lanes, just laggy ones.) So it may be an idea to test cards in the second socket, without anything in the first, and see if it still occurs.
Multi GPU's have gotten alot easier to work with over the years. Problems I have found in the past, is using different clocked cards in multi GPU setup. I had a major headache when I ran my 3x GTx 670's F.T.W and a GTX 670 SC in Quad SLI. The drivers try to set all the cards at the same speed, but the BIOS on the GPU's seem to conflict with the drivers. And so I experienced the same problem you seem to be having! What I had to do in the end, was flash the GTX 670 SC card with the GTX 670 F.T.W Bios to get them all to run properly. But next time you plan to run SLI or CFX, best to get identical cards to save the agro.
Thanks mate. It seemed that the second PCI-E slot was not working but and I have no idea why, it is now as I have a GPU in just the second slot and am installing drivers. Most odd. Will report back.
I'm confused, have you still not checked your pcie slot? Edit.... sorry I see you may be having issues with one slot.
