2 gtx 970's sli wont work?

X

Xenozx

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
2,127
OK, so I have 2 GTX 970's i have hooked both up 1 at a time and they work great. Well I put both in at the same time, and I did connect the sli bridge (tried both sets of conectors on the card) but when I boot into windows and go to try to enable SLI theres an error at the bottom that says

"to use maximum 3D performance , connect the SLI-ready graphics cards with a sli connector."

well they are!

I had 2 different brand 670's working in sli just fine, and have 2 different brand 970's now. 1 is a Zotac 970 amp! omega, the other is a Gigabyte G1, but that shouldnt matter right?

Anyone have any ideas?
 
Older X58 motherboards have been having issues with the new 900 cards. I believe the issue is fixable but it may involve updating your motherboard bios. There is also a memory option you may need to tweak in your bios. In the BIOS, under Frequency/Voltage Control | Memory Feature, try setting the "Memory Low Gap" to it's highest setting, then see if both cards will work when installed.

If your bios is updated and you have that setting tweaked accordingly

Remove your nvidia drivers and reboot, When you boot back up reinstall your nvidia drivers.
 
Guess I should say, my sig is severly outdated.

I have a Asrock Z77 extreme motherboard.

i will try the driver thing again, and install 1 card at a time. I did already delete drivers and reinstal and tried 2 sli bridges still no go. See a few other threads on google with others having similar issues, and the common denominator being different brand 970's. Wondering if you have 2 different PCB designed 970's if this would cause sli not to work right? or different clocks from the factory. Wasnt an issue with my 670's, but seems to be an issue with these 970's.
 
just uninstalled drivers. rebooted, took 1 card out, booted up, let drivers install, rebooted again, installed 2nd card, let drivers install, and rebooted again, then went in and still same problem.

even re-downloaded drivers, and did the "clean drver install" under custom drivers option in nvidia drivers menu.

tried 2 sli bridges in up to down and down to up mode, even though i think they are reversible and that doesnt matter.

Looks like I am sending a card back, which sucks because the chances of me finding another gigabyte G1 for MSRP is going to be really hard to do... Hope superbiiz, will consider this defective hardware, and not try to charge me 15% restocking fee for something i have no control over.

Checked all my bios options nothing seems to fit anySLI type settings. Like i said before a few days ago i had 670 GTX sli working on this board just fine, using the same 2 PCI-E slots and bridge connector. only variable that has really changed is the 2 cards and driver version.
 
Try reinstalling the drivers with one card in, then reboot and put the second card in, BUT DON'T PUT THE BRIDGE IN, then let it install, set CPU as the Physx processor, shutdown, add SLI bridge, then turn it on. That combo somehow worked for my SLI 760s on my MSI mobo, maybe it will help with yours.
 
Since there is no reference design for the 970 my guess would be your mixing of brands in this case. There is a wide array of power components and voltage requirements between cards, from 1.175v with ASUS to 1.267v with Gigabyte. Compounded with the SLI voltage bug in the current drivers it could be asking for trouble.

Also, don't do the one-at-a-time thing when installing an SLI configuration... Install both cards in your system with the SLI bridge attached before installing the drivers. It often makes me wonder if all the problems I read about people having with SLI is because they're not installing everything properly.
 
Are you running the latest BIOS for your motherboard? I'd update the BIOS and chipset drivers first. Then completely uninstall video drivers, and uninstall/remove the cards themselves from device manager. Let Windows re-detect them. Then install video drivers.
 
I had a similar issue a few years back trying to run 2 GTX460 cards, and it turned out the secondary PCI-E slot on the motherboard was defective. Try to run one card at a time in each slot to rule out the motherboard.
 
Armenius said:
Since there is no reference design for the 970 my guess would be your mixing of brands in this case. There is a wide array of power components and voltage requirements between cards, from 1.175v with ASUS to 1.267v with Gigabyte. Compounded with the SLI voltage bug in the current drivers it could be asking for trouble.

Also, don't do the one-at-a-time thing when installing an SLI configuration... Install both cards in your system with the SLI bridge attached before installing the drivers. It often makes me wonder if all the problems I read about people having with SLI is because they're not installing everything properly.
Click to expand...

My suggestion comes from personal experience that was posted on this forum. The combo i suggested was the only way i got mine to work. He can try everything plugged in. But that doesnt always work and no one knew why it didnt work for me with my 760s.
 
I saw a similar issue on another messageboard a while back. The solution was to use one of EVGA's new SLI bridges.
 
I updated my motherboard bios to the newest one, didnt fix a thing. tried all the install options above, deleted drivers, installed with both cards. tried changing pys-x to CPU, none of that worked. dug up 3 more SLI bridges, and tried those, so 5 sli briges, none of them work.

still a no go, this sucks, i guess I will try with another card, just gotta wait till one comes in stock.

I have verified both ports work fine, and show 8x PCI gen 3 status for both.
 
Xenozx said:
dug up 3 more SLI bridges, and tried those, so 5 sli briges, none of them work.
Click to expand...

Apparently the new SLI bridges are different. In particular, older SLI bridges can have problems with 4K. This may be related.

See here.
 
OK, so the issue appears to be some kind of software issue. I was doing a ton of research and came across a thread with this tool

http://www.mediafire.com/download/obb0f8bh7qya447/DifferentSLIAuto1.1.zip

I used it, and sure enough SLI can now be enabled.

the tool above changes windows 7 back to test mode, and modifies a particular DLL file in the nvidia folder.

Since no hardware has changed, it must be an nvidia driver bug thats keeping us from enabling sli on these 970's.

EDIT: ran 3dmark 2013 and pulled a pretty darn good 3dmark if i might say so myself

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4387173?

considering a titan Z SLI scores about 14200 :)
 
Last edited:
I had the same issue with my EVGA 970s, one was the SC blower model one was the ACX 1.0 model, resolved by doing the same by using the DifferentSLIAuto tool, and worked fine. Now I score about 15.5K o/cing my cpu to 4.5ghz and mildly overclocking the 970s
 
I updated my bios on my board last night and at least now I can get display with 2 980s installed. Unfortunately I can't get nvidia control panel to actually open now. *sigh*
 
veedubfreak said:
I updated my bios on my board last night and at least now I can get display with 2 980s installed. Unfortunately I can't get nvidia control panel to actually open now. *sigh*
Click to expand...

Turns out I'm just an idiot. Apparently on this board you have to use pci-e 1 and 3 which are 2 of the orange slots. Whenever you add a card to the orange slots (plx chip enabled) it disables the black slot which is only meant for use when 1 card is being used.

When in doubt read the directions. Didn't run in to this last time due to using 3 cards.

Also, quote != edit.
 
Xenozx said:
OK, so the issue appears to be some kind of software issue. I was doing a ton of research and came across a thread with this tool

http://www.mediafire.com/download/obb0f8bh7qya447/DifferentSLIAuto1.1.zip

I used it, and sure enough SLI can now be enabled.

the tool above changes windows 7 back to test mode, and modifies a particular DLL file in the nvidia folder.

Since no hardware has changed, it must be an nvidia driver bug thats keeping us from enabling sli on these 970's.

EDIT: ran 3dmark 2013 and pulled a pretty darn good 3dmark if i might say so myself

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4387173?

considering a titan Z SLI scores about 14200 :)
Click to expand...

Having the same problem, HOW FRUSTRATING!! I am on Win8.1, I guess I will try this...hopefully it doesn't mess anything up!
 
So, any update on this? I have a p6t deluxe and I was thinking about 970s in the future.
 
It is if you are buying a cheap second card to be able to have playable frame rates in games that you know support it.

But yeah, SLI is far from perfect - so a single, powerful card is almost always better - if you can afford to do it, and aren't 4K gaming with high settings.
 
980ti sli here with two different brands. Not a single issue. Sorry about the problems people may have. Is it roughly a 970 issue?
 
I had a gigabyte g1 gaming 970 and an evga ftw 970 that wouldn't work in SLI. I had to use the SLIautoTool mod to get them to work together and then they ran properly. There is an issue with different 970 boards from different vendors and even the same vendor being recognized for SLI.

The one issue I think I came up with using the SLI auto tool mod is that the file that it modifies gets flagged and you get a fail from punkbuster or some similar cheat protection and I couldn't play DAYZ using both cards under that windows profile.
 
I also have two 980 Ti cards, one NVidia and one Gigabyte, however both are reference cards I bought one day one of release.

No SLi issues.

It may be exclusive to the 970 at this point.
 
If they're reference designs then there should be no problem. The issue comes in when mixing cards that use custom PCBs and power profiles. As I said, the timings on Maxwell are a lot tighter than they used to be, so any variation in power design is going to cause issues.

I think a lot of confusion comes in when someone reads something on the NVIDIA website. NVIDIA can only guarantee proper operation when using reference designs. Any incompatibility with custom cards must be taken up with the AIB manufacturer. So when NVIDIA says you can mix manufacturer cards on their website, that only means that SLI will work with a Zotac and Gigabyte reference card together, for example. There is no guarantee a Zotac reference card and Gigabyte G1 are going to work together.

With the GTX 970, reference cards are only made by NVIDIA and are only available from Best Buy or directly from NVIDIA. So the issue may not be unique to the GTX 970, it's the simple fact that the 970 was not launched with a reference design and the only places to pick one or more up are where PC gamers don't typically shop for parts.
 
use identical 970's, not all revisions are compatible with each other. found the exact same tool to enable sli but surround is broken. replaced card with the same sku and sli works with no tool same bridge and board.
 
DejaWiz said:
Will flashing both GPUs to the same BIOS help?
Click to expand...

You'd probably end up bricking a card doing that. Power phases can be different, power plugs and power draw is different, just too much is different between non-reference cards to expect anything but a dead card after.
 
Oh dark lord please bring back this thread, I have sacrificed the required Pentium 4, I have CRIMMed the RIMMS and am ready to receive you.


So now that that's out of the way, Anyone have that SLIautoTool program mentioned earlier in this thread still?
Xenozx said:
OK, so the issue appears to be some kind of software issue. I was doing a ton of research and came across a thread with this tool

http://www.mediafire.com/download/obb0f8bh7qya447/DifferentSLIAuto1.1.zip

I used it, and sure enough SLI can now be enabled.

the tool above changes windows 7 back to test mode, and modifies a particular DLL file in the nvidia folder.

Since no hardware has changed, it must be an nvidia driver bug thats keeping us from enabling sli on these 970's.

EDIT: ran 3dmark 2013 and pulled a pretty darn good 3dmark if i might say so myself

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4387173?

considering a titan Z SLI scores about 14200 :)
Click to expand...


Or an alternative? I found this https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/sli-with-different-cards.158907/ but it stops with 770s it appears to me.

I had assumed it was a chipset problem but I went through 4 different chipsets today from intel and amd and sli was a no go with the 970s
 
stealthballer123 said:
Oh dark lord please bring back this thread, I have sacrificed the required Pentium 4, I have CRIMMed the RIMMS and am ready to receive you.


So now that that's out of the way, Anyone have that SLIautoTool program mentioned earlier in this thread still?



Or an alternative? I found this https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/sli-with-different-cards.158907/ but it stops with 770s it appears to me.

I had assumed it was a chipset problem but I went through 4 different chipsets today from intel and amd and sli was a no go with the 970s
Click to expand...

Here ya go.
https://github.com/EmberVulpix/DifferentSLIAuto/releases
 
Coming into this late, I had issues SLI'ing a pair of EVGA GTX970 FTW cards. Turns out that they made a change to the SLI connector between revisions, apparently to support RGB stuff on the connector itself, and I had to RMA the older revision card which EVGA replaced with a newer card. SLI worked right away with the two newer revision cards.
 
DF-1 said:
wow evgas stupidity never ceases to amaze. :sick::vomit:
Click to expand...

Pretty sure this was an Nvidia-directed change. The challenge was that there was really no way to know beforehand, and the relief was that EVGA simply replaced cards.
 
So I all but gave up on pulling this off as intended, it was a bitch to get working even with all the editing and work I had to do to get it to "work." It's my wifes 4k Netflix hulu machine so it needs to be rock solid or I will hear it.

I will just pick up another 580 when prices get back to not retarded and crossfire the 4k TV. Thought I figured out a way to get around buying something else.

I guess an added bonus is the computer in the guest room is now sporting a 970, connected to a 1024x768 first gen plasma panel, lol.
 
Xenozx said:
OK, so I have 2 GTX 970's i have hooked both up 1 at a time and they work great. Well I put both in at the same time, and I did connect the sli bridge (tried both sets of conectors on the card) but when I boot into windows and go to try to enable SLI theres an error at the bottom that says

"to use maximum 3D performance , connect the SLI-ready graphics cards with a sli connector."

well they are!

I had 2 different brand 670's working in sli just fine, and have 2 different brand 970's now. 1 is a Zotac 970 amp! omega, the other is a Gigabyte G1, but that shouldnt matter right?

Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

So here's your answer. I had the same issue with a gigabyte 970 and an evga 970 a few years back. The different brands may not work as intended for the 970 due to vendor side differences. HOWEVER there is a program that I found which worked to force the sli together, and I ended up using that, and had 100% compatibility after. The games that best support sli saw almost 100% scaling so I knew that I wasn't losing any performance using the program to force it. Enjoy!

you can get the tool here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/sli-with-different-cards.158907/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top