7800 GT SLI .....need help!

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rbarr110

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
278
I have 2 evga 7800 gt cards that I am trying to set up in SLI. Each card works fine on it's own, but when attempting to try in SLI, the monitor goes black after the WinXP splash screen.

The motherboard is an EVGA SLI ready motherboad with a X2 4200+, 2 gigs corsair ram (4x512).
Mother board http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=133-K8-NF41-AX&family=20
Vid Cards http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=256-P2-N518-AX&family=22

I have downloaded and installed both the motherboard and vid card latest nvidia drivers.

I can get into windows in safe mode and device manager sees (2) 7800 gt cards. Both cards have the PCIe power cords attached, and the mother board as a standard molex connector plugged into it (says SLI power on the motherboard next to the molex connector). The SLI bridge is installed and I see no settings in the BIOS that relate to any SLI setup.

The power supply is a 550 watt Antec SLI ready power supply.

Any ideas or suggestions?
 
Use nvflash and verify that the BIOS on both cards are the same. Several people, including me, had SLI-related problems because the BIOS on the cards were not the same. Most problems showed up after the 91.xx driver release.

http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/15/37/
put nvflash on a bootable disk, use the "save" option to backup the BIOS and see the BIOS version
 
Well I used nvflash to check each cards bios, and they are the same.

Version 05.70.02.13.8B

Should I flash both cards to a different BIOS? Or try an older version of drivers?

Thanks
 
If the BIOS on both cards are the same, then your problem is probably elsewhere.
Looks like you have the lastest BIOS. I definitely would not flash to an older BIOS.
I would try an older driver first, like the 84.xx series. You can find them here
ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/
 
All I can say is try the 91.33 drivers.....the 91.31's were randomly dropping SLI for my 7900GT's but I haven't had a problem since switching. Come to think of it...most of my problems are usually with WHQL drivers. :p
 
ok, make sure SLI is enabled on the motherboard (see manual for how to get that done) and when you're sure that's done, then fully clean out your old drivers and install the 91.33 drivers... also make sure your display cable is plugged into gpu1 (not gpu2). let us know how that goes.
 
Ok - it finally works!!

I went into safe mode, uninstalled drivers, used driver cleaner, and shut down. Put both cards in and booted into safe mode again and installed the 91.33 drivers (was trying 91.31 before).

I restarted and after the splash screen the screen did go black for about 3 seconds, then picture came back and all was good with the world.

Thanks for the help.
 
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