8800 GTS 320 SLI issues

[Sean]

Good day all,

My buddy just upgraded his system. We put in an EVGA 680i-A1 board and added in a second 8800 GTS. The original card is an BFG OC2 and the 2nd card is an BFG OC1. Running Vista Ultimate, WHQL Nforce drivers for the board, and 163.69 for both cards. He is reporting that there seems to be a DECREASE in performance almost like SLI isn't enabled.

I suggested using NTune to down clock to 550MHZ the speed of the OC1 as I think hes reporting 580MHZ in NTune now (OC2 speed). He ran Bioshock and saw a performance drop of around 30% not an increase. Along with artifacts and tearing.

He's reporting temperatures from NTune as 79C to 81C on idle. He's using a ThermalTake Tsunami and when we put it together I thought it was a little cramped.

Here's his specs.
Tsunami with an Antec 650W TrueTrio, E6600 w/ Zalman 9500 CU-LED, EVGA 680i-A1, 3GB of Patriot (2X1GB, 2X512MB) DDR2-800, 1 BFG 8800 GTS 320 OC2, 1BFG 8800 GTS 320 OC1, 1 36GB Raptor, 1 320GB 7200.10 Seagate both SATA, SATA DVD drive. No other expansion cards. System is NOT OVERCLOCKED.

He really feels his system is unstable. My instints are telling me its heat and the clock difference on the OC1 and OC2.

Thanks in advance for the answers.

 

[jmackay]

I only see these three versions of that PSU:

Trio-430 - 430 Watt
Trio-550 - 550 Watt
Trio-650 - 650 Watt

Can you double check the wattage on it? Also have you tried having him run 3dmark or ATI Tool's artifact scanner to check for problems / recheck the clock speeds?

Also try running just the new card by itself to make sure its not damaged or anything, and also OC it to the speeds of the OC2 and see if it has any problems at that speed.

 

[Sean]

I only see these three versions of that PSU:

Trio-430 - 430 Watt
Trio-550 - 550 Watt
Trio-650 - 650 Watt

Can you double check the wattage on it? Also have you tried having him run 3dmark or ATI Tool's artifact scanner to check for problems / recheck the clock speeds?

Also try running just the new card by itself to make sure its not damaged or anything, and also OC it to the speeds of the OC2 and see if it has any problems at that speed.

It would be the 650W. Ill get him to try those two suggestions.

 

[jmackay]

Not sure if the PSU can handle the system or not, can't pull the specs up atm, I'm sure others can answer that for ya though if I can't later.

I'd recommend that you make sure there is good airflow going over both cards and pushing out the back / side because these cards are hot, esp if you have two in there.

Also since you have vista, make sure he applied all the microsoft hotfixes / patches.