Is SLI generally unstable?

[Scream And Fly]

Well, what I mean is, is SLI less stable than a single card solution? If system stability is my first priority, should I be running a single card?

Greg

 

[DaCoOlNeSs]

there should be no difference unless your cooling sucks. as long as you have good airflow you should be fine.

 

[heatlesssun]

I've been running my sig rig for the last four months, and I haven't had any stability problems with SLI. Here'a list of the newer games that I play in SLI with no stability problems:

F.E.A.R.
CoD2
HL2
Serious Sam 2
BF2

Now I have had on issue with running SLI on my Gateway FPD2185W monitor. For some reason, I would get screen flashing, like static poping up in some games, namely F.E.A.R. and CoD2 when gaming at the native 1680x1050 resolution. Never did it happen in a standard 4:3 resolution, just widescreen. Since then, I've upgraded my BIOS and just installed the beta Forceware 84.12 that just came out and I've played about an hour of F.E.A.R. and CoD2 and the issue seems to have been resolved. It was an issue that nVidia identified in their reslease notes as existing and being resolved in an earlier driver release, but doesn't seemed to have been completely fixed until this release, at least for me.

Also, with this A8N32 mobo, there is a BIOS setting, the NB to SB that has to be set correctly, otherwise games running in SLI will lock up, but that's just a setting that needs to be correct, not really an SLI issues.

So that sums up my experience with SLI problems to date. Really, SLI has been far less troublesome than I thought it would be, and overall, my system is rock solid. No stability issues. In fact this has been about the most stable PC I've ever had.

Finally, the performace boost from SLI allowed me to play F.E.A.R. and CoD2 at maximum detail and 4AA/16AF and have smooth gameplay. That wasn't achieveable with even a single 7800 512 GTX with those particular games, and the added quality really makes F.E.A.R. look awesome I think.

So if you're worried about a solid SLI, I wouldn't be. Not saying that you want have any problems, but it should work well for you.

 

[UltimaParadox]

Of course it will be less stable when it comes down to numbers, since you are adding another piece of hardware, thats just facts.

However I wouldn't base my purchasing decision based on the stability of SLi as it will probablly vary from card to card. Of course when you buy their product is should be stable at stock.

 

[heatlesssun]

Of course it will be less stable when it comes down to numbers, since you are adding another piece of hardware, thats just facts.

However I wouldn't base my purchasing decision based on the stability of SLi as it will probablly vary from card to card. Of course when you buy their product is should be stable at stock.

I would say that what you're talking about is fault tolerance vs stability. If you have two GPU's the chances have just doubled that you'll a video card failure as you now have two that could fail.

An unstable system is unreliable, even when the hardware and software have no functional faults, but obviously if such a system is unstable, it at has design faults.

Actually SLI makes a system more fault tolerant. If one card fails in an SLI setup, you loose the ability to run your system in SLI, but you have a backup card so that you can still run in single card mode. Generally, fault tolerant systems degrade that way. As hardware fails, you loose system capabiliy and fault tolerance until the hardware is replaced. Buy you can at least take one failure without loosing the whole system.

 

[Scream And Fly]

I appreciate the input guys. I already have an SLI system (in sig), but I need to buy a workstation for work stuff. I would like to get another SLI system, but just today I had a system hard lockup when I went to load Day Of Defeat: Source, and that got me thinking...

Should this lockup worry me?

 

[heatlesssun]

So is this the first time you experienced the lockup while running this game? Any system changes recently?

My primary work system is SLI as well (sig system), and sure, it's always a good thing to get to the bottom of a crash. However, one system lockup while gaming, with no reoccurance wouldn't concern me, espeically if it never happened outside gaming.

 

[MrWizard6600]

no, the sli systems iv seen have had no problem with stabillity what so ever. cept in one case. but that was cuz the dude didnt have enough power.

yea, but then Abit has a problem with there south bridges, for those who dont know, your first pci-e slot runs off you north bridge, and in sli, your seccond runs of the bridge that handles normal pci hardware ethernet cards, sound cards etc. called the southbridge. on the new sli16x this isnt a problem cuz the south bridge has reserve lanes for sli configuration, but on the origonal sli boards, they took 1 pci-e 16x lane and split it into two, making each board have 8 lanes, and for some reason, alot of abit setups couldnt handle that.

 

[foofighter06]

I would say that what you're talking about is fault tolerance vs stability. If you have two GPU's the chances have just doubled that you'll a video card failure as you now have two that could fail.

You're looking at it all wrong.

With SLi if one card breaks....you totally have a backup.

 

[Scream And Fly]

So far, it was just that one lockup. It happened when the game was loading to its main menu screen, not during gameplay. I restarted the system (had to power down to restart), and it works fine. I played the game a few times since with no problems.

Greg