SLI Folding Causes Display Driver to Stop Responding

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LennonMOBILE

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Alright, well recently me and my dad have been getting back into folding, so I spent the weekend overclocking our three i7 920's to 4GHz, and then putting a second gpu (GTX 285) into one of our rigs to run 2 instances of gpu folding while using SLI . The problem is, whenever I run both instances of folding, it will work alright for a few minutes, and then the screen will go black. After a few seconds it will come back telling me the display driver stopped responding. Now I know this probably isn't F@H's fault, but I was just wondering if any of you guys have any suggestions on how to fix it. I have already monitored temperatures, and it doesn't seem like they are overheating, and I also completely removed the drivers and installed the newest ones. I heard that updating the motherboard (Asus P6T) drivers might help, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, because I'd love to mow down people even faster :D



Note: This^ PPD is still inaccurate since our systems were down for a few days while I overclocked. We should be close to around 100k PPD.
 
Have you tried disabling SLI and just running the two cards separately?
 
You can try disabling SLI, since it's not necessary for folding. Also double-check that you're running the 258.96 drivers. What OS is installed?
 
I had this problem sometimes when I was running a P6T. Be sure to upgrade the bios on the motherboard to the latest version. I think that helped a bit. Also, set the offending systems cpu clock back to normal and see what happens. Maybe you are pushing the motherboard too hard. Go stock all the way then if that clears it up slowly raise clocks.
 
It's running Win7. I'd like to keep SLI enabled if possible since this is a machine I actually do use, but i'll test it out along with the bios update when I get time this weekend. I was just curious if this had happened to anyone else.
 
LennonMOBILE said:
It's running Win7. I'd like to keep SLI enabled if possible since this is a machine I actually do use, but i'll test it out along with the bios update when I get time this weekend. I was just curious if this had happened to anyone else.
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you can leave the sli bridge connected.. all you have to do is go into the the control panel.. disable sli.. and let it fold.. you want to play games.. just close the gpu clients enable sli and feel free to play your games.. if your like me and you just play games when ever you feel like it then its a pain in the ass to always have to do that but if you dont then you get use to it pretty quick.. though you shouldnt need to close the gpu clients but if your on the gpu2 client then i recommend doing it since the gpu2 client leaves the WU in the video memory when its not folding.. if you are using the gpu3 client and using core15 then you can just leave the clients open(paused) since it no longer requires the video memory to run the WU..
 
Also, if you disable SLI and have the same problem, then you know SLI is not the issue. :) DooKey may be right that your brand new overclock is not 100% stable.
 
SazanEyes said:
Also, if you disable SLI and have the same problem, then you know SLI is not the issue. :) DooKey may be right that your brand new overclock is not 100% stable.
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I guess that may be it... But it did pass 24 hours of prime, and has been running everything else fine for almost a week now. It's just that whenever I try to run 2 instances of the gpu folding, it starts to act up. Also, with SLI disabled, will I have to use a dummy plug, or is there another way around that now?
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
you can leave the sli bridge connected.. all you have to do is go into the the control panel.. disable sli.. and let it fold.. you want to play games.. just close the gpu clients enable sli and feel free to play your games.. if your like me and you just play games when ever you feel like it then its a pain in the ass to always have to do that but if you dont then you get use to it pretty quick.. though you shouldnt need to close the gpu clients but if your on the gpu2 client then i recommend doing it since the gpu2 client leaves the WU in the video memory when its not folding.. if you are using the gpu3 client and using core15 then you can just leave the clients open(paused) since it no longer requires the video memory to run the WU..
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This is exactly what I have to do. It's a known issue I've had with both my 280s and now 285s. It's not that hard to get used to re-enabling SLI when you need to play a game, it only takes like 15 secs to close the clients and enable SLI (with all the screen flickering after you enable/disable it).

There's no way to fix it that I know of and I've even tried running everything stock speeds.
 
The latest drivers do not require dummy plugs. Also, I've heard that LinX is a better overclocking tester than Prime, especially if you set it to use most of your memory.
 
Good advice guys. This is what makes us such a great team!

Fold On!
 
Yeah I've been having this issue lately and I have SLi enabled in the driver....before when it wasn't enabled, I didn't have this issue and I've been scratching my head as to whether or not that was the culprit. Thanks for the thread - I will definitely go disable this then and just re-enable if I need it for a game.
 
Thanks for all the help guys. When I get a chance, I'll test it out, and report back for anyone else who ends up having this problem.
 
Alright, well disabling SLI didnt fix the problem, so when I have time on Friday, I'll update the BIOS, and hopefully that will fix it. If not, thats like 10k PPD I'm missing out on.
 
Alright, well i had some time this morning to finally update the motherboard BIOS, and so far its been going good. I'm not going to trust it completely yet though since its only been about a half hour, but thats the longest its gone so far.
 
Well I guess not... It lasted most of the day untouched, but as soon as someone started using the computer, it pushed it over. so far I have updated the drivers, motherboard bios, and turned off sli. I guess the next step is to mess with the cpu overclock...
 
Since disabling SLi I have not had the "nvlddmkm has stopped responding" problem myself, so that did fix my troubles at least. Hopefully you get your problems straightened out soon as well. :eek:
 
If you use nvidia's system monitor - uninstall it, its a piece of garbage that crashed my machine dozen's of times before it went the way of the dodo
 
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