The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Believe it or not, two GTX275s actually use MORE power than two GTX285s by a substantial margin.
As for the test, not necessarily, it could be instability as a result of fluctuating power output, which may only affect how demanding the program is on stability, not how much power it draws. Of course, there's still a significant chance it's not the PSU.
Have you even checked if the DFI X58 boards are SLI compatible? The Gigabyte ones need a BIOS update to do it.

 

Lol yes, it is. 3way sli or crossfire. But I'll look for BIOS updates. Interestingly enough, I just installed the 182.50 vista drivers, played fallout3 for a little bit without sli.. was all good... then turned on sli.. and as soon as I got to a part where the screen whited out and it was supposed to say "one year later" (I'm at the very start) BAM it froze.

 

Man, even with my dodgy PCI Express controller I lasted longer than that!
All I can suggest at this time is to try different drivers, if no luck, reseat the cards and SLI bridge connector, and then try again, if no luck, try changing the PSU. If still no luck, faulty second card maybe?

 

rubix hello, I'm sorry if I Have forgotten you, but did you come when I took a break? I love your rig btw, I want a uATX i7 setup or i5 for my microgaming system with sli, as I have had my last 4 cards ati, 2900gt, 4850, 4870x2 and a 4870. It's be nice to try nvidia now

But then again I want an amd sli setup aswell

Have you tried using vista / xp as the OS instead of win7 with vista drivers.

Sam don't make those statments without proof. I'm sure it'll be able to output a continuous. 1000w or they would have to be retracted as cm are a very big respectable company.

 

Then you clearly don't know much about Coolermaster PSUs. Their high end units are well known for not falling to spec. The sites that do show the CM units being stressed properly often show large amounts of droop on the +12V (0.6V for the 900W unit for example) and most of their units use a mediocre OEM, AcBel.

 

Yeah I came when you weren't here Haven't tried different OS yet, have to install vista first lol. I don't really think it's the psu... sli off is definately fine, as soon as I turn it on and start playing, even when the pc is only using around 360w.. in that same spot it just crashes. Every time. Sam, I did a reseat, and that didn't help - at first I thought the USB header was getting in the way of the end of the card, and holding it out of the slot a bit - but by my crashing AGAIN, obviously not the case lol. This might sound weird, but DESCRIBE a psu crash to me? Because I'll describe to you what happens:
1. Boot windows, enable sli
2. Open fallout3
3. get to spot where I'm walking down the hallway with dad
4. screen fades white, dialogue still going on...
5. screen stays white. Audio continues, as does G15 applications, keyboard doesn't respond, HDD flickers a little almost as if it's trying to continue on with the game even though the video has stopped. Eventually the G15 apps give up (which I assume is when the registry value for maximum video time wait has been reached) then I have to hit the reset button.

 

A PSU can recreate ANY crash a system would otherwise encounter. Your crash comes at a difficult time to diagnose. It is as likely to be graphics related as it is CPU stability related (due to your high overclock).

 

adding a second card will increace stress on the NB, try adding some more voltage to the NB and using a 3.0GHz clock atm, if its stable push up the OC and lower NB voltage till one gets unstable.

 

Damn. Ok well as we speak, I'm installing vista. So we'll see how that goes. Any bets on using the same drivers in vista vs windows 7 won't make a difference and knowing my luck it will still crash? lol.

Edit: Ok, after I'm done installing if it still crashes I'll see if raising the vtt helps.

 

dont raise the VTT, thats the FBS termination voltage for the CPU core, you need NB voltage.

 

have you tried
185.81

they just got released today for win7

 

yep was using those ones, and 182.50, and some other one, doesn't work. lol. OK is there another name that NB might be known as? I cant recall seeing a NB voltage in my BIOS settings. Hmm... I was thinking... there are two floppy style power connectors, one above each pcie slot, and apparently these help with sli stability. should I connect them? It says it SHOULD work without them..

Andd.... I was reading a review on clunks forums, a guy got his core i7 920 stable at 4.0ghz with crossfire cards using exactly the same voltages I'm using now - only changed cpu to 1.375v and vtt to 1.24v. :S

 

G(MCH), but I don't know if that applies to i7s. MCH should.

 

Theres no MCH. ICH, IOH ?

 

ICH and IOH refer to interface hub, i.e. southbridge.

 

Theres definately no MCH. ICH, IOH, CPU, VTT, DRAM, PLL and thats it.

 

yes plug those floppy connectors in!

from looking at your bios i cant find a NB voltage. i think its IOH, but dont quote me on that yet, let me delve

 

Ok, looks like it's not a driver problem :S just played Fallout on windows vista, clean install, 185.66 drivers, sli enabled. To begin with, the power usage in game was higher, which I thought was a good sign, means the power supply wasn't crapping out at around 370w like I thought it was. figures were up around 430w. But, I got to that same white screen spot, and it died out the ass. Power instantly went down to 360w (I think the second card cuts out??) and then it just stopped again. I will try tomorrow plugging in the floppy connectors, but for now it's time for me to go to bed. cheers for the help guys.

Edit: hmm I was just thinking... fallout3 is an ati favoured game, and I've never seen a gtx 275 sli review for it... so maybe theres a driver issue that nvidia doesn't know about?

 

That sounds like the second GPU returning to idle. 375W seems too high for the second card to be completely shut down, so at least it doesn't sound like a PCI Express controller failure.

 

Yeah with cards that powerful I would plug in the floppy connectors. They are supposed to help a lot if you have power issues.

EDIT: LOL another reason for me not to get i7. All of my PSUs have 1 floppy connector.