A8N-SLI problems

[mrohde]

I set this system up a week and half ago. The system has been running fine. I love this MOB.
Now that I know the system is stable it is time to install the second 6600 GT card.

I installed the second card the PCI bridge connector (the one that goes between the cards) the clamp to keep it in place. THe MOB thingy was always set to two vidoe cards so I din't need to change that.

I start up the system and I get a blue screen with the stop error "inacessable boot device". I tried booting several times and was not able to get past this same stop error.

I pulled the second video card and return the hardwae to it's original state. Rebooted the machine and got the same stop error. I finally had to boot off the W2k cd and perform an OS repair to get back to where I could boot.


A8N-SLE deluxe MOB
Athalon Fx-55 CPU
2 SATA drives
XFX 6600 GT V cards.
MOB bios ver 1002
Chipset update the lastest on the Nvidia site.
V card drivers from the XFX install cd 66.31 (had tried the latest from Invidia and was having probs w/ single v card)



Any ideas

Thanks!!!

 

[century child]

Other have also had problems installing a second card in a system that was originally configured with just one card. You will probably have to do a fresh install with the second card installed.

 

[ArborBarber]

mrohde,
First off,welcome to the forum! Second, sorry to hear you're having problems...
In the book of lies, i mean manual, it says the ez selector is set at the factory to single card mode, well I just checked my boxed a8n and it too was set to dual video cards. Well I decided to pop it out just to check the ez selector card out and noticed that it can be seated back in the socket with one edge not fully seated, maybe check yours to make sure it's fully seated. Also I'm sure you've already done so, but make sure the new video card is sli certified and that both cards are from the same vendor and both are of the same family. Make sure everything is seated properly, and do use a 4 pin atx power cable to connect to the ez plug. Connect your display to the card inserted in the blue pci connector. Power supply may be an issue, running a single video card in dual mode may have configured bios/os incorrectly. You might want to check both cards in single mode...check one out and make sure it works, and then check the second one out to make sure it also is working. If they both work, try installing the the second video card again...maybe it will have been just a loose connection ...keep us posted to how you're making out...

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I had the same problem when I added the second XFX 6600gt. I have found that any time you go from 1card to 2cards or from 2cards to 1card, you have to clear the CMOS (at least in 1003.05, I haven't tested the other bios). The cards only seem to work in SLI mode with the latest drivers from nVidia website, the ones on the mobo CD won't work for me.

Update the drivers from the website then install the second card, clear the CMOS by removing the battery and switching the CMOS jumper for a few seconds, then boot up and bios will recognize both cards. Then when windows loads it will give you the pop up message "your system is SLI capable".

Then follow the normal instructions. "Enable multipule GPU" check box and the system reboots, go back to the same 6600gt properties screen and go the the "Performance and Quality" settings click "advanced", scroll all the way to the bottom, select the "SLI rendering mode" and set that to "Multi GPU rendering".

Now you are ready to enjoy some SLI goodness!

 

[DrRios]

The lattest driver is the only Nvidia driver that supports SLI.

But it does not support pure digital monitors as Plasma, HDTV LCD's or Apple Cinemas.

SLI DOES NOT WORK WITH PURE DIGITAL DISPLAYS !!!!

SOYLEN GREEN IS PEOPLE !!!

NVIDIA STIFF US !!

 

[mrohde]

Well I finally have the system up and running. Things are operating fairly well.

Here are two of the major pit fallls in my install attempt.

I started with my LCD monitor as mentioned here, digital monitors are not supported at this time.

I started with Win 2K pro. This system does not like W 2K. Did a fresh install of XP Pro and most (if not all ) of my remaining prolems went away.

So here is my system:
Athalon FX-55 processor
Asus A8N-sli mob
two XFX 6600 gt sli v cards
2 gb corsair DDR 400 mem.
1 160 GB Western digital SATA drive (OS and apps)
1 80 GB westerndigital SATA (virtual mem)
Audiogy 2 sound card
CD burner
zip drive

 

[DrRios]

Nvidia has a new driver 71.89
placed in the web 2 -5 days ago

Is the first driver that will allow to turn "off" SLI in a ASUS Deluxe from the driver and back "on" with no difficulty and no lock.

this will allow Apple Cinema used to turn SLI "off" so they can play games in a lower resolution than native.

SLI work fine in native 1900x1200 resolution but most games do not go to this resolution.

Nvidia in the Release Notes for this driver for the first time admits there is an issue with Apple Cinema monitors and SLI and recommends to use NVIDIA 6800 Ultra with 512 MB ( and pass on SLI) for now...

http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/71.89/71.89_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

RELEASE NOTES FROM NVIDIA FOR DRIVER 71.89

page 12...

 

[FastEddie]

To start with, you can't run SLI with W2K, you must install WinXP.

Second, you can't boot to raid unless you have W2K+SP4 installed. You can slipstream the install of the OS to include SP4, but otherwise, you'll keep loosing the boot partition