Probs With 8800 GTX's

[badvock]

Hi all

First post in here, just sorry it has to be a problem. I seem to have a problem with my new 8800 GTX's (both XFX) They just are not running as specified, in 3d mark 05 for example i get anywhere from just 5k to about 9k in single mode, with absoloutly NO performance increase in SLI :? I have the latest 97.02 drivers and the mobo is updated with the latest P20 bios revision.

System Specs are:

Conroe 6600 (on vapochill XEII @ -35)
2Gb Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2, PC8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15, EPP
2x XFX 8800GTX
EVGA 680i Mobo
Soundblaster XFi Platinum
Tagan 900W PSU

All drivers are up to date and they are all on a fresh install of XP SP2. I had the same problem with my MSi K8N Diamond and AMD FX60 but just put this down to the fact that both pci slots throttled to 8x in SLI mode. Temps all look ok so I dont think throttling is taking place to be honest I have just about given up. I thought it may be a driver issue but no'one is reporting similar problems that i can see so I doubt this is the issue. Fear looks ok at full res with max details resulting in 100% of frames above 40 but even aquamark only returns a score of 62 in single card and 100k in SLi (my mates 7900 gtx returns 140K)

I dont think that both cards could be faulty (though it could happen) I have tried them both in the system on their own with similar results, I.e. Crap There is no overclocking on the board or processor at the moment and all bios values are at stock. Please anyone if you have any advice, tips or fixes I would be most appreciative of any help you can offer.

Thanks in advance

 

[Flakes]

First off check to make sure they are 8800GTXs, they should be about 10.5 inches long... then go through the bios options and see if there is an option to enable SLI in the bios(this is the thing most ppl overlook).

you should get scores over 30k in 3dmark05 with both cards in SLI. and about 15k with one card...

i think you might of been incredibly unlucky and got 2 faulty cards there.

P.S

what monitor are you using?

 

[badvock]

Hi, thanks for the reply

Yes they are both GTX's I can confirm that, they are running a Viewsonic VA2012W 20.3" monitor at the mo, till i cantalk the missus into buying me a 30" for christmas

As far as i can see there is no SLI option in the 680 bios. Both pcie slots are rated to run at x16 with an additional "linkboost" that kicks in and ups the speeds of the slots from 100 to 125 Mhz.

I have added an additional fan to blow air over the primary 8800GTX and this drop in temp seems to have helped a little, a quick aquamark now returns a score of 92K but sice the cards are set to sli in driver this is still poor returns

 

[Flakes]

hmm, disable "linkboost" i once played with my pcie settings and found 115 to be the optimum anything above that and i got worse performance.

second if the fan worked then try removing the side of your case and having a normal fan blow in.

but i am sorry to say it looks like a RMA to me.

 

[badvock]

I have no case sides on anyway, at the moment idle temps are 67 on primary 65 on secondary and after a 3d mark o3 test (which returned a crappy score of just 17,000 8O ) those temps hardly budged. i am beginning to think that I have been seriously unlucky here and bought 2 B0rked cards, they are just 1 digit apart on the serial numbers but have one component different on each card just near the power connectors. i am not an electronics engineer so have no idea what component this is though.

 

[ethel]

Nothing to do with your post, sorry - but your sig made me lol

 

[Mousemonkey]

Have you / can you try the cards in your mates rig?

 

[badvock]

not at the moment

I put my 7800GTX back in and ran another Aquamark (it's quicker than 3dmark) and that returned a score of 109,508 (gfx=18,327 Cpu = 13,590)
So i put 1 of the 8800's in and ran it again and i got 62,734 (gfx=8,148 cpu=13,610) this says to me that cpu throttling is not the issue, but there is a prob with at least 1 of the cards, am just about to try the other one now so will let you all know.

 

[badvock]

Well the second card seems knackered too. An aqua bench on the 2nd card returned 62,691 (gfx=8145 cpu=13,613) I guess both cards go back to the vendor for replacement tomorrow, just hope i can convince them that both cards are goosed

 

[Mousemonkey]

I feel your pain mate, I hope you get it sorted and end up with two screamingly fast cards, keep us posted on how it turns out, and may lady luck be on your side my friend.

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Yeah. Sorry about your cards, mate. Hope the replacements are the ones without the transistor issue.

Post back when you rape 3DMark for real!

 

[badvock]

thanks for that link rob, i have been searching high an d low for something like that so i can check if the resistor is bad. As it stands i have checked the resistor on one of the cards (the other is still in the system) and the resistor on the card does not tie in with either resistor mentioned in the link (mine has 225) written on it :? I am going to pull the other card now and see if that has the same resistor as this card or it has either of the ones mentioned in that link. Will let you know.

 

[tmac]

As far as one of the cards having the wrong component. It
still doesn't explain, why both cards when used by themselves. -
Shows bad performance.
2 8800GTX in SLI mode = bad performace -> I feel your pain.
Keep us posted.

 

[badvock]

Well it seems both cards have the same resistor in place which, if this is a defective part would explain the problems I am having with both cards. I have given up on this problem now and have decided that I am going to take em both back to Scan for replacement tomorrow. Once I have the new cards in place I will let you know if the problem is resolved, if you don't hear from me it's probably cos i am concussed from banging my head too hard against my pc case :?

 

[danny9894]

Damn that sucks, all that money for 2 pretty much dead cards

 

[Granite3]

Stupid question, but have you wiped the old drivers prior to installing the new card?

I moved from a 7900 GTO to the 8800 GTX, and had a similar underuse till I pulled and wiped the drivers clean with drivercleaner.

I did not catch the brand, I know eVGA guaranteed all theirs to be the correct ones regarding the recall.

 

[badvock]

Well the component in question is NOT the resistor anyway, looks more like a power regulator, but i am most likely wrong.

Granite3, u almost had me there m8, you were right, I had uninstalled the old drivers however they didn't clean completely, after running driverclean and restarting and re-installing the 97.02 drivers i ran an aquamark bench which returned 133,000+ and a 3d mark 05 that returned 14,000+ Yayy thought I how stupid i am to have missed such an obvious thing. So i set the bios back to enable the linkboost option (pushes the pcie clock up to 125) and rebooted only to have the system revert back to its old ways. So back to the bios manually set the pci-e clock to 100 and restarted and nothing changed. I can now only assume that the resistor that is on the board is defective and causing the issue after the card has been running for a little while.

 

[XFXSupport]

Sorry I didn’t back to you sooner but I was on vacation. I take it you are not using the blue pci-e slot, just the two black ones correct? You might want to further your testing to each card by itself in each black slot. Also I did notice this issue that may or may not be related to your motherboard at a few other forums such as: http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21518 and I plan on looking into more. I also suggest you see if you can follow the advice of mousemonkey and try these cards in a separate system. You should also start a support ticket if you have not already at www.xfxforce.com. Please keep us informed.

XFX Support

 

[badvock]

Hi

Thanks for getting back to me, unfortunately I had to swap the cards as I came to the conclusion (after extensive testing) that there was something wrong with them. I "think" it may have been a resistor issue but Icannot confirm as the resistor used did not correspond to either the faulty one or the correct one :/ As it stands I now have 2 EVGA versions of the card (supplier did not want to give me like for like) and with the 97.28 dirivers the sli issue and slowdown after reboot issues "appear" to have been fixed.

Get the drivers here if you are having similar problems with 8800GTX's

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21822&hl=

 

[mpjesse]

Umm... what resolution did you have 3dmark05 set to? The higher the resolution the lower the score. I believe the default res is 1024x768. Also, if enable things like FSAA and a higher Anistropic filtering, your score will drop.

 

[badvock]

Bog standard resolutions all the way m8.

 

[mpjesse]

You never said, are the scores better w/ the new eVGA cards?

 

[badvock]

The 97.02 drivers are B0rked, they have issues running sli and they reduce performance radically on the cards after a reboot on the system. I am not the only one who has been having these issues but it seems that some people have no real problems with this revision. As it stands I canot seem to run 3d05 as it now seems to BSOD on me even though my overclock is stable after a 10 hour Orthos stress test, i think it may have issues with my memory overclock.

Anyway I have managed to get my hands on the 97.28 revision of the drivers and not only do they solve the slowdown issue they improive performance (at least on my system by almost 100%. to give you an idea on the return to proxyconn test with the 97.02 drivers I never went above 65 fps in SLi now with the new drivers it runs at 120fps

I posted a link to the drivers above.

 

[bigbadjohnnyb]

Stupid question, but have you wiped the old drivers prior to installing the new card?

I moved from a 7900 GTO to the 8800 GTX, and had a similar underuse till I pulled and wiped the drivers clean with drivercleaner.

I did not catch the brand, I know eVGA guaranteed all theirs to be the correct ones regarding the recall.

What did you do with the 7900GTO? Care to sell?