SLI 8800GT not working

I am having a problem with SLI and 8800 Gt cards. I have a MSI P6N Plat Motherboard and when i installed my second video card and connected the bridge i got the "SLI is available" message and went into the NVIDIA control panel and turned it on. However when i run the 3DMark 5 & 6 is shows false for linked adapters.

so far i made sure the chip was flipped on MBD for SLI enabled 8X8, made sure drivers were installed properly for both cards.

Even went so far as to remove the drivers from add/remove, go to safe mode, run driver cleaner pro, reboot reinstall.

Also removed drivers like above and reinstalled the cards 1 at a time. The second card never requires a driver install and i never get a found new hardware message, it just auto places it in the device manager.

Nothing in the bios for this MBD to enable SLI, only the big chip between the ports.

The marks are the same for 3dmark and also when i load fps games, no increase.

Any ideas?

I am running XP pro and both video cards are BFG 8800GT cards.

I also have a 850 power supply.

Thanks.



MSI P6N SLI Platinum LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - Retail
Rosewill RX850-S-B ATX12V v2.2 & EPS12V v2.91 850W Power Supply - Retail
Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model - Retail

2 X BFG 8800 GT 512

Should say the SLI looks like its all working, its enabled etc. but 3dmark5-6 is still showing as false for linked adapters.

I tried to custom change the 3dmarks to settings other than single GPU in nvidia software to no avail.

There a trick to getting programs to use SLI?

Do the Bios's of both need to be the same, i thought it was only the same core.

any help would be greatly apreciated.