9800GT SLI Freezing

[davem]

Thank you to all who read my post, I would greatly appreciate some help from anyone who has a few moments to spare.

Using a fresh install of XP x64 SLI is running without a hitch on desktop applications and games that don't require much from the GPU.

But as soon as I try to play Crysis, Dawn of War 2 or anything else that can make use of 2 9800GT's i get the same result each time. After about 2 - 5 minutes of gameplay the screen will freeze up and the whole system becomes unresponsive.

I have double checked the SLI flip chip is firmly seated and the bridge is secure.
Tested both cards individualy with no problems.
Installed the latest drivers for everything in my system.
Tried turning off physx.
Tried without AA (seems to run a little longer before freeze)
Dissconected all none essential hardware dvd-rom, extra HDD's and large case fans.
Tried using a 6pin molex addapter instead of using the 6 pin addapters from the PSU.
Nothing in my system is overclocked or overheating.

I'm completely at a loss for a solultion and the only conclusion i can come to is that my PSU os not putting out enough power. However after e-mailing the support at OCZ i'm told is unlikely the PSU is at fault.

Please see my system specifications below and thank you very much to anyone who might be able to shed some light on this problem .

Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Platinum
CPU: Core2 Duo E6750 2.66GHZ
Ram: OCZ 4GB PC2-6400 Titanium XTC Edition (2x2GB Modules)
VGA: Zotac 9800GT 512mb / Club 3d 9800GT 512mb (Zotac currently in primary slot)
PSU OCZ GameXStream 600W
While i'm trying to find the answer to the problem i'm leaving the system with just it's main single sata hdd as the only other thing connected to the PSU.

 

[gamerk316]

My GX2 had the same issues (and still does for streaming video from time to time...). I've isolated the problem to drivers; The entire 180 driver line has an SLI bug for 9000 series (and maybe other) cards in SLI. 180.48 was by far the worst, while 181.20 is reasonably stable. (178.24 also freezes from time to time, and 174.24 was rock solid stable. I'm still testing the 175 WHQL drivers...).

If you are not already, use the 181.20 WHQL drivers. If those fail, try the older 178.24 drivers and see if the situation improves. If not, it could be one of the cards is bad.

 

[davem]

Well some good and bad news, the good new is that using 174.24 drivers the system is rock solid stable as you predicted gamerk316, the bad news however is that the performance decrease brings the sli setup to an inferior state to a single 9800gt.

I have only had a chance to try this in crysis at the moment as that was the game that froze the fastest before hand.

Keeping positive though this indicates that theres nothing wrong with either of my video cards, correct? And it's merely a a driver problem.

Thankyou very much, while the problems not solved yet i do feel like we're getting somewhere now, so if anyone has any further suggestions i'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[gamerk316]

I'm still toying around a bit myself. I haven't tried 181.22 yet, but 181.20 is stable in gaming, though watching any streaming video will cause a lockup within about a minute 10% of the time...(its usually fine once it starts though...). 178.24 is slightly less stable than 181.22, but at least recent enough to be usable.

I might use this thread as reference later on, since I've been tracking this issue for a while now...Its definatly an SLI bug with the 9000 series, possibly only 9800's though...Maybe an unofficial driver might work better?

 

[davem]

It still an ongoing endevour to try to find a stable driver i'm still going with the idea that it's not a GPU or PSU problem as the 174.24 drivers while very slow are very stable.

Seeing as i have some time to spare i'm going to start installing drivers in reverse order to see if i can find a match in performance/stability.

As always should anyone have any further suggestions or thinks i may be wrong about the PSU i'd be very thankfull for your input.

Drivers tested so far:

181.22 High performance, no visual artifacts, extreamly unstable under heavy 3d usage, system lockup in under 3 minutes.

181.20 High performance, odd behaviour on crysis menu (text dissapeared), extreamly unstable under heavy 3d useage. system lockup in under 3 minutes.

178.24 Very low performance much worse than using a single card, minor visual artifacts in crysis on rare occasions, still stable after 2 hours+

I'll post back with more findings as I test other drivers.

 

[davem]

Drivers tested so far:

181.22 High performance, no visual artifacts, extreamly unstable under heavy 3d usage, system lockup in under 3 minutes.

181.20 High performance, odd behaviour on crysis menu (text dissapeared), extreamly unstable under heavy 3d useage. system lockup in under 3 minutes.

180.48 High performance, no visual artifacts, extreamly unstable under heavy 3d usage, system lockup in under 3 minutes.

178.24 Very low performance much worse than using a single card, minor visual artifacts in crysis on rare occasions, still stable after 2 hours+

I'll post back with more findings as I test other drivers.

 

[baxbunny]

So i know this post is really old, but a friend of mine seems to be having these troubles on his newly added 9800gt to make it SLI. He'll be loading L4D then as soon as the game finishes loading, the computer freezes, and ctrl-alt-del will get him to the task manager but then that will freeze up and he'll have to manually turn the power off.
He's running windows xp 32 bit with 2 x 9800gt not the same brand (but shouldnt matter). He has the most recent drivers 191.XX . i would hope that nvidia would have fixed this by now (9 months later) . or do you guys think there may be something else going on?
His power supply is enough, its not over heating, games work fine with single card

Drivers tested so far:

181.22 High performance, no visual artifacts, extreamly unstable under heavy 3d usage, system lockup in under 3 minutes.

181.20 High performance, odd behaviour on crysis menu (text dissapeared), extreamly unstable under heavy 3d useage. system lockup in under 3 minutes.

180.48 High performance, no visual artifacts, extreamly unstable under heavy 3d usage, system lockup in under 3 minutes.

178.24 Very low performance much worse than using a single card, minor visual artifacts in crysis on rare occasions, still stable after 2 hours+

I'll post back with more findings as I test other drivers.

 

[nforce4max]

I recently had this happen in crysis but every thing else works ok.