GTX 260 SLI malfunction

[iode]

My motherboard is an ASRock K10N780SLIX3-WiFi, running 2 GTX260s in SLI.
The SLI used to work perfectly, but recently, it stopped working altogether, when I enable it in nvidia control panel, GPU-Z confirms that SLI has been enabled. But when I turn on SLI Visual Indicator in nvidia control panel and I run SLI supported games (such as Crysis, Left 4 Dead), no indicator bar shows up like it's supposed to, leading me to believe that SLI is not enabled.
I also ran another test with 3dmark vantage, running the GPU tests Jane Nash and New Calico with SLI turned on and off. With it off, I'm getting 9356 and with it "on" i get 8069. Obviously, there's something wrong here so I thought about what kind of changes I made with my video cards recently. I turned off Rivatuner entirely and brought them back to factory default clocks, restarted my computer, and ran the two 3dmark vantage GPU benchmarks again but to no avail. SLI still seems to not be working as I'm getting lower scores with SLI turned on than with it off.
I installed the latest nvidia windows 7 64 bit drivers 197.13 WHQL and I updated my BIOS to the latest version. Still no luck, any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[BroHamBone]

My motherboard is an ASRock K10N780SLIX3-WiFi, running 2 GTX260s in SLI.
The SLI used to work perfectly, but recently, it stopped working altogether, when I enable it in nvidia control panel, GPU-Z confirms that SLI has been enabled. But when I turn on SLI Visual Indicator in nvidia control panel and I run SLI supported games (such as Crysis, Left 4 Dead), no indicator bar shows up like it's supposed to, leading me to believe that SLI is not enabled.
I also ran another test with 3dmark vantage, running the GPU tests Jane Nash and New Calico with SLI turned on and off. With it off, I'm getting 9356 and with it "on" i get 8069. Obviously, there's something wrong here so I thought about what kind of changes I made with my video cards recently. I turned off Rivatuner entirely and brought them back to factory default clocks, restarted my computer, and ran the two 3dmark vantage GPU benchmarks again but to no avail. SLI still seems to not be working as I'm getting lower scores with SLI turned on than with it off.
I installed the latest nvidia windows 7 64 bit drivers 197.13 WHQL and I updated my BIOS to the latest version. Still no luck, any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

as far as seeing the bar, that is just checking the box for an overlay.

Depending on your motherboard, which is AM3 ready, what CPU are you running?

SLI will not benefit from low end CPU's. Considering your score non-SLI is higher, i will guess you have a lower-end cpu that needs to be updated?

 

[megamanx00]

First test each card individually at stock clocks. You should get identical scores. If you don't, then something may be wrong with one of the cards. If both cards check out by themselves then you may want to try an older driver that you know worked for you.

 

[iode]

I'm using Phenom II 720 OC'd to 3.6 ghz on this system, no bottlenecking there.
I eventually fixed the problem by uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers in minimal safemode. It worked out at the end, got the SLI indicator to work and got a nice 17000 GPU score in 3dmark vantage, indicating a complete recovery in my graphics system.
I appreciate all your help guys.

 

[iode]

Best answer selected by iode.