SLI Flickering in BF3 and BC2

[Dawisch]

I recently purchased a second GTX 560ti to run SLI. It runs fine in almost all games including all source games (left 4 dead 2, portal 2, counter strike source, etc), the witcher 2, dirt 3, cod black ops, etc. The problem comes up when I'm running Battlefield 3 or Bad Company 2.

When I run them in fullscreen they flicker REALLY bad. It appears that every other frame is a black screen (frame rate lowers flickering gets slower). In windowed it works fine but the frame rate drops.

Things I have tried:
Bought a new SLI bridge and it didnt fix the problem (could just be really bad luck and dead on arrival?)
Swapped cards and disabled SLI just to be sure they both worked (they did)
Bought a new PSU, my old one was 600w so I upgraded to an 850w
Plugged my monitor into the other GPU, same results

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated, this problem is so annoying, it feels like I've wasted my money.

 

[rocknrollz]

Nvm, you tried it.

 

[Warmacblu]

What resolution and graphical settings are you trying to run the game at? If you are playing at 1980x1050 or above and trying to run the game with all the settings maxed on 1GB GTX 560 Ti's then you could be running out of VRAM and the textures are taking a bit longer to load in.

If you have the upgraded VRAM GTX 560 Ti's and you are seeing this issue, the only thing I can think of is some sort of driver issue.

 

[Dawisch]

What resolution and graphical settings are you trying to run the game at? If you are playing at 1980x1050 or above and trying to run the game with all the settings maxed on 1GB GTX 560 Ti's then you could be running out of VRAM and the textures are taking a bit longer to load in.

If you have the upgraded VRAM GTX 560 Ti's and you are seeing this issue, the only thing I can think of is some sort of driver issue.

Yes they are 1GB and I am trying to play at 1920x1080 but I have tried other settings with not results. And the thing is I can run Bad Company 2 max settings just fine with one of these cards. As soon as SLI is on though it starts flickering.

If I use the first Nvidia drivers that support my card there is no flickering but I get a terrible frame rates, its barely better (if at all) than a single card.

 

[Dawisch]

Oh also something interesting: When playing lots of other games they will work perfectly but when I unplug the sli bridge they start flickering exactly like the battlefield games.

 

[Warmacblu]

Hm ... must be some sort of driver issue between Battlefield 3 and SLi.

 

[dharmenparikh]

Your issue might be too many frames per second because of the 2nd card. Max out all settings and then turn on vsync. That fixed it for me on my 6970 crossfire.

 

[Dawisch]

0_o

Weirdest thing. I tried running BF3 on my old LCD monitor (1680x1050) and it works just fine... Looks shitty though compared to my new LED. If I run the game at 1680x1050 on my LED it still flickers so I dont understand... maybe refresh rate?

 

[swifty_morgan]

most of those games seem to work best with cpu vs gpu, then you post the last 2 games that are gpu more than cpu................. just sayin'................. VRAM lower your settings and res a little. what happens ?

 

[Dawisch]

Still flickers even on lowest settings at 1024x768 lol
And like I said. On my old LCD monitor at 1680x1050 MAX settings it runs flawlessly (50-60fps)... It has to be something with my monitor I guess

 

[swifty_morgan]

ambient occlusion in the games control panel................. in the nvidia control panel, i read something a while back that needed to be disabled or set to a specific setting for the game to work right. so open the panel and start futzinutzin because i can't remember what it was.

 

[Dawisch]

I switched from a DVI cable to a VGA cable with my LED monitor using an adapter to plug it into the graphics card and the flickering has stopped. I guess that's a temporary fix but I would still like to be able to use DVI...

 

[clonazepam]

Some general info link -

http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/battlefield-3-tweak-guide

I usually leave the nvidia driver's game profile at its default settings, but you can also play with the sli mode, like alternate 1 and 2, and other settings in there. I haven't had any such issues with sli, so I've left them alone for this title.

 

[swifty_morgan]

I switched from a DVI cable to a VGA cable with my LED monitor using an adapter to plug it into the graphics card and the flickering has stopped. I guess that's a temporary fix but I would still like to be able to use DVI...

so, it's a bad cable. easy fix. just get another.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Tried this ? new 290.36 Driver

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-290.36-beta-driver.html

My son is using 285.79 .... He's using two Asus 560 Cu TOP 560 Ti's in x16 x16 MoBo, and I just turned down the OC from 1000Mhz to 980 as top card was breaking 82C. He has no flickering issues with 120Hz monitor.

 

[Dawisch]

Damn, I've actually gotten nowhere. Apparently when SLI is turned on only the primary display uses SLI. Using the VGA cable my LED wasnt set as my "SLI display" so I changed it and the flickering is back.

 

[monsta]

What brand 560ti's are you running?
I have the Gigabyte cards and they would flicker, I upgraded the bios by downloading installing and running the bios flasher , once it upgraded the bios to the newer version all the flickering went away and solved my problem. If its not a Gigabyte check your vendors website and see if they have a newer bios to upgrade your cards to.
Turining off AA or AO in the game menu may also help.

 

[Dawisch]

What brand 560ti's are you running?
I have the Gigabyte cards and they would flicker, I upgraded the bios by downloading installing and running the bios flasher , once it upgraded the bios to the newer version all the flickering went away and solved my problem. If its not a Gigabyte check your vendors website and see if they have a newer bios to upgrade your cards to.
Turining off AA or AO in the game menu may also help.

The 560's are both EVGA. My motherboard is MSI. I could try upgrading my motherboard bios I guess...

 

[monsta]

Upgrade the motherboard bios first , give it a run and see if that helps, if not then go to EVGA and see if they have a bios flash tool to upgrade the bios on your cards.
Goodluck hope this works for you.

 

[swifty_morgan]

no, the bios on the video cards. and if you do it put 1 card at a time in to do it. and it might be good to uninstall and reinstall the drivers for each card before hand.

good call to the poster on this. forgot all about the bios problems.

 

[monsta]

It should be fine to flash them both together , it was really easy to do and only took a couple of minutes and the problem was solved.

 

[Dawisch]

I cant seem to find EVGA graphics card BIOS. Any idea where I could find them?

 

[monsta]

Can't seem to find the bios ones either , contact EVGA and they might be able to help you with it. Theres also a SLI enhancement pack , not sure what it does exactly but have look here -
http://www.evga.com/support/download/default.aspx

 

[Dawisch]

Can't seem to find the bios ones either , contact EVGA and they might be able to help you with it. Theres also a SLI enhancement pack , not sure what it does exactly but have look here -
http://www.evga.com/support/download/default.aspx

Ya, that didnt help at all. I filed a support ticket to EVGA so hopefully they will send me the bios update.

 

[monsta]

OK hope it works out.