[Solved] GTX 285 SLI question: Troubleshooting Help Requested

[Starke]

I just put together a new desktop for gaming and ran into a weird problem. The pair of GTX 285s I stuck in the system are each 2 gig cards. But, when I check dxdiag, it thinks there's only 1.5 gigs of vram.

EDIT: This is DXDiag being weird. GTA4 will only recognize the memory off one card, and nothing except the nvidia control panel recognizes the full memory on each card.

I'm having a different issue now that I've tried to actually use the cards. Nothing runs. Well... almost nothing. GTA4 has what looks like overheating issues, which screw up the screen pretty badly, requiring a restart. Crysis CTDs after a couple seconds, so does Clear Sky (which I initially assumed was just STALKER doing it's thing.

Even the bare bones game Alien Shooter went toes up right after launch. I'm still troubleshooting though.

For the record the rest of the system is an i7 920, 12gigs of DDR3 ram (6x2gigs), an XFI sound card, and the two GTX 285s.

UPDATE: One of the cards was faulty out of the box.

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

Falcon Punch it.

Don't know why, felt like doing that.

Did you try calling tech support?

 

[Starke]

Yeah, 2 each, 4 total.

I'm not too worried, it was just, you know, strange.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143193

 

[shotgunbob]

Seems like a bit of overkill.

Its pry just a messed up reading

 

[ribonuge]

Gah didn't you know 50% of statistics are made up on the spot?

Besides it doesn't matter, I have one GTX285 and I can run 99% games on full @ 1680x1050 with reasonable AA. Except Crysis, for obvious reasons.

Edit: By the way my dxdiag says 3820mb. Yet the card is merely one gig.

 

[Starke]

Yeah, 2 each, 4 total.

I'm not too worried, it was just, you know, strange.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143193

See my edit. My number is quite strange. Also, maybe SLi hasn't been fully enabled yet if you just finished your build and haven't rebooted. (You have to enable it in the control panel and restart the system. Maybe you'll get an even weirder number 4 or 5 GBs.. )

Yeah, it spits out the same number for both SLI and non-SLI, so, I'm not sure what's going on there, but, like you said, a messed up reading.

Regarding overkill, the whole system is a mild case of overkill. A i7 920, 12 gigs of ram, 3tb of drive space, ect.

 

[ribonuge]

Yeah, 2 each, 4 total.

I'm not too worried, it was just, you know, strange.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143193

See my edit. My number is quite strange. Also, maybe SLi hasn't been fully enabled yet if you just finished your build and haven't rebooted. (You have to enable it in the control panel and restart the system. Maybe you'll get an even weirder number 4 or 5 GBs.. )

Yeah, it spits out the same number for both SLI and non-SLI, so, I'm not sure what's going on there, but, like you said, a messed up reading.

Regarding overkill, the whole system is a mild case of overkill. A i7 920, 12 gigs of ram, 3tb of drive space, ect.

You are set, for about three years The sad thing about PC gaming is that it is constantly evolving - so keeping up is quite costly.

Also what case did you get - out of interest?

 

[Starke]

Yeah, 2 each, 4 total.

I'm not too worried, it was just, you know, strange.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143193

See my edit. My number is quite strange. Also, maybe SLi hasn't been fully enabled yet if you just finished your build and haven't rebooted. (You have to enable it in the control panel and restart the system. Maybe you'll get an even weirder number 4 or 5 GBs.. )

Yeah, it spits out the same number for both SLI and non-SLI, so, I'm not sure what's going on there, but, like you said, a messed up reading.

Regarding overkill, the whole system is a mild case of overkill. A i7 920, 12 gigs of ram, 3tb of drive space, ect.

You are set, for about three years The sad thing about PC gaming is that it is constantly evolving - so keeping up is quite costly.

Also what case did you get - out of interest?

One of these. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146054

Not too showy, but still pretty snazzy.

 

[Starke]

I've got them in tandum because I've only got a single PCIE 1 slot, which blocks the first PCIE16 slot, the other two are also PCIE16s, but it does put the cards next to each other with one venting onto the other.

HWMonitor only reports a 3c difference between the cards though. And I've yet to see more than a 10c difference when it's trying to run something... Which actually has me thinking... I'm going to check something.

EDIT: There are two things I have ruled out.

First this model of card has shipped with the wrong bios and vram before, but, that's not the case here.

Second this model also shipped with the wrong clock speeds resulting in overheating, but, again, not the issue here.

 

[Dys]

My understanding of SLI is that the memory doesn't add together, so you won't ever read 4gigs of vram.

It could be overheating, though what you've described (random crashings) sounds uncannily similar to the problem I've been slapped with since I installed windows 7. Basicially, I can't run any games (my rig is far older than yours, however it is similar in that I'm running crossfire, maybe there's an issue with windows7 and dual cards?). When I was running vista I had no problems, and I have an xp dual boot which I've checked out (and found that my games rune fine).

I'd recommend that you moniter your tempuratures with rivatuner (or something similar), if it is an overheating problem that should be easy enough to diagnose. If not, let me know if any fix becomes available, because having to use xp (an operating system which I despise) for all my gaming is far from ideal, and mine could be a similar issue...

Oh, also check bios for specs, I wouldn't trust DXdiag.

Gah didn't you know 50% of statistics are made up on the spot?

Besides it doesn't matter, I have one GTX285 and I can run 99% games on full @ 1680x1050 with reasonable AA. Except Crysis, for obvious reasons.

Edit: By the way my dxdiag says 3820mb. Yet the card is merely one gig.

Video memory includes a portion of ram. What obvious reasons are there for not being able to run crysis on full? I run it on near full (as well as mechwarrior living legends, a awsome crysis mod) at 1920x1200 on far older cards than yours :S (I run dual ATi 2900XTs, I'd be amazed if they could pull better frames than the GTX 285). Have you tried installing the crysis patches?

 

[Starke]

I've been using the steam install, which I picked up today, I'm getting a straight CTD off the disk install I've had since launch.

I'm testing the cards individually now, I'll let you know what I find.

 

[Starke]

So, in a surprise to no one, one of the cards was fucked, right out of the box .

The other works fine, but it's going to be a pain to get it RMAed for a replacement.