SLi Guide (Installing, Troubleshooting + Increasing Performance)

That is a loaded question. The only Stable driver is the Alienware driver. But I've read that all the current 169.xx drivers eventually will cause the 8700 to crash. I don't think the 8700 can handle the temperatures that 169 (Desktop) drivers put out.

Since Dell actually tests their drivers, I would try one made for the XPS 1730 which comes standard with SLI 8700. Here is a link to one that was posted on Laptopvideo2go. v167.45

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16311

One thing, m9750 8700 gt users are rare on here, so you'll have to figure out a few things by yourself. I would take a few hours and grab a few drivers and start installing. If you do this, make sure you post your results. I'll add your recommended driver to the Download thread and I'm sure Stone will add it to the SLI Guide.

Good Luck

 

Thanks for the reply eightd, i'll keep you guys posted as i learn more.

 

Yea I'll add it to the guide as soon as you post stuff on it. I would post some more stuff on the 8700GT, but I do not have the card.

Also I am running the 169.61 driver right now and it is running well so far. UT3 seemed to run well on it. I will update you guys with more information.

 

hmm when playing UT3 on max with SIngle GPU on with my m9750 i get 36 FPS (ress is 1440X900) and when SLI is enabled i get 44 wtf isnt SLI supposed to give 100% increase or what ? XD i think the issue is with Vista not driver right?

 

No, common misconception. SLI gives you a increase in FPS but will pretty much never give you a 100% increase over a single card. The Game has to be created specifically for SLI to get a 2x performance boost. In other words Created perfectly

This is from Nvidia.

How much of a performance increase will I see with SLI technology?
The amount of performance improvement will depend on the application and its ability to scale. Several of today's hottest games see a full 2x increase in performance when using SLI technology with two graphics cards. 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology enables up to 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU. In general, applications running at higher resolutions with higher image quality settings will benefit most.

Why don't all games see performance increases?
Applications which tax the GPU will see tremendous performance improvements of up to 2x with SLI technology when using two graphics cards. Most of today's hottest games and as well as next-generation games fall into this category. However, some applications, typically older generation applications, are limited by factors other than the GPU's processing power.

The most common limitation is the CPU. If an application becomes CPU bound, no additional graphics power can improve performance. This situation is most common at low screen resolutions like 1024x786 with no additional functionality turned on. Turning on antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, or switching to higher resolutions, can often move the processing requirements back to the GPU.

For CPU-bound applications, NVIDIA offers a new SLI rendering mode called SLI Antialiasing. This rendering mode allows you to enable SLI8x or SLI16x antialiasing and enhance the visual quality of any gaming application.

 

still 8 FPS isnt 1/3 of the currunt FPS, i have reports of people with my same config getting a constant 60 FPS but with XP pro

 

Running games under Vista will never match XP speeds. Vista is just too much of a resource hog. It also has alot to do with the Game, UT3 engine is based on old technology. Epic needs to release a patch for UT3 that optimizes SLI Play.

But the issue of 8700 GT users crashing while playing games longer than 30 mins, is a Driver issue. People are reporting that this is happening on Vista as well as XP.

 

8700gt users try out the new 173.65 driver. Hopefully it runs UT3 as good as it runs on my 7950gtx. I'm getting about a 8-10 AVG FPS gain over 169.61.

One issue I'm having though, is that I can't run Crysis on High mode.

I've added the driver to the Download Thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2825771

 

Thanks Stone! I can now run Vanguard, and EQ2.

The only thing I might add is to put the .inf into the folder where you put the extracted driver files, and overwrite the old .inf

Also, I am using 174.12 driver, and so far, I am very happy with it!

 

hey guys!
im the owner of a vista 32bits with dual 8700sli!!!

i have a the f%%% nvlddmkm error after 10 mins playing all my game!!
im using 169.28 atm !
temps are good = 70-75 for cpu(t7400 2.16) and 77 for both gpus ( in game)!
Is someone here under vista with sli 8700 who can run games without this damn issue?

 

Guigz,

that is a comon problem with the 8700. Try the 174.16 driver is very stable for vista users and when Vista SP1 is released you'll get a big performance increase, if you're not already running SP1.

Here is a link to download the driver.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=203797

 

ok thx for infos dude!!!

those 8700 are piece of sh!!!! hope new drivers+ sp1 will help!!

im gonna try those driver! ty

 

OMG OMG OMG

174.16 IS THE FIRST STABLE DRIVER FOR 8700M SLI +VISTA32



NO MORE NVLDDMKM ERROR



Actually i can play with SLI ENABLED!!!!!!!!!!

 

Great Guigz, I'm glad it worked for you. Once you get SP1 the performance headaches will go away too.

 

omg sp1 ll rox my cg's lol

 

Bon ! Au moins un de content...

Good ! Guigz is glad, at least !

 

Hehe t'es partout !! ué je suis glad lol

 

What is the best driver for SLI 7950 GTXs with Vista? Is it 169.28 or 174.16? Should I get SP1 and if so where do I get it? Thanks!

 

Vista + SP1 + 174.xx is a combination for the the 7950 or 8700. I got a major boost in performance in UT3 and COD4. The only issue I had was with Crysis, I can no longer run in HIGH mode. Not a big deal to me since I pretty much think it is a terrible game.

If you don't have SP1 yet then stick with 169.28 until it is released.

 

Update: Quoted you eightd.

Personally, I use the Alienware 167.76 "beta" driver on my laptop and it works great. The problem with the 169.28 drivers is that you can not output to a external monitor properly on the laptop. I would much rather the 174.xx or the 167.76 drivers.

 

the official alienware 167.46 drivers are very darn confusing when attempting to install. it is an exe file that self extracts and instals onto one card. i manually do not have it instal on the second card and reboot the computer. but after that how would i go about installing the drivers on the 2nd card? the drivers instal into a temp folder and then seem to delete this folder after installation. double clicking on these official drivers again would seem to instal the driver over the 1st card again or what?

it was confusing so i just allowed the drivers to instal themselves onto both cards at once and it gave me a black screen that it would not recover from. so i simply hard-booted the system and the drivers appear to be installed fine.

now for my second part of my confusion. i have enabled SLI after the drivers were installed. now, i would like to understand how the game profiles are setup. there is a large list of games that have pre-defined settings from nvidia directly. but, do these game settings launch automatically or do you have to select them right before you start playing your game?

for example; i play supreme commander and i am trying to determine if sli is working in the game. i ran it's built in benchmark with sli disabled and again with sli enabled. there was an 82% increase in FPS when sli was enabled. now, i saw there are 2 supreme commander pre-defined settings and their sli option was set to "custom". i am assuming that one of these pre-defined settings kicked in automatically when the executable file of the game was detected upon launch by them? if so, then there is nothing you have to configure or anything to select (as long as you simply enable sli in the control panel) if your game is under that pre-defined list.

 

I'll answer the first issue, someone take the second one. Make sure you completely remove the previous Nvidia driver, strange stuff happen when you don't. Reboot, ignore the search for the driver dialog. Install the Nvidia driver. Ignore the reboot dialog, the dialog will disapear a and confirm install dialog will popup comfirm and go from there.

It is really confusing, the strange thing is that the 173.64 driver fixed the issue and had steps that made sense. And then they messed it up again with the driver after it.

 

damn i need your help again!
I can play sli enabled 30min-1hour( 2 hours for cod4) then screen freeze and fps drop to 15 in every game!! I tought vista was stable with 8700 gt.....

This is what i tried:

Moving sli cable
MOving Video card
drivers ( all the 169.XX// 174.16//173.65... etc)
TRy split frame , alternate frame 2 etc.....
temps = 70 in game for GPU's and 65° for cpu.

I wrote about thi to aw! but maybe som1 can help me here?

 

I've played in SLI for hours (HL2) which ofcourse isn't the latest of the latest but it runs without any issue. Recently i've turned off SLI because i've been playing a lot of WoW and SLI actually makes the game perform worse.

174.16 is still my prefered driver, i have no clue what's causing your issues guigz.

About the profiles in manage 3d settings, these profiles get loaded everytime a matching game starts, so no need to go preselect them or whatever. However, i 've noticed that with almost all(if not all) l2v drivers that whenever you make changes to those profiles, it never remembers them. I'm not sure if this is the case with AW stock and beta drivers too. An easy way to see if and which SLI type you're running is to turn "Show SLI visual indicators" on under 3D settings in your top bar of nvidia control panel.
Hope this help a bit.

 

ok. when i first installed the alienware beta drivers in supreme commander the pre-defined sli settings said "custom". i changed them around and it lost that custome setting. i removed the drivers and re-installed them again and it still does not say "custom" in the sli setting. it says single gpu, but i know that cannot be correct since single gpu gives worse performance when i manually select it. best performance is with AFR2. it gives an 82% fps increase under this sli setting so i know when it used to say "custom" it must have been running the AFR2 setting.

i am finding out that the sli drivers are very finicky. for example, in eve online, the system appears to lose it's sli setting and then it comes back on again during game play. the other official alienware drivers (non-beta ones) for the m9750 do not even work with sli enabled. they gave both of my games worse performance under any sli setting. they did however, have the sli anti-alliasing feature which the beta drivers lack.

what i will have to do is manually remove one gpu and have a true non-sli system and test my games out after a fresh instal of the beta drivers. i really want to see if sli works or not. because, under the current system, with both cards being installed, sli is giving me almost double the framerates compared to when i disable sli feature in control panel.


edit; also, what kind of program allows me to view the gpu temps?

 

nTune http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html
or RivaTuner

 

this drivesweeper progeam, i run it under safe mode and select the nvidia drivers and chipset to clean but it does not seem to do anything? there is no harddrive working or nothing. does the program work that fast? it just seems like nothing is happening.

 

Yea it works. Driver sweeper does not actually uninstall your physical drivers. Here is what happens. Your drivers uninstall but they leave behind changes in your registry which sometimes can mess up your next driver install. Driver sweeper quickly goes through the registry and deletes all of the files so that the next installation is as fresh as possible

 

do you experience wierd slowdowns when gaming in sli mode? for example, in supreme commander sli would give me almost double the fps over single gpu mode, but it would drop the fps to almost zero at speradic times. it recovers after a short while, but really hinders gameplay. if i move or pan the camera it seems to recover quicker.

in eve online, if i am at my player-owned station the fps cripples and tries to recover. sli also doubls my performance in this game.

also, what are you idle and load temps for you cpu?

 

I haven't taken the time to measure my temperatures for this system yet. Your FPS drops are weird though. What drivers/OS are you using currently. I can't get back to you tonight since I still have to study for a French quiz, english vocabulary/grammar quiz, and a math test and its already 11PM EST.

What I am using...
Alienware's "Beta" Drivers
Vista (Non SP1 *used to have it but got rid of it for a bit just because I really didn't see that much increase, will switch drivers when I get it though*).

 

i'm using xp media center. tried with the AW beta drivers and the recommended ones in this thread for xp.

 

Oh man. I had problems with the 169.09 drivers (no idea why they are up there still ). I should take them down. Well the 169.09 drivers sucked for me.

Try the Alienware beta drivers, or the new 174.xx drivers that are posted in the guide.

 

Try these too if nothing else works. Doesn't matter that they are dell only btw.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=89

 

i also want to mention that the i took out one of the gpu's to see what a true non-sli setup would do in the games i play, supreme commander and eve online. everyone usually says these games were not coded for sli and that sli does not really give a performance boost. the results when i ran with only one gpu was the same as disabling sli when i had both cards installed. with oth cards installed and sli enabled i got an 82% fps increase in the supreme commander benchmark and in game. i also get almost a 100% increase in fps for eve online running the premium graphics client. i used fraps to help me check results.

this study really made my day. sli does indeed work extremely well. i would say that this is the performance of one 8800m gtx gives or even better. i would love to compare these benchmarks with someone that has a m15x.

both games ran at wuxga resolution and at max settings.

the major downside of sli so far appears to be the finicky drivers that causes instability in terms of framerate stutters and major slowdown. the slowdown and stutter is very obvious that it's not caused by the "too much on the screen for the gpu to hande" syndrom, but instead of the finicky drivers.

i have tried 3 kinds of drivers so far. the first one was the alienware official drivers. those gave worse performance than sli disabled in all the sli settings. the second driver i used were the aliewnare official beta drivers. these gave the sli performance boost as i just mentioned but are finicky as described. they also were a pain to install because i do not know where these files self extract to, probably a temp folder or something. the 3rd drivers i used were the ones siggested in the first page for XP and they give identicle performance to the official alienware beta drivers and are just as finicky.

 

I've installed the nVidia 174.16 drivers and SP1 on my m9750 and get amazing results from my 8700s. I used to think the 8700 cards were garbage, but with this current setup I get on average 35-48 fps in UT3 at 1920 x 1200 with all settings maxed out on high. Prior to SP1 and the 174.16 drivers I was getting closer to 25 fps.

 

i am interested in overclocking my dual 7950gtx. i am wondering what would be good overclock settings and what others are running stable at?

 

does anyone know sli what drivers are the best for crysis? i just downloaded demo and the performance on it is pathetic, almost laughable.

 

How smooth is it running for you? When I use to play it I had to keep my settings down to keep the framerates high enough for multi-player.

 

I'm using 174.74 and for cod4 multiplayer on 1440 res and 4x anti I'm getting 25-35 fps - I used to get higher, but I suppose it's best to have newer drivers than better performance

 

sir travis dont use X4 AA.
I get 50 fps with one 8700 GT without AA and more than 90 wiith sli
Sometimes i use 2X aa ( not much difference between 2XAA and 4XAA) and i get 40 fps ( no sli) or 75 with sli.

 

aa makes it look better though

 

yeah but no difference between aax4 and aaX2 exept loss of 15 fps lol

 

Yea the difference is very negligible

 

So I am now using Vista Home Premium 32-Bit with dual 7950 GTX 512mbs on my m9750, and I was wondering what is the best driver? I am currently using the 174.16 and it runs great, but new ones come out like every week and I was wondering if there was a better one out already? I have SP1 on Vista.

 

Currently using the 174.74. Frame rates seem to be up a little and am getting 100 more in 3dmark. The biggest thing was that it fixed the occasional stutter I was getting in UT3. Overall they seem to be slightly better than 174.16.

 

yeah go for 174.74

 

I've found that if I use anything other then the Alienware ones I have issues with standby and hibernate. Anyone else have that kind of problem?

 

That's not suppose to happen. Do you have Vista Service Pack 1 installed yet?

 

Yeah I do(as far as I recall) I also have issues with media center crashing everytime I start it(cant get past setup), but thats no matter what drivers I use. As long as I stay with alienware drivers I have no issues with the standby and hibernate tho.

Sorry I should start my own thread, I didn't mean to hi-jack...

 

This is not a driver problem. I am using the nVidia 169.25 driver and I have used previous versions of the nVidia drivers in the past with Vista Home Premium and I have had no issues with either standby or hibernate.