SLi Guide (Installing, Troubleshooting + Increasing Performance)

Well at this point I would recommend just installing them over your older drivers. However, before you install the tweakforce drivers, I would run driver sweeper to clear out the registry.

 

thanks for the help stone. I had to mess with it for an hour or so but finally got those new drivers up and running.

 

for tweakforce drivers there is no modded INF file on their website.. why?

 

Because its already in the driver, all you need to do is just install it and enjoy the performance

 

You need the tweakforce mobile drivers for the laptops though (including 7950 GTX); not the regular ones.

 

@Ashena - I linked the Mobile Tweakforce drivers in my guide so if you follow it you shouldn't have any problems.

@Maz - As brainer said the INF is already in the driver so all you have to do is install it and it should work.

 

Tried the tweakforce drivers today. They seem pretty good, but suffer from the old "can't sleep or hibernate while in SLI mode" issue. Anyone ever find a solution to that?

 

i Told Semp "the Owner of Tweakforce" and he is going to fix that in the next driver release, thanks for your patience

 

Awesome, thanks. I'll be looking for it. This release also has (very) occasional black screen flashes on my system, but is otherwise pretty good. Though 7600 3DMarks on an 8700M SLI is a little low, no?

 

yes, its a low score, you should be scoring 8600+ depending on the CPU.. did you install all SLI hotfixes if you are on Vista? are you 100% sure that you have SLI enabled from the CP?

 

Are there still hotfixes even with SP1? SLI is definitely on, as I get around 5000 without it. My CPUs on the slow side: 2.0hz Core 2 Duo.

 

well its not on the slow side, i have the same CPU, well probably you have many processes running when you did 3dmark06 score?

 

Possibly. The system's new and nothing much showing on task bar, but I didn't go into task manager to end things yet. Other than closing the sidebar I haven't tweaked Vista either. Guess I should turn off Aero!

 

thats a possibility you still need to tweak it an also Download Nhancer, its a must have software for SLI users

www.nhancer.com

 

Is there a guide for what Nhancer settings I should tweak?

 

well for best SLI performance, leave the settings that Nhancer has already, only change stuff like AA and AF

 

Hmm, I thought it was just a tweaking utility. Does it change some settings on install/first run?

 

yes, it has the best pre-defined settings for SLI, it overrides the stock profiles in the Nvidia driver

 

Thanks for the info. Hey, has anyone here tried these new Alienware beta drivers yet (173.53), and if so how did you find them to be?

http://support.alienware.com/Forum_Pages/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=567880

You'll need to log in. Looks like they're finally working on updating their defaults!

 

+REP on the catch buddy!

EDIT: could someone upload it somewhere? i forgot my user on the site rofl

 

Snatcher, great find. Here is the URL posted in that thread.

http://aliendl.alienware.com/mobile/m9750/m9750_NVIDIA_Vista_173.53_BETA.exe

 

thanks alot buddy, downloading now, but i'm still hesitating.. the XG is a killer, dunno if i need to reinstall those AW drivers

 

Just FYI everyone, the Alienware beta is only for Vista 32bit.

 

woops havent noticed canceling download

 

Well I hope someone tries it. It sounds like it's great for games, but has some issues with video playback.

Edit: Hey Stone, are you able to use sleep mode with the 174.74 drivers?

 

Sorry for the double post, but I thought this info from Alienware was interesting:

NVIDIA Graphics Driver 173.53 Beta

This beta driver has not been fully validated and has been made available in order to improve your gameplay experience with Age of Conan; however some features within your system may not function properly such as standby or hibernation.

If you encounter any problems with this driver please roll back to the previous officia non Beta display driver for your system.

 

@Snatcher - I have not actually used the 174.74 drivers. The two drivers that I have used that have fixed the standby problems are the 175.75 drivers and the 175.63XG drivers.

 

Oh that's odd, standby doesn't work for me with the XG!

 

Yea I am going to try the Alienware beta driver. Right now, I have a good list of drivers to use / test.

167.46 : AW drivers, not enough resolutions
173.53 : AW drivers, testing right now.
174.16 : Worked very well, don't know why I upgraded...
174.74 : Haven't tested yet (yes I know it says that I did on the front, I meant 175.75.
175.63 : XG Drivers. Actually crashed on me quite a bit>
175.75 : Used these drivers until they crashed.
175.80 : Downloading right now.

 

The AW betas seem good so far: boosted my 3dMark score about 100 points, and standby works (albeit with an error message when resuming). Mass Effect, the inaugural game for my laptop, runs great at max settings. However, I haven't tried playing videos yet, which one user reported to crash his system!

 

I have tried a ton of different drivers and I can't seem to find any that work properly. I have a 9750 with SLi 8700's and I keep getting screen flickering when I run SLi mode in games. I have messed around with the nvidia control panel settings and tried them with nhancer. Nothing works. Anybody else had this problem in the past?

PS- I have followed this guide religiously.

 

@Highrise - I have no idea what your problem could be. As of right now, I am done with trying to fiddle with SLi on my laptop as it has been nothing but a problem recently. I am going to send it back soon for repairs.

 

This is probably no help whatsoever...... but here goes anyways:

I updated my m9750 (twin 8700s) out of the box with the 174.16 Driver. I have changed no settings, tweaked nothing, touched nothing. I just enabled SLi in nVidia Control Panel and that was it.

Machine runs CoD4 flawlessly, does everything ales it should well and has only hung a couple of times, easily fixed by a restart.

Perhaps the secret is to just leave stuff be?

 

@Clean - You got lucky that you found a good drivers from the get-go

 

Yeah, I didn't start messing around with stuff until nothing else worked.

 

FYI, I'm trying the new 177.26 driver now and it seems very good. Slight performance increase, standby works, perfect IQ...

 

Hmm maybe I'll give that a try since I've been SOL for the past week

 

I had a bad flicker as well, and Alienware replaced my 2nd Video Card and heatsinks and it went away.

 

Hello...

Great guide Stone825. Kudos!!

Unfortunately, after following your instructions this has been my experience:

1. The driver that actually downloads from your Vista32 link is 175.16 not 174.74. Is this a discrepancy or simply an updated link?
2. You mention downloading a moded .inf file in step #3, but no additional reference is given as to what to do with it beyond DL. Should this file replace the original file in the NVIDIA installation folder?
3. I run the installation with the original file but get an error referencing me to Toshiba for driver updates. Toshiba has not been very helpful since their latest update dates back to almost a year ago and no eta on a new one to bring it up to par to the NVIDIA releases.
4. I run the installation with the replaced moded .inf file and even though it completes, after restart I still don't see the NVIDIA utility nor the correct designation for the 8600M GT card. So it's not installing correctly.

What have I missed if anything, and what can I do to resolve this issue?

I have a Toshiba Satellite x205-SLi5 with a Dual GeForce 8600M GT setup running Vista Home Premium.

My eternal gratitude for providing me a reference that can help me solve this.

 

...............

 

1. I need to fix that link then
2. You should place the inf file in the driver folder and overwrite if need be. I should add those steps.
3. I think that you need to add the inf file or try another set of drivers. There is also a boot from CD method which I have not used but there should be some guides on laptopvideo2go
4. Hmm have you uninstalled the old drivers before installing the new ones?

 

Hey Stone,

You mentioned that the XG 175.63 Drivers crashed on you quite a bit, can you describe how so? During games? Blue Screens? I've had just as much trouble as everyone else has trying to find a stable driver - I'm not even concerned with the performance anymore - I just want a driver that doesn't crash all the time. Right now, I have the XG 175.63 drivers installed on a clean install of Windows XP SP3, performance is good and everything seems stable so far.

 

yup, the driver is very Stable on Win XP, Stay tuned because the next XG is coming soon.

 

bye bye rstu686

 

Okay, there must be something I'm not getting. I'm not a complete computer noob but high-end PC gaming is kinda new to me so...

I just bought a m9750. CPU is 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb of RAM and 2 SLI-enabled 8700M GT video cards (It is the very model currently advertised on Alienware site for gaming season and being shipped in 7 days).

I followed this guide to the letter, actually I hoped it would be the thing that would save me after hours and hours of desperate tweaking but it seems not.

Hang on to your seat : I'm scoring a meager 2600 on 3dMark06. I don't think it has anything to do with SLI-or-not as from what I understand, this is about half from what I would be getting from a single 8700M GT.

When I run the test of that secret agent trying to escape from the enemy base, I'm getting 7 FPS on average (Totally sluggish). Good thing for that Bond girl she is not using my laptop for running away. Same for the "New Calico" test.

I'm not trying to fine-tune stuff and obtain 100 more points on this benchmark test, I believe I can reasonably expect something more from my machine and it's just as if I'm missing something as big as the moon for the results to be so worlds apart.

BTW, I played Crysis just to see if this was a 3dMark-specific problem but the game is slow as heck as well.

Please help me out.

 

Okay, read a bit more and thought I would add I am running Vista 32-bit and I am getting P2611 on 3dMark Vantage. It seems the scoring or whatnot is different in this version and most people are getting something in the same range.

As for the benchmarks tests, I'd guess it's normal for them to be so resource-intensive and therefore run like crap on an "average" computer (7-10 FPS).

-Marco

 

MarcoP, I got the exact same config as you, though with 4gigs of memory (that doesnt influence anything), I get roughly the same score as you in 3DMark vantage ~2692. In 3Dmark06 I got 7521, whats your score in that little program?
Concerning Crysis, what resolution and what detail level have you set it to?

 

Thank you for your reply, Sunksat. It's comforting to be able to compare the results of those benchmarking tools with someone running a similar system.

I was reluctant to install 3dMark06 at first because I thought that 3dMark Vantage effectively made it obsolete but more and more people are telling me that 3dMark06 is still a decent benchmarking tool even though it doesn't fully support Vista/DirectX 10/SLi and whatnot.

Back to the guide, I have two comments :

DriverSweeper wasn't working at first because it wasn't able to create the ini file in its own folder. I had to update the Vista security settings and set every possible entity to full Control in that specific folder and then everything was fine.

I wasn't prompted to overwrite the INF file when I copied it in the driver folder. Still, the installation went well but I thought I would at least be asked to browse for it at some point during the process. Makes me wonder if this step is mandatory or not, I guess the setup.exe knows where to look for it when it needs it.

I would answer your question about Crysis but I don't want to hijack this 25-page thread even more, is there a better forum category where we could talk about this?

-Marco

 

@Marco - You could probably start a new thread about it or talk about it in here, I really don't mind much. Also, use 3Dmark06 to benchmark your cards because that is what all 7950GTX SLi users use as we can not use Vantage.

In addition, with the new drivers from laptopvideo2go, they automatically take out the inf file out of the folder so you don't have to click overwrite when you place the modded inf in there.

 

i guess all computer come with a problem or soon to be one and its good to know ppl sre here to help us. but i have a problem with my cd reader i insert a cd and it wont read it so i can open the program or explore the disc, can any one help me with this one? thank you