3dmark06 drop, any ideas?

Ok, so I got my 9262 about 2 months ago, and it's a screamer. Love it. Love it to death. Get everything set up, new drivers, and run 3dmark06...

13900.

I'm happy, love it.

Motherboard is giving strange beep codes, send it back to Sager to get new mb installed. Down for 2 weeks during this process. Not loving it, but it's necessary, so dealing with it.

Get it back, happy and get ready for some gaming. Seems slow. Run 3dmark again....

10200.

Something is wrong. Call Sager, get directions on how to check for sli cable correctly installed, check it all, nothing helps. Run 3dmark06 with drivers set to sli off, get 10,000ish, turn sli back on, get 10200ish. Pulled both cards out, ran system with each separately, both cards work separately.

Anyone with any ideas at all? Seems one card is not working to me, at least that would explain the 3000 point drop and no rise with sli on.

 

I take it the HDD was not tampered with?

I would allmost suggest an FFR.

(Fdisk, Format & Reinstall)

That might be excessive but first check your driver versions, in the end, I would probably format and reinstall.

BTW, what was the cause of the beeping?

 

enable second card, then reboot computer and you should be back in business...we hope...

 

@Zenica

The drives were not messed with at all, just a new motherboard was installed and burned in. The beep code was strange and they determined it was a capacitor or something going out on the motherboard, thus a new one.

All drivers are still loaded, no conflicts or problems arose at all, so I'm not sure where a reformat and reinstall will help me. I've also used 4 different versions of drivers, including and mainly the same version that I was using 3 weeks ago and getting 13900 score with.

@johnksss

enable second card? It's enabled. Bios sees it, windows sees it, the drivers see it (thus allowing me to enable sli mode), and I've gone as far as to remove both, run them each separately, and then switch them and hook sli back up.

It's very strange, all looks right, but it's not using them both, as I get the same score with or without sli enabled in the drivers.

It's almost as if something isn't switched on to use both. Can't figure it out, and that's why I'm here looking for advice before I lose it again for another 2 weeks.

Thank you for replies and any more that come.

 

how about this....under nvidia control panel...is it set to one gpu or split frame rendering?

 

it's set to Nvidia recommended, which for 3dmark06 is SLI, but I've tried forcing split frame, alternate frame 1 and alternate frame 2, no change.

 

more info to try to sort this out. You got me thinking again on the settings, so I ran 3dmark06 with all the different settings you can.

Let the program decide settings.
Use my Manage 3d settings setup:
single gpu
force all 3 ways

AND...I turned on sli visual to see what's going on. Well, it's the exact same each time. The settings are not being taken into consideration. There is always an sli indicator, and the score is the same whether it's on single gpu, or sli. This, and the fact that it's the same on sli on or sli off in the drivers...it's not using them and the second card, even though it says it is.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is definately not a normal thing occuring.

 

you know what.....

did you check to make sure the sli jumper is really on both cards?? if the cards are not seated right, that stupid jumper will come undone as you insert the second card and put the screws in it.

edit: and you are running in high performance mode and not balanced or battery optimized correct?

 

Those symptoms can result if the SLI bridge cable is reversed... it happened to me.

 

so that cable is reverse able? i thought it was a one way thing. but to be on the safe side...i left it the same way it came off..during my time of being nosy. but i did switch cards around to see if the heat issued changed. you know...how one card is hotter than the other.

 

Yes, it can be reversed and it will connect, but it won't work properly and the two cards will be forced to communicate via the bus. As you can imagine, this really slows things down! Otherwise, everything appears to be normal.

 

well brat...that very well could be the problem. just as wobble has suggested.

yeah wobble, i left that cable facing the same way and all..i wasn't sure if it got reversed would it make a difference...now im glad i did.

 

I actually made sure to get them right. I have the sheet of directions straight from Sager which shows which end goes to daughter and which to parent. if you look close the ribbon ends are labelled. I think I will reverse it anyway, as it's actually something I haven't done yet. And I'm willing to try anything before sending it back again.

 

we we're banking on the fact that maybe they put it on backward...but if it's labeled and all...

 

it would not be the first or last time written instructions were incorrect that's for sure. Will try it when I get home and report back. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

man, i sure it hope that's it...because no one wants to be waiting for their laptop to come back...just look at me..*tapping foot on ground* two left till i get mine back...*LOL*

 

Ok, nothing is working, and Sager is sending me another sli cable...but, I'm not convinced yet that it's the problem, but who knows..

Can anyone tell me what the bus interface in GPU-Z means? One of the cards is listed as PCI-E x16 @ x2, and the other is PCI-E x16 @ x16.

I'm not sure what the x2 and x16 means for sli, but it sounds like one is running slower...anyone shed some light?

Also, I again cleaned all drivers and installed the old standby that got 13900 score, and set it for default, and then single gpu and it's withing 200 points of the same 10000 score This is getting too much now.

Thanks

 

well...when you uninstalled the last drivers...did you set it back to standard vga driver...the ones that load before you upgrade them to what they should be? try setting them back to this first. then see if it will allow you to see if both are on a 16x or 2x setting (speculation) you may not see anything with gpuz.... then reboot and install drivers one more time..but this time..try the "have driver method" and grab them from your 9800m vga card directory. it will take on the first one and may say something about a reboot..don't. do the samething for the second card just as the first. after that one is done, then reboot computer. enable sli and reboot again....then of course report back....

 

I don't know what it means either, but mine says x16@x16 for each card.

 

same here...it said 16x for both cards.... kind of why i wanted him to reset back to standard vga mode and see if it gave the same read.

 

I've now done everything I can think of, including wiping my drive and starting from a clean install, nothing loaded but the OS, drivers and the benchmark test.

Still the same.

Going to call Sager today and ask about the x2 and x16 stuff.

 

x2/x16 is the speed that the pci-e bus is running at. GPUZ has been known to mis-read this in the past, but if one card is for some reason running at x2 then that would explain the low performance.

 

even when mine split...it's 16x and 1x, but will verify when i get it back...you could be right and i never noticed it was 16xhigh/2x low