D901C - Installing 9800m GTX SLi - Huge Problem

Big dilemma. I had 1x 9800m GTX as a single card working just fine (along with the old 8800m GTX as a PPU), up until today when I got a 2nd 9800m GTX to go SLi (yes I have the SLi cable plugged on both cards). I installed everything, but now...

None of the three Nvidia driver sets I've tried will install. I've tried 186.81 (WHQL), 195.39, and 195.55. All of them report that there are no drivers for my hardware. What gives? I'm stumped. I've had a long day, and I thought this would go nice and smooth. Help!



Gophn, I know I totally went against your advice with getting dual 9800m GTX cards, but we can discuss that once this works D:

 

okok I've just had too long of a day, that's all.. somehow, the nv4_disp.inf wasn't copied in all 3 drivers .. however there is still a problem.

it won't detect that it's an SLi setup, mind you I'm on 195.55. What gives?

Edit: Just tried 186.81 but it still won't recognize SLi. Rivatuner reports GPU1 as an "Unattached Device". Why would it show that? The BIOS recognizes both GPUs no problem.

 

Does it recognize two separate cards? Or just that there is an unknown device there? Maybe you should try disconnecting both and reconnecting them just to see. It might work? That's about all I can think of, never worked with SLI in my life yet (sadly)

 

In Device Manager, it shows that 2x 9800m GTX cards are installed. I'm starting to think that my SLi cable came loose during re-assembly. I'll have to check later today.

Edit: Just tried Mirror's Edge real quick, and Rivatuner shows that both GPUs correctly increased their clock speeds to maximum, so I guess both GPUs are working correctly? PhysX was enabled, and there were no slow downs because of it. The GPUs are just not working in tandem it seems.... It must be because the SLi cable is loose/not connected on one of them.

 

Alrighty then, just check it and see? Maybe it's using one as a dedicated physX gpu

 

So my problem was the SLi cable's ends were attached incorrectly. I fixed that problem, but SLi is still NOT detected, regardless of driver. Both video cards are detected just fine. What's wrong? Please help.

 

In times like these you need the help of Soviet Sunrise. Try messaging him (or maybe it's a her I really never asked) and see what he/she says. I have never had a chance to even see an SLI setup in my life, so I can't comment on it. I'd say try detecting or setting it up as SLI in the BIOS, or contact sager and ask them what to do. Also it might be that the SLI cable isn't working well and you might need a new one, but I really can't say for sure. Sager has 24/7 phone support you can try calling them now and seeing what they say about it.

 

Are both of the cards running the same VBios version?

You should be able to check using GPUZ

 

That would explain it... not the same vBIOS. Crap... How do I remedy that?

Edit: Not interested in overclocking. Just want the vBIOS to match.

 

I just tried flashing the VBIOS of both cards to the same one, but... card in "i0" has a different hardware ID of the Bios I took from the card in "i1". When I told it to continue anyway, it gave me a warning that scared the pants off of me. I hit abort. It warned me that the Hardware ID of the card in i0 was different than the hardware ID of the VBIOS I wanted to flash. It said that this should only be done in "extreme cases". Is my case an extreme case? Should I flash it anyway? I don't wanna brick it...

Edit: I see in NiBiTor that I can alter the Hardware ID... should I alter it?

i0 Hardware ID = 0608
i1 Hardware ID = 0617

Is the difference in Hardware IDs causing SLi not to function? Maybe if I flashed the Hardware IDs to the same, it would work? Is that a good idea?

More Edits!: In RivaTuner, the functional card (the one that is not read as an "unattached device") has a hardware ID of 0617. So if I flash the functional card (i1)'s BIOS to the seemingly un-cooperative card (i0) with the same hardware ID, all should be well?

RivaTuner's graphics subsystem diagnostic report:

GPU 0 - 9800M GTX

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : Intel Broadwater
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 8086 (Intel)
$0400000002 Device ID : 29a0
$0400000003 AGP bus : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0617
$0000000003 Location : bus 4, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : e6000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : d0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : e4000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 00003000 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (112sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0618 (ROM strapped to 0617)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 1048576KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 216.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 432.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 100.000MHz (200.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

GPU1 - "Unattached Device"


$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : Intel Broadwater
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 8086 (Intel)
$0400000002 Device ID : 29a0
$0400000003 AGP bus : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : Unattached device
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0608
$0000000003 Location : bus 3, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : e1000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : c0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : e2000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 00002c00 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G92 revision A2 (112sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0608 (ROM strapped to 0608)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 256-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 1048576KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 216.000MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 432.000MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 100.000MHz (200.000MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

Note the clocks are just scanning the 2D/Low Power clocks.

I hope someone can help D:.

If the VBIOS difference isn't the reason, then it looks like I may have found the culprit: my SLi cable is damaged. See this link: https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?TID=2495

 

whoa whoa whoa.. hold up.

I know you're excited to get this working, but DO NOT overwrite the hardware ID on the second card. I guarantee that is not normal, you should not have to do that to enable SLi. You don't even need the same vBios versions on the card. You DO need a vBios version on each card that supports SLi.

Look at it this way, you have two cards that appear to be working independently. The problem is getting them to work together.

What parts allow them to work together? You have software (vbios, drivers) and hardware (cable). Start at the ground (hardware) and work your way up.

Get a replacement SLi cable first.

 

That's what I'm planning on doing first. I'll post here when I get it.

 

flash your 0608 card with 0617 bios so that the both cards use same bios version then restore default bios settings so that the bios can detect them correctly and you can change bios settings as their were this should work
if your SLI Cable is installed proparly

 

In case anyone wants to have a peak, here are the different vBIOSes.

[Rapidshare] http://rapidshare.com/files/310851613/9800mGTXvBIOSes.zip

 

did you try to flash 0608 card with 0617 bios ?

 

I am curious how the system performs with two 9800m GTX cards without SLI with the following benchmark:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=436718
Any chance that you can do this test and post the result before flashing your cards? I hope that the CUDA performance is scalable even without a SLI setup.

 

The two cards are not identical. The primary card has one BIOS version and the daughter card has another.

 

I just flashed the cards to the same vBIOS, and now all is well! Both of them now have the same hardware ID of 0617 and are talking with one another in SLi.

Now that I have SLi functional, it's time to endure SLi headaches! Yay!!

 

Just some terminology question: isn't the daughter card (from the corner) the main card and the parent card the secondary?
I assume that primary card means the one that is necessary to be ok in order for the boot to succeed.

 

daughter is the primary in this case maybe because this is desktop motherboard clevo modded for laptop but if you have two installed cards and
daughter-primary one dosnt working properly the laptop automaticly will boot from the seconrady card atleast in my d901c is working this way

 

this had to be the first thing that you do when discover the problem and when all your options are gone then you go for spare parts atleast you will know this for future problems

 

I tried with just one card in the parent/secondary slot and it didn't boot, but it is a good thing that if you have a broken card in the daughter slot it will still boot from the parent slot.

Was that test with the cards connected by SLI cable, because from the D901C block diagram I see that the parent/secondary slot is connected to the CPU via the SLI chip. It is not connected directly to the daughter slot.

 

yes sli cable was installed