Installing a second graphics card

So I had a P170EM with a GTX 680M. I bought a P570WM3 with one GTX 680M, figuring I could move the card from the P170EM and run the P570WM3 in SLI.

So I bought a heat sink and fan from Myth, moved the card from the P170EM, installed the SLI bridge, repasted both cards, flashed the vbios of both cards with Myth's vbios, clean installed the latest video drivers, and even bought a second PSU and power distributor.

But when I turn on SLI in Windows 8 and try to restart, the machine freezes and then won't boot back into Windows until I roll back to a previous save point.

I don't get it. Both the cards are *identical*. When I go into GPUZ and look at the stats, the cards are exactly the same. Same vbios, same clock speed, everything.

When I boot into the BIOS, the P570WM3 sees both cards.

When I look at device manager, I see both cards and they are both working (no error 43, device turned off).

When I go into nvidia inspector I see both cards.

When I go into nvidia's control panel, I see both cards and can turn on SLI (I just can't reboot after doing so).

Can anyone tell me what I might be missing?!?

I really hope it isn't a motherboard issue.

 

Could it be a driver issue ?

 

defective sli cable?

also, check each card in single mode as master and put full load onto it with benchmarks and stress programs like msi kombustor. see if both are stable.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

If this is a Mythlogic system, contact them, their tech support is really good.

then won't boot back into Windows until I roll back to a previous save point.
- That part, I find really odd. Means something is prevent Win 8 from booting and crashing immediately. SLI should be like CFX, not be engaged unless you are using a 3D application. While in 2D, the 2nd card is supposed to be dormant.

I don't know the fix, jaybee's suggestions seem to be good, but I'd consider contacting Mythlogic.

 

What I find really odd is that I have trouble shutting down in Linux as well. I need to power off the machine with the power button. So I am beginning to wonder if it is the card from the P170EM.

I think I will do what jaybee suggested: try each card as master and stress test them.

Myth did tell me that if I wanted to install the card I should let them do it.

 

So SLI configuration actually works until a reboot? That sounds software related. I agree with stress testing the cards individually as well though, just to rule out component faultiness.

 

Hey

Yea totally agree with everyone else's suggestions, give each card a shot to make sure you have a pair of good working cards, wouldn't be the first time something got a little messed up in transit, but as long as you flashed the P170 card to the same vBIOS as the new one, then yea give them both a shot and see whats going on from there =)

 

Worth clearing out the graphics drivers and trying the latest set.

 

Actually, no. I turn on SLI and it asks me to reboot the machine immediately. When I reboot it doesn't work.

I am also wondering if there might not be disk errors. When I booted into Linux the last time it started to fsck the disk. So last night I booted into safe mode for windows 8 and chkdsk'ed all the disks in the laptop (3.8TB ... this machine is amazing!). I'll see if it can boot tonight, because before I quit and went to bed I couldn't even reboot into Win8 after rolling back to a previous restore point.

 

One thing you could do is try windows 7 on a new disk.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Since you're running two different operating systems with two different file systems, you might need to run both disk check utilities for each OS. That or use a third party program like HDAT2.