How To: Enable SLI on pre-i7/i5 hardware

[anatolymik]

FINALLY SUCCESS!! Thanks anatolymik and wolf for all your help. I tried everything that was suggested and no SLI. Here is what I did to make it work. Updated my bios to latest bios, reset the bios settings to default ( my previous setup was OC'ed to 4GHz with customer bios settings).

Halmod v.071 + Asus SLI Cert + unmodded drivers = BSOD

Halmod v.07 + Asus SLI Cert + unmodded drivers = SLI

thanks for your test. tell me how did you install v0.71?

 

[yeba]

0. Disable UAC
1. Install v0.71 halmod
2. Install Asus SLIC cert
3. Reboot
4. Install Official drivers, during install, nvidia installation crashes and reboots my PC. Unable to install official drivers.

thanks for your test. tell me how did you install v0.71?

 

[TiN]

derGhostrider

Congratz, as I told, it's totally possible

Provide us some benchmark results from mighty quadros with multicpu madness :-D I'm sure there is not a lot of people who can afford to have server with Quadros here :-D

Can you try SLI with Win2003 too?

 

[anatolymik]

derGhostrider

Can you do some tests for me?

 

[cxghjcqr]

Which POST is the last version slistringinstall in.Please tell me . I can't find it
By the way ,the last version HALMOD is ver0.71,isn't it?

 

[anatolymik]

Which POST is the last version slistringinstall in.Please tell me . I can't find it
By the way ,the last version HALMOD is ver0.71,isn't it?

yes it is. from last post where it is

 

[TheWolf]

Sorry my friend, but you are wrong.

I DID IT!
Quadro FX 4800 SLI on X8DAH+ running Server 2008 R2!

NO HALmod! NO modded drivers! And NO test mode!

All I needed was the customized SLIC string!

Here is my new .dsl file. The part from aGeoM was "almost correct". I just had to remove the "IFSL" and directly return the SLIC to get IASL to compile the file without errors.

My .dsl is attached. I will also attach the .aml file for people who can't do it themselves. (Maybe it won't work for them if their hardware differs too much... at least it's worth a try)

---

Here my short step-by-step description what to do to enable SLI on a Supermicro X8DAH+ running Windows Server 2008 R2:

0. Install the Quadros to the native 16x PCI-Express 2.0 sockets. It is no problem that these 16x ports are connected to different IOH-36Ds!
1. Install unmodified NVidia Quadro 191 drivers.
2. Download the attached ZIP sli_X8DAH+_Win2008R2.zip. It contains the asl.exe tool, as described earlier in this thread, and the file DSDT.aml. (It also contains the .dsl and iasl.exe if you would prefer to mod it yourself as I did.)
Extract these files to an easy to reach path (e.g.: c:\SLI).
3. open a command prompt. (Start -> run... -> cmd)
4. Enter the path where you stored the files that you extracted from the zip. -> cd\SLI
5. Run the following command: asl /loadtable DSDT.aml
6. That's it. You may have to reboot to enable SLI. An automatic SLI-notification will pop-up in your taskbar and the NVidia Control panel will show SLI and PhysX.


Thanks to Anatolymik, TheWolf, aGeoM. I needed some help that you provided. ->

Now I will have to run some Benches.
This thread is awsome!

----

Edit:
I added a screen shot as ZIP because the forum shrinks my 1920x1200 pixel screen shot so much that you can't see anything.

Edit2: Added another Screenshot that shows some of the Quadro-SLI capabilities: 64x Antialiasing!.

Can you post the string "mods & all" that you added from start to finish as its installed.
I looked at your files but I could not tell for sure were the insert starts & ends.
I want to make & test my own from stratch. Thanks...

 

[TheWolf]

yes it is

Has there been anything new added to the slistringinstall & is it still needed use of with the latest Halmodver0.71?

 

[anatolymik]

Has there been anything new added to the slistringinstall & is it still needed use of with the latest Halmodver0.71?

yes. you need use it with HALMod. SliStringInstaller was added.

 

[TheWolf]

yes. you need use it with HALMod. SliStringInstaller was added.

SliStringInstaller wasn't in the last halmod I downloaded, so I'm not sure how old the one I have is.
Could you post a link to the latest, perhaps a total package of everything?

 

[anatolymik]

SliStringInstaller wasn't in the last halmod I downloaded, so I'm not sure how old the one I have is.
Could you post a link to the latest, perhaps a total package of everything?

http://www.xdevs.com/sli/SliStringInstaller.rar

the total package of everything will be later

 

[soundood]

wow, this has came so far, all thanks to you anatolymik, (and of course lots of others) to think we will now just download two instals, instal them and reboot....was totaly unthinkable 6 months ago.

just amazing

 

[Nick [D]vB]

A few years ago I tired to mod an Asus A8N-E into an A8N-SLI (soldered SLI bridge of nforce4 chipset, flashed bios to A8N-SLI Premium, even edited DMI info) but I could not make SLI work (even with the old hacked drivers) so I just gave up on it in the end...

Luckily I still have the board so I am going to pick up a couple of 8800GTs on eBay and give this a try, better late than never! Because this board *should* support SLI already will I have to do anything differently?

I’m also going to try it on my new system, which has a Biostar TA790GX-128M board, could Biostar be added to the SLIStringInstaller? (Biostar do make an X58 SLI board if that helps) If not can I do it “manually”?

I just want to say that it is really great to see this working again, thanks to everyone involved, especially to the guys who stick around to help us mortals work it out, you rock!

SliStringInstaller: Push ASUS button and install latest HALMod

I'll go and unplug my soldering iron then... this is almost too easy now.

I would still be interested to know why my A8N-E mod failed? I'll do a clean install and try to save the ACPI table before I do any softmods etc.

Maybe you can take a look at it later when you have time? I know this new method will work anyway, thanks again for all your hard work.

 

[anatolymik]

I'll go and unplug my soldering iron then... this is almost too easy now.

I would still be interested to know why my A8N-E mod failed? I'll do a clean install and try to save the ACPI table before I do any softmods etc.

Maybe you can take a look at it later when you have time? I know this new method will work anyway, thanks again for all your hard work.

i always have time for it. just send me files.

 

[Black Panther]

I haven't read all 46 pages of this thread (!) but if you want I can test drivers on my SLI 8800M GTX. They're laptop cards though...

 

[anatolymik]

I haven't read all 46 pages of this thread (!) but if you want I can test drivers on my SLI 8800M GTX. They're laptop cards though...

test if you want to

 

[derGhostrider]

Welcome.

I'm glad you managed. Is always nice to see one more happy face around here.

derGhostrider

Congratz, as I told, it's totally possible

Provide us some benchmark results from mighty quadros with multicpu madness :-D I'm sure there is not a lot of people who can afford to have server with Quadros here :-D

Can you try SLI with Win2003 too?

Hi!

It looks as if SLI is activated but unstable as hell.

- Furmark causes a complete system freeze right after the start.
- nHancer won't start at all:
(translated error message): "Error reading XML-File 'c:\Windows\system32\nvapps.xml': Error in XML-document (854,47)."
- I can play Left4Dead for some minutes but then the system freezes. Only a reset or hard power off helps to recover the system.
- When I remove the second graphics card the system won't boot at all! (That is quite strange, isn't it?)


Next things to try:
1. Replace this crappy nvapps.xml file.
2. Some different drivers. (desktop drivers instead of Quadro drivers, old driver)
3. The same SLIC-insertion with Windows XP 32bit. Maybe that will be more stable.

derGhostrider

Can you do some tests for me?

Yes, of course. As soon as some test program will finish without freezing the system or crash.

Can you post the string "mods & all" that you added from start to finish as its installed.
I looked at your files but I could not tell for sure were the insert starts & ends.
I want to make & test my own from stratch. Thanks...

This is what I inserted (line 9702 to line 9730):

 Scope (_SB.PCI0)
    {
        Name (SLIC, Buffer (0x9E)
        {
            "987134512781Genuine NVIDIA Certified SLI Ready Motherboard for SUPERMICRO X8SAX    0101-Copyright 2008 NVIDIA Corporation All Rights Reserved-765289891023(R)"
        })
    }

    Device (_SB.PCI0.WMI1)
    {
        Name (_HID, "pnp0c14")
        Name (_UID, "MXM2")
        Name (_WDG, Buffer (0x14)
        {
            /* 0000 */    0x3C, 0x5C, 0xCB, 0xF6, 0xAE, 0x9C, 0xBD, 0x4E, 
            /* 0008 */    0xB5, 0x77, 0x93, 0x1E, 0xA3, 0x2A, 0x2C, 0xC0, 
            /* 0010 */    0x4D, 0x58, 0x01, 0x02
        })
        Method (WMMX, 3, NotSerialized)
        {
            CreateDWordField (Arg2, Zero, FUNC)
            If (LEqual (FUNC, 0x41494C53))
            {
                    Return (SLIC)
            }

            Return (Zero)
        }
    }

 

[TiN]

derGhostrider

Try to swap cards. Are they working perfectly both? I got same system halts and errors, when slave videocard was damaged (getting artifacts on image when running single).

 

[derGhostrider]

derGhostrider

Try to swap cards. Are they working perfectly both? I got same system halts and errors, when slave videocard was damaged (getting artifacts on image when running single).

Hi!
When I swapped the cards the SLI-option was suddenly gone!
Update: The SLI-Option was gone because I forgot to plug in the SLI-Bridge. So: Even with this "SLIC-hack" the SLI-Bridge is absolutely necessary in this special case!

Nevertheless I can run FurMark for long times on both cards without any problems. ATItool, even if this program is a little bit older, can scan for artifacts: 10Minutes, no artifacts found.

That's so weired!

At the time when SLI was available I could simply disable SLI and the system was stable again.

Next test on Sunday with Windows 7 x64...

 

[hhahaahyea]

how do i undo the mods, i want to wait til my nvidia cards are here

 

[TheWolf]

how do i undo the mods, i want to wait til my nvidia cards are here

You can use windows system restore by picking a restore point date before the install of the mod.

 

[hhahaahyea]

You can use windows system restore by picking a restore point date before the install of the mod.

thanks. there are a few side effects that i'm not liking. not anythign serious though.

 

[TheWolf]

thanks. there are a few side effects that i'm not liking. not anythign serious though.

I try to remember to make a restore before I do any of these type changes.
That way I'm pretty much corvered if I have to go back in time.
If a restore is kind of old you may have to re-install some programs.
That's mostly the badest thing I've seen when using older ones.
Anything I might can help with?

 

[yeba]

Here is my update on more of my testing. The previous build that worked SLI was not in RAID mode. So I resintalled win 7 x64 again with RAID enabled:
halmod 0.7 + SLI cert + unmodded drivers = BSOD

SLI cert + modded drivers = SLI enable

Is the halmod messing around with my raid?

 

[TheWolf]

halmod 0.7 + SLI cert + unmodded drivers = BSOD

Did you have test mode enabled?
Also you may want to try using dseo13b.exe to sigh a system file if you haven't already.
On the hal.dll that is.
Have no idea on the raid question.