SLI with 7xx0 GT(x) on AM3+ board(s)

[Ragnar G.D.]

Hi,

ich have a pair of venerable GeForce 7-series cards: EVGA 7900 GTX 512MB PCIe.
I used them on a (now defunct) nForce4 SLI board on XP pro 32bit - with SLI, of course!

Board dead, long live SLI. So i thought.

I bought an MSI 970A SLI Krait (SLI on 8x/8x), with an AMD FX 4320.
Both cards are recognized, and provide the desktop on all 4 DVI-D ports, when asked kindly (i'm always polite with the elderly).

Board alive, SLI dead (aka "disabled"). Says the NVidia control panel, and says GPU-Z.

:-(

What i tried:
(on both Windows XP pro 32bit and Windows 10 home 64bit)
- drivers from 260.26 (the first supporting SLI for 970A) to the actual ones for each OS (and two in between)
- changed cards through slots
- used different SLI-bridges
- tried with two GF 7600GT PCIe 256MB for a change
- asked on NVidia SLI-forum
- asked on MSI support forum
- contacted MSI support ("Did you test GF 7-series with SLI on this board?")

User "Sora" on NVidia-forum said "SLI for Series 7 broke somewhere after 280.26 and was never fixed...". Otherwise, polite questions, but no answers...

Can you help me? Or squash my hopes with some facts if and why not?

Cheers,
Ragnar G.D.

 

[eidairaman1]

if you were told its not working, well it is not working, time to upgrade there dude

 

[Kanan]

Simply use the old drivers then.

 

[Ragnar G.D.]

if you were told its not working, well it is not working, time to upgrade there dude

That user was stating an opinion, i found no "official" statement on this whatsoever.
Upgrading is not an option, as this would break compatibility with W98SE.
This System runs (fast and perfectly) with W98SE, XP and W10 in multi-boot.
This is for gamedesign-studies, esp. older games from the Windows 9x-Era, that require DX1-9, so VMs - which don't provide DX on W98SE - are not an option.

 

[Ragnar G.D.]

Simply use the old drivers then.

With using the 280.26, that is the oldest driver possible already, as older drivers don't provide SLI on that motherboard-chipset.

 

[eidairaman1]

You won't get your answer, you have exhausted all avenues of it working. Time to let the 7900s go or go find a nf4 board online through amazon.com

 

[Kanan]

With using the 280.26, that is the oldest driver possible already, as older drivers don't provide SLI on that motherboard-chipset.

Didn't you say it was disabled "after" those drivers?

Well I guess the others are right, it's over, at least on the platform you're using, because it's too new. Combine old with old, better match.

 

[Vya Domus]

Why do you want to use them in SLI though? Play games ? To be fair those 2 cards even in SLI wouldn't do much , pretty sure you can find a newer card for dirt cheap that can drastically outperform a 7900GTX SLI and if you want them for compatibility purposes , again I doubt running them in SLI would give you that much of a boost. Maybe you can find a 7950 GX2 if you want something like an 7xxxGTX SLI since I believe it dose not require SLI compatibility on the motherboard , although I am not sure how the driver is supposed to work in this case but my guess is that you'll probably run in the same issue.

 

[Ragnar G.D.]

Didn't you say it was disabled "after" those drivers?

Well I guess the others are right, it's over, at least on the platform you're using, because it's too new. Combine old with old, better match.

A user (not an official Admin) on nvidia forums called "sana" SAID that SLI for series 7 is "broken" (i.e. not working, although it is supposed to) on a driver later than version 280.
But this is neither an official statement by NVidia, nor are there any references to other sources. So i see this as a singular opinion by a (helpful) user. So far (s)he seems right, though.

Unfortunately, those older boards that provide SLI (nForce 4/5/6) are not compatible with W98SE (system won't even boot - many users on msfn tried, and failed).

The fact that (quite some) AM3+ boards run with W98SE is some freaking incident, unintended by AMD, i think, but i'm not to complain, as i can now use all three important gamer-operating systems on just one PC.
I'm using a GTX 960 as my second card on another, similar system (ASRock 890FX Deluxe5, AMD 8350FX, 16GB Ram, 3 SSDs, SB Audigy 2 ZS), which is of course faster that two 7900GTX in SLI and more reliable for XP and W10 (the 7900GTX is disabled when booting up XP or W10 on that machine, which use the GTX 960 via DVI-D, while W98SE boots with the 7900 GTX on VGA).
But with the MSI 970A SLI Krait, it would just have been *nice* if, when SLI is imprinted on the package, it would just work as promised, right?

 

[Ragnar G.D.]

Why do you want to use them in SLI though? Play games ? To be fair those 2 cards even in SLI wouldn't do much , pretty sure you can find a newer card for dirt cheap that can drastically outperform a 7900GTX SLI and if you want them for compatibility purposes , again I doubt running them in SLI would give you that much of a boost. Maybe you can find a 7950 GX2 if you want something like an 7xxxGTX SLI since I believe it dose not require SLI compatibility on the motherboard , although I am not sure how the driver is supposed to work in this case but my guess is that you'll probably run in the same issue.

I share your opinion that two 7900GTX in SLI don't do much, as even in working cases, only a few games would profit. It just would have been nice, to be able to use SLI on a board that has SLI in its name, reight?
The 7950 GX2 proves troublesome on W98SE, unfortunately, and given SLI does not work on XP or W10 on the Krait mMoBo, is suspect it would not work on XP and W10 either.

 

[Ragnar G.D.]

Thank you all for your advice!

Unless someone can find some "official" statements from NVidia or MSI on that subject, or has some deep technical insight (like the maintainers of HybridSLI or such), i just bury the idea of doing SLI on an SLI-enabled board... :-D

 

[eidairaman1]

Thank you all for your advice!

Unless someone can find some "official" statements from NVidia or MSI on that subject, or has some deep technical insight (like the maintainers of HybridSLI or such), i just bury the idea of doing SLI on an SLI-enabled board... :-D

Contact Nvidia and the board manufacturer directly. Good luck on talking with an Engineer on those