SLI with different cards

[P!nkpanther]

Hi, I've gone and re-done the entire process again and it seems to be working better where it only losing about 20 frames compared to one GPU. Both 970s are at full load and now the SLI bridge does seem to have an effect where it crashed when not on while previously it had no effect. Could the problem be within the bridge? It is one of the flexible ones and I've had it for a for a few years.

The standard flex bridge should be enough for 970s. Problems I once had with the standard bridge showed colored artifacts. And if the bridge not worked at all, then you'd get the same performance as without.
970s are known to cause problems in SLI because of different memory types used, depending on manufacturer or even different version of the same manufacturer.
Usually such combinations refuse to show the SLI option. But since DSLIA unhides the SLI button, these problems are laid open.
I suspect in your case it's one of these problems. Maybe you can get hold of a different 970 somewhere (ideally one of the type you already have) to confirm this.

 

[mattjdio]

in my previous set up i was able to sli these two cards noramly so I'm not sure if that was the problem

I just checked and on card has Hynix ddr5 and the other has Elipida ddr5 would this cause an issue with different sli auto

also one is in a pci 2.0 at x4 and the other at pci 3.0 at x16 would this cause issues

 

[P!nkpanther]

Really strange...
If these pair of cards already have shown to SLI in a previous setup, you should be able to SLI these two cards without issues on the new system, regardless of the different memory types. All that DSLIA does is bypassing the 'safety' checks nVidia does for enabling SLI, like MoBo certificate, PCIe width/speed, etc.
The SLI algorithms themselves in the driver are not touched at all.

As far as the different PCIe widths/speeds are concerned, you might see some asymmetrical load in some few games (that's why nVidia does not endorse it), but this can mostly be neglected.

So I don't know what to recommend regarding SLI, except maybe looking a bit further, like chipset drivers for the MoBo and the like...

 

[mattjdio]

I just ran some tests on the second card only I believe the x4 pcie2 slot is haveing a significant bottlenecking effect as it is running upwards of 30/40 fps lower than the cars in the 3.0 x16 slots I'll try swapping cards and seeing the effects..hopefully I don't have a busted card

 

[P!nkpanther]

Run nVidia Inspector, activate the monitoring of the second GPU by right-clicking on the graph and watch for Bus Usage. If you have a bottleneck, you'll see it there.

 

[mattjdio]

I had already stating taking apart my rig when you posted so instead of checking the bus usage I swapped the card in slot 2 to slot one and it is at the same performance of the other card in slot one. I can only assume that at this point the issue with the setup is the bottle necking of the 2.0 x4 slot. The motherboard was a good slae with the cpu so I will get a new mother board and report back in the future. Thank you very much for all your help

 

[P!nkpanther]

Before replacing the MoBo, I'd check out the latest chipset drivers for it, etc, from the AMD website.

 

[mattjdio]

I'll do that and post to see if that had any changes.

There were no bios updates so it can't be that also I just checked and bus usage wasn't very high but I can't think of anything else as perfomce drops significantly from the x16 to the x4 slot

does anybody here know of an matx am4 mobo with 2 pcie slots that run at at least x8

 

[P!nkpanther]

There's probably only the Biostar X370GT3 atm, until X470 comes out.

Low bus usage seems strange to me however. If it's really the bus speed which is hampering your card in the second slot, bus usage should be all over the top.

 

[mattjdio]

I know that's why I'm confused. The bus usage is pretty low so idk what it could be. For the biostar board it seems it can only run slot two at x4 but the slot is fully x16 wired. Does it let you run at x8 x8?

I just found out that the 350 chipset does the first x16 slot lanes from the cpu and the additional x4 lanes come from the chipset could that be slowing it down?

 

[dorsetknob]

Natively SLI requires min PCIx8 preferably PCIx16
I think your find it won't Run in a combination of PCIx4

 

[İsmailTPC_Hastanesi]

"Gigabyte GA- EP45T EXTREME" Motherboard, and the same GPU X2 PALIT NVIDIA GTX460 256 BIT 2GB Graphics Card You can see the SLI Work on this video.
System Hardware Components Used:
Gigabyte GA- EP45T EXTREME
PALIT NVIDIA GTX460 256 BIT 2GB + PALIT NVIDIA GTX460 256 BIT 2GB
XEON X5460 OVERCLOCKING @4.01GHz. 12MB QUAD CORE
1600MHz. DDR3 4GB RAM + 1600Mhz. DDR3 4GB RAM+1600MHz. DDR3 4GB RAM + 1600Mhz. DDR3 4GB RAM=Total 16GB DDR3 RAM
SLI Bridge
Intel Motherboards do not support SLI Actually.
Intel 775 Socket Motherboards give CrossFire Support as Production.
On this video you will see the Intel Motherboard and the SLI Application as one by one.
Operating system: Windows 7 64BIT

Also, motherboard and Xeon x5460 processor overclocked, GTA V Game Test with 2 different GTX460 Graphics cards

 

[P!nkpanther]

Since I happen to have a B350 MoBo and a GTX 970 as well, I decided to try to test the influence of the x16 vs. x4 PCIe bus width myself.
I used the GPU focused Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark at 1920x1080 in Standard graphics quality (Vsync Off).

First I tested the card in the x16 slot. Bus Usage peaked at ~7% and the performance was as follows:

Then I switched slots. Bus Usage peaked at ~28% and the performance suffered considerably:

While this confirms the old rule, that you always should prefer the first slot in any MoBo for your GPU, two of these cards in SLI still should be a lot faster than a single one. So even as that the second slot is only x4, this is not reason enough for a total performance of the SLI setup being slower than that of a single card.
Also the fact that the x4 slot is routed across the chipset does not seem to have any influence; it's all due to the x16 vs. x4 raw throughput difference.

 

[mattjdio]

yeah, I can't figure out why the software won't function properly on my hardware so I'm returning my AMD chip and motherboard and going back to Intel. Thank you all for all the help though!!

 

[NotTristan]

Hello everybody, I have a 1070, and a 1060 6gb, I followed the installer instructions on v 1.7.1 and I'm running nvidia drivers 397.93. When I press patch I get this.

"This is a win10 driver file. running win10 mode
Could not find patch #4
patching was aborted because some patch locations could not be found."

and btw I've doubled checked and my 1060 6gb and 1070 both show up fine.

 

[P!nkpanther]

Last driver version known to work with 1.7.1 is 388.71

 

[Skapaboopie]

Hi Everyone
So I have used DSLIA in the past for my two GTX 750ti's with success. However, I am having problems with enabling SLI on EVGA 980 4G + EVGA 970 4G (technically 3.5G). Whenever I hit enable SLI, it crashed to a black screen and when restarting windows, it starts with a black screen. The error code in Device Manager is "error 43" and only goes away after reinstalling the drivers from scratch using DDU uninstaller and reinstalling nvidia driver 388.71. I have followed instructions and drivers have been signed correctly. But the crash is unavoidable and I have tried using different PCIE-slots, switching the primary card, testing different drivers and their respective Different SLI Auto 1.xx which yielded unsuccessful results. I have also tried with and without a bridge, and my motherboard is SLI capable in 8x/8x mode. I have a hunch that the different memory architecture is causing the issues... but if anyone has successfully done this...please help?

 

[P!nkpanther]

Once you got the button for enabling SLI on otherwise non-matching cards, DifferentSLIauto is installed correctly and has done its job.
From then on SLI works as implemented in the nVidia driver, so you either get a working SLI setup or you end up with a black/blue screen, if the cards don't match, for whatever reason.

 

[İsmailTPC_Hastanesi]

INTEL MOTHERBOARD
"SLI" APPLICATION
2X NVIDIA GTX460 256BIT 2GB
ASUS P5K64 WS 775 Socket + 16GB DDR3 ram
4 PCI Express Slots
CPU: XEON E5462 12MB 1600FSB
SLI Bridge
Intel Motherboards do not support SLI Actually.
Intel 775 Socket Motherboards give CrossFire Support as Production.
On this video you will see the Intel Motherboard and the SLI Application as one by one.
Operating system: Windows 7 64BIT

 

[Edwired]

Hi every one i have tried differentsliauto 1.7.1 on windows 10 with asus gtx 750 ti oc and galaxy gtx 660 but after i did that it stops working so did the ddu cleanup then it wont install 3d vision driver from nvidia installation no matter how many times i tried it just. Did the differentsliauto made matter worse for the system i have is asus p5q premiem

 

[P!nkpanther]

These two cards cannot be SLIed together.
Different architecture (Kepler and Maxwell).

 

[Edwired]

Right my bad didnt think of that gonna have to find another asus gtx 750 ti oc somewhere online i know where to find one cheap enough

 

[slaine_mcroth]

My fork: https://github.com/system1357/DifferentSLIAuto
Code is sort of obsolete(only supports 382.xx)and crappy, will push recent work soon.

Hello JamesZzzz have you been able to make the latest source code available ?

 

[JackReaper]

can someone please help me with this?
the install cmd run normally but the program keep popping this message up

 

[P!nkpanther]

Version mismatch.
Use DifferentSLIauto version 1.7.1 and nVidia driver 388.71 (Windows 10 x64)
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/sli-with-different-cards.158907/post-3740425