machee

The problem:
You must remove any graphics cards that are not compatible with NIVDIA Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology before you can enable SLI.

Hardware:
ASUS A8N32-SLI DELUXE
2 x ASUS EN6800GT Video Cards
4200+ AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor
2gig Corsair DDR 400 (PC 3200) Ram
Antec 500w SMARTPOWER 2.0 Power Supply
81.98 Drivers

Histoy/Info
If I only run one card, I get a message in the sli mode window that says this card is sli compatible, and in order to run in sli mode, add another identical card. So I get an identical card, add it separately to start with and get that same message, both say they are willing and able. But as soon as I add the second card, the message I described above appears in the same sli mode window, remove any card that is not sli compatible. I have searched through many forums and have verified the selector card direction is/was turned in the right direction and installed correctly, the bridge connector was/is used, the 4 pin power slot is plugged in.

After a week or two trying everything I could think of, I replaced the mobo. I was using a K8n neo4/sli and thought after trying 100 different things to get SLI to run that maybe the selector unit was faulty, and so I replaced it with the board mentioned above. which is a pretty nice and doesn’t even have one of those selector cards that you reverse, but still I get the same bogus message.

I called MSI (when I had the k8n installed) who said it wasn’t there mobo because I was able to see and use both cards independently, and so they brushed me off to nvidia. Nvidia said it wasn’t their problem because I can run the cards individually, and so they said I need to call ASUS. So off to ASUS I go, who said that even though my bios is different on each card, the 80 series drivers takes care of that. I asked them where I could get a bios file anyways so I could flash both cards and make them equal, and they said they don’t have any available en6800gt bios for the public, and told me if I tried to use other mfg’s bios that I could totally screw them up from working at all. So in other words, no help from ASUS either.

Someone replied back to me on another forum stating that they had to switch something in the bios to make sure both pci slots were running at the same speed. According to both mobo mfg’s, this is automatically set and can not be changed. If I’m wrong, please show or tell me where to change this or check this.

Is there other drivers besides the 81.98 card drivers that I should be making sure are the latest and greatest that would have an impact? Is there some little thing that I am over looking…PC Pitstop says everything is good, future mark 3d gives me a 11500 rating without sli, but I want to enable that mode as I have heard it is totally awesome, and I spent $$ trying to get there….

Suggestions…Ideas…Thoughts…..

Calling on the guru’s of the world…..HELP!.... Please….Thanks….

machee