Problems with gtx 280 sli and vista 64

[BIGBADPRIME]

Okay I have three gtx 280 sli and a 790i mb.

Now if i run my copies of wow in fullscreen they run fine :)

but the minute i try running them in windowed mode they have problems and i get an outright system freeze

has anyone ever ran into this problem, or is anyone run crossfire no problem either ?


BTW i don't have this crash issue if am not in sli mode

[Stealthy]

I'm only running 2 GTX 280's - I don't get crashing in windowed mode, but i do get a big FPS hit - drops down to ~10FPS in Dal on both screens.

Obvious question - are you running the latest drivers? The released new drivers on April 2nd...just downloaded them today, will be installing when I get home. :)

Cheers,

S.

[Nitro]

Do you have Aero Turned off? I had the same freezing issue with my gtx 295 and turning off aero fixed it.

[BIGBADPRIME]

hmm so i have to turn of aero it sounds like :(

its pretty funny too considering it didn't have the same problem not in sli lol

[BIGBADPRIME]

sweet this seems to be working now thanks alot for the help


makes me wonder if this is a nvidia fualt or a vista fault

[BIGBADPRIME]

oh ya here is how to have the best of both worlds although i have yet to try it

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/easily-disable-vistas-aero-before-running-an-application-such-as-a-video-game/

[Zappy]

I've had that exact problem, and it's not limited to WOW -- it's any game that I run in windowed mode with SLI enabled. It only happens when Aero is enabled along with SLI, then my computer totally locks up. I'm running tri-sli 280GTX on a core i7 w/ vista 64. I disabled Aero and that solves the problem, however, the performance was noticeably worse for warcraft.

For now, I leave SLI disabled for wow.

[BIGBADPRIME]

man someohow it don't surprize me, lol it is mircrosoft the king of bs and they don't know how to patch a problem like this. Some one needs to submit this bug to mircrosoft lol

[kermitforney]

I was told that using two graphics cars (not in SLI) would actually be detrimental to performance. For any of you that have dual graphics cards that drive two monitors, is this an issue? Reason being, I have two 22' monitors and want to have seperate 9800GTX's or GTX280's drive each of them.

[Lax]

The benefits from SLI (or crossfire) come when games specifically implement support for them, and they are generally assuming that you'd be running a single instance of the game. If you're running multiple monitors, you'd be better served by having them operating independently -- some on one, some on the other, and this would both improve performance (much like splitting instances between CPU cores) and stability for multiboxing. If you're not using multiple monitors, SLI might help but with multiple game instances, it may be unstable.

[Vmpwraith]

2 GPUS in Vista may also cause a problem/Bug. Check out the sticky to the fix.

Possible fix for some of you with Vista and poor Graphic Card preformance low Fps ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=21517')

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710
" When a DirectX 10 application runs on a Windows Vista-based computer that has multiple graphics cards, the computer does not use the secondary graphics card"

You have a Windows Vista-based computer. The computer uses two or more DirectX-compatible graphics processing units (GPUs) in a linked configuration. You are using a DirectX 10 application and driver. In this scenario, the computer's graphics performance indicates that only a single GPU is being used.
CAUSE
This problem occurs because the operating system does not forward driver-render requests to the secondary GPU.

This may also be a problem. Anyway you can check it out. This problem will effect more than just running wow.

[kermitforney]

2 GPUS in Vista may also cause a problem/Bug. Check out the sticky to the fix.

Possible fix for some of you with Vista and poor Graphic Card preformance low Fps ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=21517')

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936710
" When a DirectX 10 application runs on a Windows Vista-based computer that has multiple graphics cards, the computer does not use the secondary graphics card"

You have a Windows Vista-based computer. The computer uses two or more DirectX-compatible graphics processing units (GPUs) in a linked configuration. You are using a DirectX 10 application and driver. In this scenario, the computer's graphics performance indicates that only a single GPU is being used.
CAUSE
This problem occurs because the operating system does not forward driver-render requests to the secondary GPU.

This may also be a problem. Anyway you can check it out. This problem will effect more than just running wow.Later in this article the solution is given and reported to be corrected in Service Pack 1.

[Phanes]

For what it is worth I am an IT consultant and build high end rigs on the side via word of mouth. I have had two of the same card and one monitor plugged into each, back before they made it so SLI could use two monitors, and saw massive performance hits. What was happening is the cards are swapping resources so while one is utlizing resources the other one is waiting. Even though we are talking 1000s of a second swaps it was still horrible results.

When Clients ask me about SLI I tell them to run a two monster cards like dual 295s for quad sli and a massive small format monitor like a 30 or 32 inch. If they want to run dual monitors just run one high end card like a 285 and a pair of 26s.

I have not done dual non sli video cards in about a year so it may be different today. I just know last time I tried back in 08 with a pair of 9800s the performance was horrible.