How to get SLI enabled?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited December 2010 in Hardware
I was messing around with my PC that I was folding on, and I decided to run benchmarks on it to see how it would do in single and dual GPU use against my main PC with a 4870, in 3DMark06 (I have XP on the computers).

It did fine in the single GPU mode, but when I'd attach the SLI bridge, I'd get the one long and 2 short beep BIOS error code. Which is a video problem.

I did some searching and I think I'm supposed to enable SLI somewhere, but the places I looked didn't show anything specifically for SLI. I looked in the Nvidia control panel but didn't see it there either. Might have missed it if I was looking for the wrong words. I searched for enable SLI, and the help section said to look in the 3D section, but there is nothing there about SLI. Does the SLI link have to be on the GPUs to get this? Because with it on I can't get it booted up to the desktop, it BIOS errors out.

I have the GPUs in the 1st and 3rd PCI Express slots, I don't know if that makes any difference.

Anyone know what to do?

MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard, 1.90 BIOS version
2 8800 GT video cards
XP Home SP3
9650 quad core 2.30 Ghz
2 GB ram

Comments

  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited December 2010
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited December 2010
    What are we saying? The K9A2 will do crossfire but not SLI?
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited December 2010
    It's an AMD board with no SLi certification, so no, it will not handle SLi for you.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited December 2010
    Straight from the first link of googling "MSI K9A2"

    <table class="spec_box" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="90%"><tbody><tr><th width="200">SLI</th> <td>N/A</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="200">3-way SLI</th> <td>N/A</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="200">Hybrid SLI</th> <td>N/A</td> </tr> <tr> <th width="200">CrossFire</th> <td>Y</td></tr></tbody></table>
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited December 2010
    A stands for AMD chipset (790FX) so yes, you can't do SLI only Crossfire.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited December 2010
    Ok thanks. Just googled some info on it as well, it said only Nvidia chipsets will support SLI. The K9A2 is an AMD 790 chipset.

    I never gave it much thought before, I assumed if a motherboard could handle crossfire then it could do SLI as well.

    Oh well, now I know. No big deal. I'll pay attention to that in the future.
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