Diesel or any other SLI guru's

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Hey Mike. I finally reinstalled Windows XP Pro (32 bit) and now everything seems to be working fine. Problem now is I'm only getting around 6500 as a 3DMark2006 score. Which I check their website is pretty damn good and I run BF2 in 1280 x 1024 with all extreme high video settings and using anti-aliasing etc and runs very pretty and very smooth. SO I don't really have any complaints I just wanted to ask how are you getting 8,000 plus. You mentioned something about my mobo not really utilizing 16 Express in SLI or something. Edjumicate a brother. My system specs are

MSI Neo4 Platinum SLI mobo
Aspire 680 watt PSU (SLI ready)
AMD 64bit 3500+ cpu
Two Gigabyte 7900GTX vid cards
2 Gb of PC3200 Corsair Xtreme ram
Audigy 4 sound card
on Windows XP Pro (32 bit)

What needs upgrading now.

[LA_MERC_Spark]

I had all kinds of problem with mine Andy. Does that board support full 16x in SLI? What eventually solved my problem was to test each vid card separately. Together the rig was scoring about 4500 - 5000 marks. Isolated, 1 card scored 4000, the other card would not run the test. The rig would lock up during the canyon run. I called up XFX and shipped the card back. After recieveing the replacement card all was well. Scored 8000 without oc'ing anything.

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

Yeah me and Spark are almost identical so our scores should be close.
when I got my new computer me and spark got the first true SLI x16 pci-E

When you go SLI in an older board you actually split the x16 into 2 eights.
When you have a board like the A8N32-SLI Deluxe, then you have 2 x16 pipes which equates to running it at x32. Does not mean a hill of beans really today, in 6 mos...maybe, except for benchmarking.

But like Spark said just to be sure, take one out at a time and run a test to make sure you are ok, it could be the dual core processors as well??

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

I did test each card seperately and I get about 4300 seperately on both. It appears to be working fine its just I'm not able to reach 8000. around 6500 is all I'm capable right now. Very good performance though. How do I check if my board does true 16 E SLI and not just split into two 8's. It may be new mobo time.

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

If you did not buy the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe at the end of last year, or have not bought it in the past few months...i think some of the other mobo makers have gone to the tech on their high end boards, but not needing to shop for them I am slightly off that loop, but before this year I know the A8N32-SLI Deluxe was the only board like that.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Here's my board and it says PCI-E express 16 times 2.

CPU
• Supports 64-bit AMD® Athlon™ 64FX/64 processor (Socket 939)
• Supports 3000+, 3200+, 3500+, 3800+, 4000+, FX53 and FX55

Chipset
• NVIDIA ® nForce4 SLI Chipset
- HyperTransport link to the AMD Athlon 64/Athlon 64FX CPU
- HyperTransport supporting speed up to 1GHz (2000MT/s)
- Supports 2xPCI Express X16 interface
- Two independent SATA controllers, for four drives
- IEEE 802.3 NVIDIA MAC for 1000BASE-T
- Dual Fast ATA-133 IDE controllers

Main Memory
• Supports dual channel DDR 266/333/400, using four 184-pin DDR DIMMs.
• Supports the memory size up to 4GB
• Supports 2.5v DDR SDRAM DIMM
Due to the High Performance Memory design, motherboards or system configurations may or may not operate smoothly at the JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) standard settings (BIOS Default on the motherboard) such as DDR voltage, memory speeds and memory timing. Please confirm and adjust your memory setting in the BIOS accordingly for better system stability.
Example: Kingston HyperX DDR500 PC4000 operates at 2.65V, 3-4-4-8, CL=3.
For more information about specification of high performance memory modules, please check with your Memory Manufactures for more details.

DIMM Module Combination
Install at least one DIMM module on the slots. Each DIMM slot supports up to a maximum size of 1GB. Users can install either single- or double-sided modules to meet their own needs. Please note that each DIMM can work respectively for singlechannel DDR, but there are some rules while using dual-channel DDR (Please refer to the suggested DDR population table below). Users may install memory modules of different type and density on different-channel DDR DIMMs. However, the same type and density memory modules are necessary while using dual-channel DDR, or instability may happen. Please refer to the following table for detailed dual-channel DDR. Other combination not listed below will function as single-channel DDR.
Green DIMM1 (Ch A) Purple DIMM2 (Ch B) Green DIMM3 (Ch A) Purple DIMM4 (Ch B) System Density
128MB ~ 1GB 128MB ~ 1GB - - 256MB ~ 2GB
- - 128MB ~ 1GB 128MB ~ 1GB 256MB ~ 2GB
128MB ~ 1GB 128MB ~ 1GB 128MB ~ 1GB 128MB ~ 1GB 512MB ~ 4GB

MSI Reminds You...
• Dual-channel DDR works ONLY in the 3 combinations listed in the table shown above.
• Please select the identical memory modules to install on the dual channel, and DO NOT install three memory modules on three DIMMs, or it may cause some failures.
• Always insert the memory modules into the GREEN slots first, and it is strongly recommended not to insert the memory modules into the PURPLE slots while the GREEN slots are left empty.
• This mainboard DO NOT support the memory module installed with more than 18 pieces of IC (integrated circuit).
• The Maximum memory speed decreases when the following two memory combination is selected:
- Each channel is installed with two double-sided memory module
- Both DIMM1 and DIMM3 are installed with double-sided memory module
• Due to the South Bridge resource deployment, the system density will only be detected up to 3+ GB (not full 4GB) when each DIMM is installed with an 1GB memory module

Slots
• Two PCI Express X16 slot (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)
• 2nd PCI Express X16 is compatible with PCI Express x 1
• Three 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots, one orange slot reserves as communication slot.
• Support 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface


On-Board IDE/SATA
• An IDE controller on the nVIDIA nForce3 Ultra chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA133/100/66 operation modes.
- Can connect up to 4 IDE devices
• NV RAID supports 4 SATA II ports (SATA1-4). Transfer rate is up to 300MB/s.
• NV RAID (Software)
- Supports up to 4 SATA plus 2 ATA 133 Hard drives
- RAID 0 or 1, 0+1, JBOD is supported
- RAID function work w/ ATA 133 + SATA H/D or 2 SATA H/D
• Silicon Image's SATARAID supports another 2 SATA II ports. Transfer rate is up to 300MB/s
- RAID 0 or 1 and JBOD groups are supported
- Support up to 2 SATA devices connected to a single controller


BIOS
• The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.
• Supports boot from LAN, USB Device 1.1 & 2.0 and SATA HDD


Audio
• Creative sound Bluster Live 24-bit H/W audio
- 24-bit / 96KHz audio quality
- 100db SNR clarity
- Up to 7.1 CH Surround Sound, Dolby Digital ready


LAN
• Supports dual LAN jacks
- 1st LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by nForce4 SLI
- 2nd PCI Express LAN supports 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Marvell 88E8053


IEEE1394
• VIA 6306 chipset
- Supports up to 3 x 1394 ports
- Transfer rate is up to 400Mbps


On-Board Peripherals
- 1 floppy port supports 1 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
- 1 serial port
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 1 audio jack (5-in-1), coaxial/fibre SPDIF out
- 10 USB 2.0 ports (Rear x 4 / Front x 6)
- 2 RJ45 LAN jack
- 3 IEEE 1394 a connectors (Rear x 1/ Front x 2)


Dimension
11.96 in (L) x 9.61 in(W) ATX Form Factor

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

yours means that they have 2 X16 slots, what they do not tell you is that when you enable SLI you still only have 16 (8x2), not double that of 32 (16x2)

[LA_MERC_Drifter]

Andy I would think that your CPU would play a big roll in the score as well. Seeing that you are running a 3500 and Mike is running a 4800 dual core ( I think) would make a big difference in bench mark scores as well.

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

Yeah and the oc memory I am sure helps as well being the 3500 corsair.

Andy just doing a quick ggogle search I think Abit and Asus are the only makers of the x32 PCI-E slots, Gigabyte may as well but i did not find their homepage, and if MSI has it, they do not advertise well , as their top of the line just says it has two x16 PCI-E slots, as all the older boards do.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

After a little research it appears that I'm rating about what I should. Mike and James have much better mobo's, cpu's, and ram, so I can see how I'm getting less. Will juts have to upgrade when I get the chance. The good thing is my video looks sweet and I can run anything turned up all the way so I'm happy. I just have to extremely nice video cards on a mediocre system. Its juts so damn expensive. Thanks god for a sugar momma, woohoo!

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

Yeah now they are saying we will need this to run the top of the line graphics game in the future: http://usa.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=2941
I have not seen it, but a buddy told me that he saw a side by side comparison, and this card made the physics look incredible, I just do not remember where the video came from.

Of course we can all see all this cool shiate at the lan... hey Reed can you bring 4 flat panels that I can hook up to see what it would look like :)

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

So what is that, a seprate card to install. How am I going to have room when I upgrade to QUAD SLI and have 4 7900GTX cards installed with the Audigy 4 and this new physics card. Son of a B(*&^(*, now they are juts getting carried away. Did anyone see the new Dell XPS renegade 700. Cost 10,000 dollars and has some kick ass specs like quad SLI of 7900GTX's. Now that's a gaming computer.

[LA_MERC_Diesel]

Yeah It is amazing, everything is going micro, but mainly due to heat everything on that front is getting bigger, which is why I have my case...air flow is so key to case when you step up to the big boys.

[LA_MERC_Spark]

Yeah... I have no room in my box for anything. Cant even stick a wireless card in. Damn vid cards take up 4 slots >.> And it does get warm in there. Im actually thinking about liquid cooling.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

No James, Water + Electricity = BAD. Just get a monster PSU (Mine is the Aspire 680 watt) and pus lots of fans. Mass Air Flow is your friend.

[LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d]

SM2.0 Score: 2037
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 2025
CPU Score: 876

Total: 4239

AMD 3700
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2x1Gb Cosair 2-3-3-6
XFX 7900GT

No overclock yet.

Spark 2 words. GET WATER! It's expensive but it does 2 things for your rig, first is the obvious cooling your stuff off better than loud fans. Second is the ultimate in l33tn3ss by using water because while it's catching on more and more not that many people have it. Zero in our clan, that I know, all of which are gaming geeks trying to have a badash setup for maximum in pwnage!

Two more words which will live forever and go down in history.


Do it.

Do it.

[LA_MERC_Spark]

Got a leet psu and two huge case fans pulling air straight through.... cpu temp hangs around 56c or so.... not bad for x2 proc, but liquid could keep it more constant and about 2 to 3 degrees cooler