Hello ppl....need help with SLI on this SR-2 board! Plzzzzzzzz
 
I have 2 PNY Quadro 4000 video cards that I am trying to run in SLI mode on my SR-2 board.
 
1.) Both Quadro 4000 cards are installed in PCI-E x16 slots.
2.) Both cards are also connected via the SLI bridge.
3.) Both cards are functioning properly. The BIOS sees 2 GPUs.
4.) I installed the latest drivers (270.76). Windows sees 2 video cards and in Nvidia control panel I see 2 GPUs.
 
When I "View system topology" it shows "SLI Mode: Diasbled: SLI Multi View." There is NO option for me to turn on SLI mode. I tried installing the beta drivers  still the same problem.
 
I have two 28" monitors and I tried different combinations with them as well (both monitors connected to one video card, one monitor connected to each video card, only one monitor connected, connected via display port or through DVI), but SLI is still disabled.

I have spent a lot of time trying to resolve this, but no luck. I scoured through many forums, but no solution. I came across one post dating all the way back to 2008 and it mentioned something about both the video cards need to be exactly identical in order for the SLI to work. So in that sense the SLI should work.
 
I contacted PNY technical support and I was told that this SR-2 board is GeForce SLI capable not Quadro SLI capable. The difference is in the board BIOS not the video card itself. Honestly speaking, this is the first I've heard of this. I thought SLI is SLI as long as the mobo supports SLI and the video cards support SLI it should work....this thing of GeForce SLI and Quadro SLI is new!!!
 
I'm wondering if anyone could shed some light on this. Maybe someone has had similar issue and found a solution or work around.
 
I bought these two really expensive cards hoping to get them to work in SLI, but now hearing this.....
 
Thanks for helping!!!
 
 
PS. I am running the latest BIOS. A53.

The Quadro 4000 does not support SLI in this sense. However, both the 5000 and 6000 do.
 
Check the spec's very carefully and note the Quadro 4000 supports "Multi OS Technology", but it does not support "SLI Mosiac Technology"  This makes things confusing because Nvidia considers both features a form of SLI. 
 
It's easier to compare & contrast it to the 5000's spec's side by side. (under Specifications -> Feature Support)
http://www.nvidia.com/obj...ct-quadro-4000-us.html
http://www.nvidia.com/obj...ct-quadro-5000-us.html
 
 

Hi guys, thanks for the responses.
 
@ radiantdragon87: damn man that's pretty sick....7 quadro cards!!! Had I knows you had so many I might've purchased them from you rather than forking out $1400 for 2 Quadro 4000 cards.
 
@ Alanw: thanks for shedding light on this. Funny how the PNY tech support bring this to my attention. They just said yes these cards are SLI capable, it's the mobo BIOS that's limiting it. It's just not supported.
 
So from what I now understand that these cards are not true SLI (in the sense that most of us know....2 cards combined via SLI bridge share the workload).
 
So with these cards I can run one app (Maya, let's say) on one card and another app (3D StudioMax) in VMWare on another cards. One question....do the cards still have to be connected via the SLI bridge for this to work?
 
Quadro 4000 cards can not be connected together to share the workload of a single application, but 5000 and 6000 can?
 
With that said, now I am thinking since both the cards can be connected via the SLI bridge what is preventing them to share the workload of a single application. Is it the Video card BIOS? Is there a work around to make them work as true SLI?
 
@ lopium: I wanted to build an audio/video workstation. I wanted to be able to do video editing as well as heavy 3D stuff (fluid sims) in programs like Maya, 3D Max etc. Having these in SLI would just make the work-flow a lot smoother.

lopium

Maya doesn't care about SLI i allready asked autodesk concerning that, i have a quadro4000 too that's why i'm asking, and don't forget that fluids effect are calculated by the cpu and not by the graphic card, at least the viewport update but the SLI configuration wont affect anything...i might be wrong but last time i asked autodesk they told me that, but maybe it changed now with maya 2012...

 
This is correct, and nothing has changed. To my knowledge there aren't any 3D applications that can use SLI. 
 
Still, it's important to distinguish the different types of usages for multiple video cards. SLI is dividing up your screen, and partitioning out pixels to be drawn by different video cards.  This isn't supported by 3D apps, but there is also CUDA and Open CL processing.  These technologies have nothing to do with drawing pixels on your screen.  They are very specialized for processing duties that fit well with parallel computational tasks.  For example, some fluid solvers are written to use CUDA, but this is only for processing the simulation, which is normally a CPU bound task.  Here's an example. http://www.foliativ.net/b...da-Fluid-Solver-Plugin
 
Mental Ray's iRay or VRAY RT are other cuda examples that will use as many video cards as you can fit in your machine. (as far as I know).  However, they have nothing to do with SLI.

linux4ever1
It will make a sig difference in video editing apps right?

 
The Mercury playback engine in Adobe Premier Pro has a few very specific operations that can make use of the GPU.  This has nothing to do with SLI though.
 
Adobe After Effects also uses the Mercury Playback engine, but it does NOT make use of the GPU for it's operations like Premier.
 
I also have a Quadro 4000.  It regularly gets to around 90C under very heavy load. Just make sure your fan is helping out when this happens.  I had to adjust mine to around 65% speed since Nvidia's drivers weren't helping out like they should.  I'm on Linux though.
 
 

I'm honestly not sure. I don't use windows.
 
In Linux I set a hidden flag in xorg.conf called "CoolBits" to the value 5.  And the Nvidia Settings panel shows the previously hidden fan control settings.
 
Try searching for it. It's possible this easter egg exists in windows as well. 
 
If you want this feature in Linux, I recommend this small python application for controlling fan speed based on GPU temperature. http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=903040

Ok, so any one still following this, I finally got the temps under control.
 
I bought http://www.newegg.com/Pro...9&Tpk=scythe%20vga
it was a risk because it doesn't mention that it will fit on a Quadro 4000 card.
 
The Scythe VGA cooler arrived. I took apart the card Quadro 4000 card, cleaned the old thermal residue. Put new thermal paste and installed the cooler and the heat sinks on the ram chips. 
 
The card originally takes up 1 slot and with the after market cooler it now takes 2 slots. So the cooler only take 1 slot.
 
And the before and after temps are as follows (your temps may vary).
 
Before (fan controlled by the video card):
Ible: low 60s celsius
Load: low to mid 90s celsius
 
After (lowest fan setting):
Idle: low to mid 50s celsius
Load: low to mid 80s celsius
 
After (highest fan setting)):
Idle: mid to high 40s celsius
Load: low to mid 60s celsius (After 1 hour of FuMark burn test, the temps didn't go past 66 degrees)
 
 
I was hesitant to purchase this cooler but it worked out really well. It not only fit perfectly, but it reduced the temp by 30 to 40 degrees. WOW! I should also mention that the fan on this cooler at max speed seems quieter than the stock fan on Quadro card at low level.
 
I am very pleased with this cooler. Highly recommend it to other users of this card. It's well worth the $40+ dollars.

No professional applications in the DCC area that I have ever heard of use SLI.  Having a second card can, in some case, help with GPU compute caluclations (see After Effects CUDA renderer) but you should not even have them connected via a SLI cable.
 
Maya does not use SLI, but if you for instance are running dual montors, having 2 cards (non SLI) can be helpful as you are not dividing the VRAM across two big screens.
 
Adobe Premiere currently only uses the display graphics, and not the extra cards, for Mercury.  That is supposed to be fixed in Premiere CC though.

linux4ever1

@ Alanw: thanks for shedding light on this. Funny how the PNY tech support bring this to my attention. They just said yes these cards are SLI capable, it's the mobo BIOS that's limiting it. It's just not supported.

So from what I now understand that these cards are not true SLI (in the sense that most of us know....2 cards combined via SLI bridge share the workload).

So with these cards I can run one app (Maya, let's say) on one card and another app (3D StudioMax) in VMWare on another cards. One question....do the cards still have to be connected via the SLI bridge for this to work?

 
Something doesn't sound right here. It sounds like a combination of:
 
1) They just re-used the GTX465 PCB hence why the SLI connector is there (quite likely)
2) The botched the BIOS and couldn't get it to work, and never bothered fixing it (just document that it doesn't work and is thus not supported)
3) The deliberately disabled the functionality in the driver and reserved it for the higher end models (by far the most likely option)
 
My guess is a combination of 1) and 3).

Hey there - I built my SR-2 with video editing in mind - Adobe CS6 Suite - and I went the GTX690 route X 2 - The Quad - SLI (That's two cards - two GPUs on each card) slowed down every cuda benchmark I ran...but no SLI and my rig was singing with After Effects...I did a lot of research and found that the GTX cards were very responsive with CUDA - the only thing you may generally gain is the 10 bit depth with the right monitoring solution by going with a Quadro....the GTX also gave much better bang for buck as well as the performance...google cuda and mercury playback benchmark tests in After Effects and Premiere Pro...you ll find it all there for yourself...P.S. the Cuda in After Effects largely only benefits ray tracing as you may already know....