PCIe extension ribbon cable

Hello,

My system includes an eVGA P55 SLI mobo and 2 SLI'd 9800 GTX+ video cards. I decided to upgrade the coolers as they run hot under load and I wanted to do some overclocking as well.

I'm using a pair of Accelero Twin Turbos which work awesome, silent and about a 20-30 degree drop, however, the cards will not fit in my PCI-e x16 and x8 slots due to the thickness. Currently, I am only running one because of this.

I ordered a PCI-e extension ribbon cable which allows me to plug the male end up into the PCI-e x8 slot in the board with just enough clearance behind the fan shrouds and allowed me to relocate the 2nd card. Success?

Nope. The motherboard does not recognize the card through the extension. There is no display, no recognition in the device manager, and when used to connect the first card to the motherboard, the LED readout shows a 2e code indicating no graphics card. Here are the steps I've taken:

Put the 2nd card in the PCI-e x4 slot below, but I was informed that you can not use this for SLI, it is dedicated for only a 3rd card for PhysX.

Uninstalled and reinstalled the latest versions of the drivers.

Ordered a second extension ribbon in case the first was faulty.

Tried both cards in both slots with and without the ribbon (the ribbon is for sure the issue).

Contacted eVGA tech support who
said they have no experience with these ribbons, but suggested their Power Boost to provide additional power to the PCI-e bus. Yes, I bit and I bought. No good.

I really enjoy the performance I'm getting with my cards and I love the fact that no matter what load test I run, I can't heat them past 71 degrees. I don't want to give up on this project when it seems that I'm ALMOST there (and I can make it look nice too ) Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Tim

If the card works by itself and doesn't with the ribbon cable, it has to be the ribbon cable. Either it is too long, faulty or creates too much resistance/latency.

You have a couple options

1) Put the stock coolers back on
2) Get a different motherboard
3) Try another cable or a shorter one
4) Only run one card with an aftermarket cooler


Honestly speaking, the last one is going to be your best bet. You are running the G92 core cards. They are old and a single new card would stomp on these like it was nothing. Not worth running SLi without having the best card out there. Sell them, get a single good card and get rid of your headache.

Yep. g92 was great late 2007 early 2008 but now it's just not up to it. I agree on sell and get something new. Even today's $150 GPU is better by a fair bit than 2 g92 GPUs.

You could keep one 9800 with your new card (assuming it was Nvidia) and use the 9800 for physX. I have an underused 8800GTS(also g92) that I've considered using for this but it gets used for HTPC stuff from time to time so I likely won't...

Thanks

Thanks for the responses guys. If that's what it comes to, then I'll have to do that. For me, this was more of a problem solving project and proof of concept. It seemed like I was very close to getting it working minus this one hiccup.

This was my first system build (end of 09) and it's all been a learning experience. I've been making additions and whatnot since it was built and it's been kind of my transition from just a gamer to a hobbyist, ya know? If I can't go any farther with it, well then I guess that's that.

Thanks again for the advise

Oops, sorry. Missed your msg that you've gotten a solution for the problem.

thideras said:

You have a couple options

1) Put the stock coolers back on
2) Get a different motherboard
3) Try another cable or a shorter one
4) Only run one card with an aftermarket cooler


Honestly speaking, the last one is going to be your best bet. You are running the G92 core cards. They are old and a single new card would stomp on these like it was nothing. Not worth running SLi without having the best card out there. Sell them, get a single good card and get rid of your headache.

Click to expand...

True, a next-generation card is almost the only "sane" solution, except modifying the coolers on the GPU. PCI-e-extension cables sound shoddy, there's a reason why they're located where they are on the mobo, in relation to the buscontroller,memory,cpu etc. ;-)

Good luck, whatever you choose. (Personally, I would get a "main" ATI Radeon 5770-6950 etc for one port, and maybe a Geforce for PhysX in addition, since the mobo supports it. That is because I love gaming. A "common" desktop pc user (web-surfer,emailing,photo editor etc ) that don't play the latest 3D-games would do with a lot less. But it's almost more valuable to buy at least a mid-range graphics card if one thinks about bang for the bucks. And in these days, who don't?

Cheers, and good luck!

-Chiron