SOLVED 2-way SLi + 3 Monitor Surround = high temps and instability vs 2-way SLi + 1 mon

I just can't seem to put my finger on this one. Thus far I have been running a single Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti GHz with 3 monitor surround and performance has been rock solid and stable. Just got my second Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti a few days ago for an SLi setup with my 3 monitor surround and have been plagued with instability. My 3 monitors are all connected with DVI cables with 2 monitors on the master GPU and one monitor on the second GPU.

My system specs:

Intel i7-3770k Ivy [email protected] 1.35v
Maximus V FORMULA BIOS 0804
SLi GTX 780 Ti GHz WindForce x3
G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB DDR3 1600
Thermalright Venemous-X RT
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATAIII SSD (OS)
Crucial M4 128GB SATAIII SSD
Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm
Tritton AX720 5.1 Surround
Corsair Ax1200i 1200 watt PSU

What I know so far:

1. 2-way SLi disabled with 3 monitor surround enabled GPU temp is in mid 60s on load and stability is rock solid.
2. 2-way SLi enabled on a single monitor gaming at 1920 x 1080 temps are in mid 60s to low 70s performance is rock solid.
3. 2- way SLi enabled with 3 monitor portrait surround gaming at 3240 x 1920 results in gpu temps in mid 70s to lo 80s.

When I say instability, it involves the following: game freezes, sound keeps playing, screens go black and sound continues to play. And nothing can get me out of this without resetting the PC. On a few occasions I've been able to ctrl alt del into desktop where i hard freeze and have to reset.

Here are the things I have tried so far:

1. A clean re-install of windows
2. Several older driver versions
3. tested one GPU at a time, both work solid with no issues
4. Down clocked the GPU core on both GPUs back to 1085 (since the gtx 780 Ti's come with a boost of 1150)
5. Tried a different SLi bridge cable

After all of this the same problem still persists. What I can't make any sense of is why having surround enabled makes the GPU temps run go so much higher than with a single monitor. Also, is there any restriction on whether I have to use a specific combination of DVI, display-port and HDMI cables for 3 monitor surround?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Just had a crash with single monitor SLi. So its not due to NV Surround. SLi is unstable.

Here is what I see in my event viewer every time my games crash:

Warning: Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

Error: The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

\Device\Video7
1593(2960) 00000000 00000000

1. Is the additional connector on the motherboard plugged in?

2. Should be normal that surround gaming has higher temps. Cards are power adaptive and only work as hard to match the vsync/framerate cap. If there is a higher resolution, it has to work harder. Check the GPU usage with GPU-Z to see if that's true.

3. I found this picture, it applies to GTX 680s, but I can't imagine 780s are any different.



4. With the HAF 932, do you have the side fan blowing on the cards?

Thanks mate, but now im confused as to if its the game crashing or if its the SLi being unstable. After i flashed my BIOS to latest it dosent seem to have kicked in until I loaded factory defaults and then set my CPU overclock again. I need to do more testing to figure out if its SLI thats unstable or if its just that one game crashing.

Is it one game in particular that is crashing?

Oops just saw you tried with the new card alone.
How many different drivers?
Try the second pcie slot alone?
Try with completely stock system?

Rattle said:

Oops just saw you tried with the new card alone.
How many different drivers?
Try the second pcie slot alone?
Try with completely stock system?

Click to expand...

Tried all of that mate. The system is not the problem. The card is bad. This confirmed it: https://forums.geforce.com/default/...gabyte-windforce-gv-n78toc-3gd-oc-bad-batch-/

I have the exact same symptoms as the people in that thread.

I narrowed it down to the second card being the problem. When running by itself it crashes the exact same way my SLi setup crashes. With the first good card in place everything is peachy. Currently waiting on my replacement for the bad one to come in.