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I tried out Quad-SLI 9800GX2 and got worse results from just one 9800GX2...

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trist007

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Jun 29, 2008
Alright check it out. I started off with an E8400 oc'd to 4.05Ghz on an Abit IP35 Pro mobo, 2 gigs of crucial ddr 800mhz ram and one 9800GX2. 700w OCZ ps. I was running windows xp. I didn't oc the 9800GX2. I ran 3dmark 2006 and was scoring an 18,400 consistently. I was amazed and was feeling good hehe. Then I bought another 9800GX2, same brand, same clock speed. I had to get a new mobo for SLI so I got the XFX nForce 780i SLI. I just moved everything over to that, except I got a new 1000w OCZ ps. One side note, this was my first nvidia chipset mobo ever. Northbridge is 780i, but there's no southbridge? Read the manual, and you can setup a raid on Nvidia's MediaShield, but I didn't. I wanted AHCI, but whatever, IDE will do. I was coming from AHCI on an ICH9R on my abit which was great. On the XFX manual it said that transfer rate was 300mb/sec. Isn't it kinda slow? Thought those sata drives could get 1.5gb/sec, or is that just on the hard disk, and the mobo's usually transfer a lot slower?

Anyways, so I bridged the two 9800GX2s together. Does it matter which way the bridge goes? Anyhow, I ran 3dmark 2006. My score in windows xp went from a 18,400 down to a 13,110. I was like, crap this sux. I just spent all that money. Then I found out that quad sli is not supported on win xp and only works on vista. This made sense, b/c the nvidia control panel in win xp didn't give me the option to enable sli. So, I installed vista. Mind you, I always made sure I had the latest nvidia graphic card drivers. I went to the nvidia control panel in vista, and bam, there was the option to enable sli. I clicked it, it setup and I was ready. I oc'd this board to 3.8ghz. I ran 3dmark 2006, and bam was getting a 13,000 again, wtf. I'm thinking of maybe switching the orientation on the sli bridge. I've heard talk that my core 2 duo e8400 may be the bottleneck, but then why would I be able to get an 18,400 with just one 9800GX2? Then, I thought, maybe a setting in the bios was holding my power back. Learned that MCP, the northbridge, is in charge of processing all the SLI bandwidth. Do I need to make an adjustment to the MCP? More voltage? Or are the drivers not very good for quad sli yet?

I'm ****ed also that nvidia didn't give us a warning that quad sli is not supported in win xp. They did a massive marketing campaign and decided to leave that out. I'm hoping it's just the drivers. I'm gonna look into the MCP and some other options. I'm eager to see what you guys think. If anything, I'll prob switch back to my abit board with one 9800GX2 for now. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks. Oh yeah, the bios on both mobos were fully updated. Laters.
 
Just ran 3dmark 2006 in vista again, 14,491. Earlier I said that vista gave me a 13,000.
I just guessed that it was a 13,000 b/c I didn't run the whole test. The minute I saw the framerate go down into the 30s I just quit it. My first setup with one GX2 never even got into the 40s, except obviously on the cpu tests. Well it's a little better, but I mean still, wtf...............
 
That's really odd, Windows XP should support dual 9800GX2s (Quad SLI).

Make sure you have the latest service pack installed for XP, and the lastest drivers installed for the video card. It doesn't matter which way the bridge goes, but you need to enable quad-sli in the nvidia control panel.

Also make sure both your video cards are running on the same BIOS.

Don't expect Quad-SLI to scale very well, though. You might hit 20k on 3dmark06 in XP if you're lucky.
 
Oh, I see. Didn't know the video cards had a bios. Gonna install the newest firmware. I'll report back with results.
 
JamesXP said:
I'm betting lack of power, the OCZ isnt quad sli material.
Click to expand...
+1

I think 9800gx2 consumes 300W+ under load, you might need a bigger PSU. If you have another PSU laying around you can use that to power at least 1 card and have the OCZ on the other 3.

Curious, have you tested 3-SLI? good framerates?
 
I'm gonna use a separate psu to power one 9800gx2 and use the ocz to power the other 9800gx2. I'll post up results later on tonite.
 
trist007 said:
Alright check it out. I started off with an E8400 oc'd to 4.05Ghz on an Abit IP35 Pro mobo, 2 gigs of crucial ddr 800mhz ram and one 9800GX2. 700w OCZ ps. I was running windows xp. I didn't oc the 9800GX2. I ran 3dmark 2006 and was scoring an 18,400 consistently. I was amazed and was feeling good hehe. Then I bought another 9800GX2, same brand, same clock speed. I had to get a new mobo for SLI so I got the XFX nForce 780i SLI. I just moved everything over to that, except I got a new 1000w OCZ ps. One side note, this was my first nvidia chipset mobo ever. Northbridge is 780i, but there's no southbridge? Read the manual, and you can setup a raid on Nvidia's MediaShield, but I didn't. I wanted AHCI, but whatever, IDE will do. I was coming from AHCI on an ICH9R on my abit which was great. On the XFX manual it said that transfer rate was 300mb/sec. Isn't it kinda slow? Thought those sata drives could get 1.5gb/sec, or is that just on the hard disk, and the mobo's usually transfer a lot slower?

Anyways, so I bridged the two 9800GX2s together. Does it matter which way the bridge goes? Anyhow, I ran 3dmark 2006. My score in windows xp went from a 18,400 down to a 13,110. I was like, crap this sux. I just spent all that money. Then I found out that quad sli is not supported on win xp and only works on vista. This made sense, b/c the nvidia control panel in win xp didn't give me the option to enable sli. So, I installed vista. Mind you, I always made sure I had the latest nvidia graphic card drivers. I went to the nvidia control panel in vista, and bam, there was the option to enable sli. I clicked it, it setup and I was ready. I oc'd this board to 3.8ghz. I ran 3dmark 2006, and bam was getting a 13,000 again, wtf. I'm thinking of maybe switching the orientation on the sli bridge. I've heard talk that my core 2 duo e8400 may be the bottleneck, but then why would I be able to get an 18,400 with just one 9800GX2? Then, I thought, maybe a setting in the bios was holding my power back. Learned that MCP, the northbridge, is in charge of processing all the SLI bandwidth. Do I need to make an adjustment to the MCP? More voltage? Or are the drivers not very good for quad sli yet?

I'm ****ed also that nvidia didn't give us a warning that quad sli is not supported in win xp. They did a massive marketing campaign and decided to leave that out. I'm hoping it's just the drivers. I'm gonna look into the MCP and some other options. I'm eager to see what you guys think. If anything, I'll prob switch back to my abit board with one 9800GX2 for now. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks. Oh yeah, the bios on both mobos were fully updated. Laters.
Click to expand...


So your quad sli didnt work in 3dmark06 with windows xp on your motherboard without a southbridge.

Hahahahahahahahhahaha.

Sorry all the guys in the office had a good laugh at this thread.
 
-Where to find n00bs
On the internet, n00bs make their colonies on forums. They migrate in waves, usually on weekends, and proceed to clog up bandwidth with stupid questions and sometimes even stupid answers. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to be on a board large enough to attract migrating noobs, there will hopefully be authority in charge who is smart enough to take extermination measures before they can make nests and larger colonies.
 
Hehe, I know I'm a noob. Glad I at least got you guys some laughs. I'm just used to going to newegg and looking at a mobo's northbridge and southbridge. Just thought it was weird that this one didn't have a southbridge. So how does it work the?. I mean the 780i is the northbridge, does it also takes care of handling hard drives, dvds, usbs?
 
Well I had my uber flame thread almost fully written until I saw you took my last post well, so I'm deciding to be helpful instead.

The northbridge handles communication from the PCIe, AGP, and memory busses to the CPU.

The southbridge handles almost everything else, PCI busses, USB, IDE, SATA, floppy, LAN, mouse and keyboard, etc.

The 780i does have a southbridge as does all modern motherboards.


Now, as for your actual issue, the 9800GX2 will not work in SLI under Windows XP, ONLY Vista. Secondly, it is common to receive lower performance with quad SLI in 3dMark 06, in Vista of course. The more accurate benchmark for Quad SLI will be 3D mark Vantage. Try going to Vista, run 3DMark Vantage and you will probably see some good performance gains over one GX2.
 
A better way to establish performance is in actual game-playing, have you tried it?

Also Mamm0th I don't think you would fit well here, posts like that will get you banned by the mods pretty fast. Glad you decided to be helpful, though.
 
I got a P11,654 on 3dMark Vantage. Is that good for quad sli?

Also, used a separate psu to power one 9800gx2 while the other 9800gx2 was powered by that OCZ. I got the same score on 3dmark 2006, so I don't think power is an issue. I would think 1000 watts is plenty, but what do I know. I'm figuring that the potential of quad sli hasn't been fully unleashed with the current set of drivers. With my setup on 3dmark 2006, I could only get a 14,400 with one 9800gx2. I was getting a slightly lower score with quad sli, 14,200. Those results are with a 3.0 e8400. Judging by the past, if I oc'd my cpu to 4.0 score would probably only go up by 2000 points.

I think I'm gonna stick with my old setup, abit ip35 pro oc'd to 4.05 with one 9800gx2 getting a 3dmark 2006 score of 18,400. Plenty of power for now hehe.
 
Last edited:
Did some comparison on ORB and that score isnt too bad with 2 GX2s. I would try it with one GX2, then both and see the difference. Try OCing your CPU to 4.0 which should be a breeze with a 780i. Either way, I think your idea of going back to 1 GX2 with your E8400 @ 4.0 is a good one if you can get your money back on the second GX2. The performance of a second GX2 just isn't all that at the moment to be honest.
 
That 1000 watter is more than enough. Your system with a single GX2 would draw under 400 watts loaded (at the wall, less at the PSU) and adding a second is only going to bump it up to 575-625 or so. P11654 is a respectable score, my single GX2 with a 3.8ghz dual core nabs 9194, so SLI is definitely working for ya. Time to play some games :)
 
Do you guys think that the 9800GX2 Quad SLI crappy performance is due to crappy drivers? Should I be expecting a better set of drivers to be released which will significantly improve the performance of 9800GX2 Quad SLI? Or should I just sell one of these cards while the price is high?
 
Last edited:
It's crappy because quad-SLI doesn't scale as well as dual SLI. It only scales well in SOME games and even then, it's nowhere near the performance of a dual SLI jump.

Technically, the 9800GX2 or GTX 280x2 is the best performance you can get from Nvidia.
 
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