Artifacts in SLI fullscreen only

[moot]

This is since I've enabled SLI in the nvidia control panel. The game is running in Win98/ME compatibility mode.  It looks like flickering pink and green overlays on some parts of the picture.  It doesn't show in screenshots, and alt-s screenshot in AH doesn't either.  The screen stops doing it when I press that, or PrintScreen key.  The AH film viewer doesn't have any problem, even in fullscreen mode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yNmTtig_nI

As a control.. other games do it too, but only in full screen.
Celestia doesn't do it either in full screen or windowed. Mount & blade doesn't do it at all. Live for speed does it in full screen only.  Quake 3 locks up the computer in a black screen (not monitor standby).

..
Doing this

Gives this result
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCh5O9vsPLg
Turning it back to "single-gpu" removes all problems.   I'd really like to get this to work, otherwise I may have to return one of these two 200$ gfx cards.

[drdeathx]

Maybe use global setting in SLI mode. Do you have vsync off or on? Run Vsync with global settings(3d application). Having vsync off can cause screen tearing and artifacts. Only other thing little me can say is are you using current drivers? Sometimes older drivers may solve the issue. Easiest troubleshooting. Here is a screen shot of what I run GTX 280(no SLI) and you will see vsync selection.






m00t, post what cards you are running SLI with. Sometimes troubleshooting forums(such as Nvidea's) will recommend which drivers to use in SLI with certain cards. Sounds like you have at least the GTX 9800? Also what drivers.


If these suggestions don't work, try running with 1 card and see if you have same problem then try running other card(solo). Do not have a second card installed. This will probably eliminate the possibility of a bad card. Switch the cards to see if you have the same problem(SLI mode). This will again help eliminate the possibility of a bad card. If both work individually and you have same problem with the switch in SLI mode, it most certain it will not be a card problem. It should be a setting, driver or user install problem.

Let me know if any of these suggestions work! I did a lot of research many months ago when I bought my video card. I went with 2 x (512) ATI 3870 crossfired cards(problems). EEXC to a 4870 x 2 2g ATI(problems only 1 GPU worked) and then EEXC to Nvidea GTX280(perfect)! In the meantime, I spent countless hours learning a thing or 2.

Another few tidbits: Is your motherboard SLI certified? Do you have the cards installed in the 16X slot? Longshot on these 2 issues.



Death

[drdeathx]

m00t, also check the temps forgot that 1. get pc wizard nice monitoring tool for free. It will show temps on gpu's. Maybe in full screen you are running the card or cards hot causing artifacts. Just may be a simple turn fan speed up. If you cannot turn fan up from control panel run rivatuner.

[BaldEagl]

Have you tried alternate frame rendering?  It's probably preferable to split frame anyway.

[moot]

Cards are XFX 9800GTX+ and GTX+ XXX, both 512MB. I've tried 178.24 and 181.20 nvidia drivers, same results.  DxDiag is here.

Vsync and triple-buffer combinations make no difference. 

Both cards are functional, otherwise I couldn't run SLI other apps/games.  SLI runs fine in some apps, fullscreen and windowed.  Just not AH in fullscreen.. The AH film player works just fine even in fullscreen, great fps and everything.
Both cards are on 16x PCI slots.. The motherboard's an M2N-SLI, ASUS. Certified for SLI. Same with the power supply.

The GPUs are ok in temp.. 60 on idle and never over 70-75 anytime I looked under load.  The alarm/auto slow down is at 90, and it's never come up.  The artifacts happen only in fullscreen, and that takes less than a second to switch to and fro.  Same results everytime.

All SLI rendering modes give artifacts, only the split-frame mode does something different from the rest.

I don't understand why it's only some games and 3D apps.  And why it only bugs in fullscreen mode, or why the film viewer runs fine. 

..

Without win98 compatibility mode, there's both these artifacts and the spinning clipboard issues.

[drdeathx]

With vsync off you could still have screen tearing and artifacts. Always run Aces high with vsync on.

[moot]

It's not tearing Doc.. Look at the videos.  There's epileptic pink and green flashes all over the screen. Everything else is pretty much normal, the game (AH anyway) runs fine otherwise.

[drdeathx]

The problem has been stated here, and in other posts on this board, to be that the GPU (generally the other card for single GPU, SLi configurations) that is processing the alternate frame (using the 9x.xx drivers) is corrupting the image. Since the frame rate is higher than 24 fps (the fastest the human eye can recognize) it appears that the screen image is messed up all the time, when the former is actually the case: every other frame, or all frames rendered by the 2nd GPU.

A notable difference between the 84.xx stream and the 9x.xx stream is that the rendering algorithm changed from split screen rendering to full-screen alternate-frame rendering.

This quote makes me believe it may be a driver issue>This post was from running 7600 cards. I will read more.

[moot]

But why would some of the other games not have any problems, and why do some of them work just fine in windowed mode?  Why would one of the cards be the cause of that?  Live For Speed will show these artifacts in full screen, and then not show them at all when the exact same game with no change in graphics settings switches to windowed...
Celestia is pretty heavy in resources.  Some of the planet textures are a couple of hundred megs.  I've got the Earth with about 1250MB of textures in total. No problems there, it runs just great.  Same with Mount & Blade which isn't a light game either.

[drdeathx]

Skuzzy question.

[moot]

The bridge was on the wrong tabs, or the wrong way. I wouldnt know since there's no instructions in either the motherboard or graphics card manuals. Very smart of em not to put that in there when it's required for SLI to work correctly.

[drdeathx]

I was going to suggest this but since I know ya m00t I didn't want to say it.... Anyway nice!!!! Hope you enjoy the SLI!

[moot]

Thanks Doc.