New Rig Complete...any tweeking that you think it needs please

[Changeup]

Do you have your SLI settings right in the Nvidia control panal?  You should never see a drop below your refresh rate with those cards in SLI.

NVidia control panel indicated it was seeing and running both cards but I guess I don't know what the settings should be for max performance.  I didn't mess with the settings any.  Suggestions?

[BaldEagl]

NVidia control panel indicated it was seeing and running both cards but I guess I don't know what the settings should be for max performance.  I didn't mess with the settings any.  Suggestions?

As long as SLI is enabled in the control panal you should be good so there's sometrhing else going on here.

Are both SLI slots operating normally?  Are both cards properly seated?  Is the SLI bridge on correctly?  What drivers are you using?  Is your RAM properly seated?  Are you running a lot of background processes?  Is your PSU running out of power?...

You'll have to do some troubleshooting to get to the cause.

I'd start by using a single card and running it in each slot then do the same with the second card by itself.  That will eliminate the cards or the slots as culprits.

[Changeup]

As long as SLI is enabled in the control panal you should be good so there's sometrhing else going on here.

Are both SLI slots operating normally?  Are both cards properly seated?  Is the SLI bridge on correctly?  What drivers are you using?  Is your RAM properly seated?  Are you running a lot of background processes?  Is your PSU running out of power?...

You'll have to do some troubleshooting to get to the cause.

I'd start by using a single card and running it in each slot then do the same with the second card by itself.  That will eliminate the cards or the slots as culprits.

One thing the nVidia website said was if the clock speeds were different, the faster card needed to be in slot 1 and right now it's not.  I will switch them tonight.  The other thing it said was that you should download and reinstall the drivers so that both cards are installed properly.  I don't know if it makes a difference but I will give it a try.

PS is a Raidmax 850 80+ Gold 4 12v rails.  150w x 4, 34w. MB needs 130w and the cards only need 25w a piece so I'm fairly certain power is fine.  Thoughts?

[SectorNine50]

Do you have a fan on the side of your case?

I'm not sure how it's working on your setup, but the top card can get VERY hot when they are that close together.  A side fan pointed at the cards often helps, I've found.

[Changeup]

Do you have a fan on the side of your case?

I'm not sure how it's working on your setup, but the top card can get VERY hot when they are that close together.  A side fan pointed at the cards often helps, I've found.

Thank you...I'm going to have to buy one and custom fit it...there are two more fan nubbins (my new technical term for tiny plugins) on the MB.  When I got home today it was very hot...so you are absolutely right.  But the system is enclosed in a cabinet too so I will put a fan on the 1 ft X 2 ft breather grill I cut out of our built ins in our study.  I will monitor temps for a while too...

I am going to reinstall the drivers now..

[guncrasher]

changeup is your cabinet just big enough for the case to fit inside?  if it is then that is your problem.  not enough air circulating around the computer case.  also if those pics are still accurate then you may want to re do the cabling as it is affecting the air flow.

also you may want to move the fan for the cpu cooler from the front to the rear.  reason is so more air will flow from the top fan to the video card.  assuming the top fan pushes air in instead of out.

with the side 230mm blowing on the video cards it shouldnt get that hot.  i only have a 120mm and temps are usually in the mid 60's at full speed with lots of cons around.   but i believe your problem is the cabinet itself.  nice system.


semp

[Changeup]

changeup is your cabinet just big enough for the case to fit inside?  if it is then that is your problem.  not enough air circulating around the computer case.  also if those pics are still accurate then you may want to re do the cabling as it is affecting the air flow.

also you may want to move the fan for the cpu cooler from the front to the rear.  reason is so more air will flow from the top fan to the video card.  assuming the top fan pushes air in instead of out.

with the side 230mm blowing on the video cards it shouldnt get that hot.  i only have a 120mm and temps are usually in the mid 60's at full speed with lots of cons around.   but i believe your problem is the cabinet itself.  nice system.


semp

Thank you.  I reinstalled the drivers, added 6 more gigs of DDR3, 1600mhz memory and installed a 330mm fan on the vented opening of the back of the cabinet to vent air OUT of the cabinet itself. The system is running at 41C, the card #1 is at 47C and card #2 is at 34C.  I ran the game for just a bit and got those numbers.  Now, that is with the cabinet door open...enclosing it during gameplay may present a problem, lol.  I will leave it open.

After moving the cards to the right slots and reinstalling the drivers and dedicating card #2 to PhysX only, it is on FULL eye candy and moves from 60 to 59 rarely now and that was in a full DAR bar sector at close range...everyone within vis range...pretty busy environment.

Thanks for the help gents and I will rewire it as soon as I get the fam out of town.  Hell, I need to clean up the cabinet extension cords and back up power supply unit anyway.

Thanks guys...

[BoilerDown]

After moving the cards to the right slots and reinstalling the drivers and dedicating card #2 to PhysX only, it is on FULL eye candy and moves from 60 to 59 rarely now and that was in a full DAR bar sector at close range...everyone within vis range...pretty busy environment.

I wasn't aware that Aces High took advantage of PhysX.  You're probably better off in some kind of SLI mode.

[YamaRaja]

The single biggest thing you can do to make your machine faster is to go to an ssd.
Yes they can fail, but these days they are getting very reliable.
Hard drives also fail.

That's what they make programs like Acronis for.
Do a backup, save it on one of your storage drives. If theres a failure just reinstall your C:drive back to what you had, easy.
This also works well for a reformat on spinners (which you don't have to do to keep performance like new with an ssd).

I have been running 2 OCZ 120GB Vertex 3's in Raid0 for 8 months now with no troubles.
Then for spinners, 2 640GB's in Raid1 and 2 1.5TB in Raid1
I save my image file on both Raid1 partitions, as I do all my important data. The 4 hard drives have to fail at the same time to loose it.

Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds

You dont defrag ssd's, they have a feature called "trim", which keeps everything in order.
In raid0 trim does not work.
So the newer ones have another feature called "garbage collection" that works in conjunction with trim.
Garbage collection does work in raid0
Garbage collection works best when logged off or idleing at the bios screen
So the maintance of it?
Idle at the bios screen over night once a week with the monitor off.
Not to big of a pain for the speed.

My machine:
Intel i7 SandyBridge 2600K 3.4 @ 4.7
Asus P8P67 Deluxe v.3 1702 bios
ThermalRight Silver Arrow Cooler
Corsair Vengence 8gb 1600 8-8-8-24-1
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata III SSD 120GB x2 Raid0
1.5 TB WD Cavair Black x2 Raid1
640GB WD Cavair x2 Raid1
2x Sapphire HD6950 2gb Crossfire
HD6970 Bios Mod - Catalyst 11.10
E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor 1616m
LG Blu-ray Burner WH10LS30
LG Blu-ray Reader UH10LS20
Corsair AX1200 PSU
Antec SX830 Case Modded
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Viewsonic VX2255wmb x2

Welcome to the world of tweaking your box.
The best advice I can give is stay off the bleeding edge and use only whats been out for 6 months or so.
It saves alot of pain and money.
Drivers, bios, firmware etc all get more stable

Read, read, read, and ask questions in tech forums

[Skuzzy]

I wasn't aware that Aces High took advantage of PhysX.  You're probably better off in some kind of SLI mode.

Aces High does not make any use of PhysX.

[Changeup]

Thanks Skuzzy...I checked the box to dedicate it and then changed it back to let the system choose.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds

Is that 20 seconds with Post + bios initialization included? Must be since my 7200rpm 320gb drives boot my win7 in 27 seconds from grub. The post and initialization take at least 10 seconds.

[YamaRaja]

Is that 20 seconds with Post + bios initialization included? Must be since my 7200rpm 320gb drives boot my win7 in 27 seconds from grub. The post and initialization take at least 10 seconds.

Yes

[Infidelz]

I have a PCI-E SSD from OCZ. It is the 100 giga byte one. The drive does crash. I am starting to see less crashes as time goes on. I have been careful about what is turned on during boot and monitor the boot sequence.

This was a huge problem at first because the OS was non-recoverable. I hadn't run back up since the drive was supposed to be reliable. After the first crash I imaged the drive (see the getting started thing in WIN 7).

I have since
moved the SSD drive to a 16x slot and put the sound card in the 4x.
updated my bios (always a treat).
began running drive image at every software config change.

Problems that still occur have to due with the fata1ity card. Seems it loses all its settings @COLD BOOT and I wind up with no sound until a reboot. Think I am finding the work around lately by changing from game to music mode and back.

INFIDELZ

OCZ SSD 2.0
EVGA GTX570 Super clocker
ASUS R3E
12 Gig Corsair 12800
veloci-raptor
cool max 932
corsair 1000 watts
WIN7 64

INFIDELZ
 

OCZ sent me a replacement soon after this post and I haven't had problems with it or the sound card since. There was an issue with slow shutdown and boot. This was due to a setting on the HD hardware in device manager. There was a check box in there that had to be set. Fix was a pain to find. Located it on the OCZ forums and had to pass it on to their tech team. boot time is fast and so is shutdown.

Infidelz

[ink]

The single biggest thing you can do to make your machine faster is to go to an ssd.
Yes they can fail, but these days they are getting very reliable.
Hard drives also fail.

That's what they make programs like Acronis for.
Do a backup, save it on one of your storage drives. If theres a failure just reinstall your C:drive back to what you had, easy.
This also works well for a reformat on spinners (which you don't have to do to keep performance like new with an ssd).

I have been running 2 OCZ 120GB Vertex 3's in Raid0 for 8 months now with no troubles.
Then for spinners, 2 640GB's in Raid1 and 2 1.5TB in Raid1
I save my image file on both Raid1 partitions, as I do all my important data. The 4 hard drives have to fail at the same time to loose it.

Is it fast? I boot Windows 7 Pro with over 50 processes running in 20 seconds.
Seek time is .08 miliseconds
Read/write transfer rate is 1000MB per second
Photoshop loads in just under 3 seconds

You dont defrag ssd's, they have a feature called "trim", which keeps everything in order.
In raid0 trim does not work.
So the newer ones have another feature called "garbage collection" that works in conjunction with trim.
Garbage collection does work in raid0
Garbage collection works best when logged off or idleing at the bios screen
So the maintance of it?
Idle at the bios screen over night once a week with the monitor off.
Not to big of a pain for the speed.

My machine:
Intel i7 SandyBridge 2600K 3.4 @ 4.7
Asus P8P67 Deluxe v.3 1702 bios
ThermalRight Silver Arrow Cooler
Corsair Vengence 8gb 1600 8-8-8-24-1
OCZ Vertex 3 Sata III SSD 120GB x2 Raid0
1.5 TB WD Cavair Black x2 Raid1
640GB WD Cavair x2 Raid1
2x Sapphire HD6950 2gb Crossfire
HD6970 Bios Mod - Catalyst 11.10
E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor 1616m
LG Blu-ray Burner WH10LS30
LG Blu-ray Reader UH10LS20
Corsair AX1200 PSU
Antec SX830 Case Modded
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Viewsonic VX2255wmb x2

Welcome to the world of tweaking your box.
The best advice I can give is stay off the bleeding edge and use only whats been out for 6 months or so.
It saves alot of pain and money.
Drivers, bios, firmware etc all get more stable

Read, read, read, and ask questions in tech forums

crazy system.