Yes, I understand that most of you believe SLI is total bullshit and a great way to throw your hard earned money away. But putting that aside and seeing that that's what I have and I want it to work again here is my problem...

I have 2 7800gt's in SLI and they were working fine, no artifacting or lagging in games at ultra high settings. I recently moved and had to set my computer up again. When I got it up and running and ran Oblivion it started artifacting like crazying. But running games like Far Cry and Doom3 had no problems (don't know if those even use SLI). I tried reinstalling Oblivion, reinstalling forceware drivers, and even reformated the computer. Nothing. I've eliminated the possibility of a bad vid card b/c i tried them each out individually and they work fine. any suggestions?

[Edited on July 5, 2006 at 10:55 AM. Reason : .]

7/5/2006 10:54:09 AM

It sounds like you've done all the obvious troubleshooting already. Good job on that. As far as what might be wrong, I can't think of a thing you haven't checked. Other games run fine, therefore all of your hardward seems to be working fine. That leaves the OS, the game install, and the drivers. Maybe you have some weird setting in the game turned off or on? I don't know what to really say other than to start double checking the things that you've already looked at.

7/5/2006 11:16:21 AM

I guess at this point i'm going to try reinstalling all the drivers for my mobo, including PCI, ethernet, nForce and whatnot... don't know what else to do short or buying a new mobo

[Edited on July 5, 2006 at 3:04 PM. Reason : its an EVGA mobo if anyone has any experience with those...]

7/5/2006 3:03:18 PM

i know this is minor, but maybe it never occurred to you.

Did you check to make sure the gfx cards weren't dusty? It could cause overheating and therefore artifacts, although it would probably be in most 3D games.

7/5/2006 3:30:48 PM

Ya, i've taken them both out and made sure they were clean. I agree, its not something that should be overlooked. But is odd that it has only happend in Oblivion so far. Then again i know Oblivion takes adavantage of SLI, i don't know about the other games i've tried.

7/5/2006 3:32:58 PM

Doom 3 does. Have you checked what the GPU temps are while playing?

7/5/2006 3:36:27 PM

Did you check to see if the SLI bridge was damaged in any way?

7/5/2006 3:37:14 PM

^ I'd think he would see problems in other games if it was. In fact, I don't think it would even go into SLI mode without errors.

7/5/2006 3:46:35 PM

Oblivion has problems with SLI... check their forums?

7/5/2006 4:52:23 PM

^^^^ do you recommend a good program for that?
^^^ the bridge looks fine upon visual inspection.
^ i thought it might be the game, but the drivers do wierd things in windows too. like when i start up my computer it defaults the resolution back down to 800x600 and it will give me a bunch of resolutions to choose from in settings that my current lcd doesn't support. i'm baffled.

7/5/2006 10:29:01 PM

yea try each card individually, make sure both pass all the stress testing just fine.

also make sure you arent killing your power supply, make sure you are using a surge protector from the wall, a UPS if you have one, and check all your voltages while under load.

7/6/2006 12:42:58 AM

Everest will report GPU temps
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

In addition, this is my 1000th post!

[Edited on July 6, 2006 at 10:33 AM. Reason : -]

7/6/2006 10:32:19 AM