This is a brand new system. When I install 1 video card, I get video. When I install the 2nd one, I get nothing out of any DVI port on either card. I installed Vista Ultimate with just one card installed. I haven’t done any updates to Windows, nor installed any updated drivers. I figured I should still be able to get video during POST regardless of what Windows is about to do.
I do NOT want to run the 2 cards in an SLI configuration. I’m “simply” trying to build a system that can support 3 monitors. It may be important to note that the GTX 295 has 2 GPUs running SLI on a single card. AFAIK, the 9400 GT card doesn’t even support SLI.
Should I be tinkering with something in the BIOS? What am I doing wrong?
Is there an SLI bridge of some sort (I have seen some that have a physical bridge that connects the two cards, and some that don’t need it). Is there anything in the BIOS to toggle SLI on/off?
I’m with Astroboy–you probably need a BIOS setting to turn SLI off, otherwise it’s going to assume you want to SLI the two cards together and then fail when there’s no SLI bridge installed.
That’s my instinct as well. I don’t think the second card even supports SLI, so there might not even be a spot to connect a bridge. Anyway, I’m not near the machine at the moment. I’ll report back tomorrow. I’m not stranger to BIOS, but I sure am a noob at SLI.
When you only build a new PC every 5 years or so, it’s like starting your knowledge base over every time.
I thought SLI could be turned on/off in the NVIDIA control panel? I have XP and it’s not in front of me, but I thought I remembered that. Although you need to have the same card for SLI anyway (at least that’s what I remember).
Ah, I remember reading somewhere that you cannot combine SLI and non-SLI. Your 295 is almost certainly hardwired to SLI. Try combining the 9400 with a non-SLI card to confirm this. Alternatively, try the 295 with a card from a different manufacturer.
There was nothing in the BIOS except choosing to use PCI or PCI-E as the primary graphics adapter. Both cards were PCI-E, and I left the option unchanged.
With one card in, I booted up windows and installed drivers. I updated everything that could be updated (firmwares, drivers, etc.). Then I swapped cards. Made sure drivers were up-to-date with that too.
Then I added the second card. I was able to get video from the second card, but when I switched the DVI cable to the first card, I got a display… but it wasn’t right. It was a small portion of the screen zoomed in. (basically, a blown-up 640x480 portion of the screen showing on the 1920x1200 screen; but it was a 640x480 portion of a larger desktop) So I couldn’t really “use” it that way.
I called it a night.
Then the next day I figured that Windows might have been sensing whether a screen was connected. So I brought the machine to where the 3 monitors were setup, plugged 'em in and fired the box up.
It worked!
I was also able to go into the nVidia Control Panel at that point and set the monitors up correctly. One on the little card, two on the big card, SLI on the big card, PhysX on the little card. Now I just need to do some cleanup work and the office is done… at least until I finally get around to building that custom case.