680i + 8800GTX's SLi = Bad sound? Nope, I fixed it!

[CodyDewey]

Hello all,

I hope that some of you will find this post helpful. As many of you know, the 680i line of motherboards can be a bit discouraging. The MOST discouraging thing about this board has been it's Mind-Blowing, Crackling , Screeching and Popping that "Any" sound card will generate, if you run SLi 8800GTX's. I have spent the last few days playing with my new Evga board and believe I have found a FIX.

I kept thinking about the older nforce boards and how all my old creative cards sounded like crap if I didnt place them in the bottom PCI slot. I felt like this would possibly fix the problem, but unfortunately my 8800gtx's Heatsink prevents anything from plugging into it. I messed with PCI Latency programs, which helped a bit, but still made gaming a headache ridden affair.

Well, earlier tonight I got curious to see if my 2 8800gtx's had the faulty resistor replaced on them, as I had heard rumors that some people's 8800gtx's did not obviously get repaired prior to them being sold. So after taking out both my vidcards and confirming that I did indeed have the correct resistors in place, I though ,"What the hell" and tried something.

I placed my secondary 8800GTX in the middle blue PCI-X slot on my board. After securing it, I found my shorter SLi bridge from my old DFI SLIDR motherboard. I attached that bridge to my two vidcards and fired up the system with the Creative Xfi seated in the bottom PCI slot.


3dmark06 demo, Splinter Cell double agent, Gothic 3, BF 2142 and a few other games all sound perfect now.

The only down side is the heat which the top card pulls off the bottom one now. However, with the amount of air being blown into my case rivalling that of an F16's afterburner, They are still staying no higher than 62'c under load.

I ran 06' and the score was within 100 points of what it was when I had them in the "Correct" slots.

Guys and Gals, I know this middle slot is for Physics and future GPU use, but the fact is, if you have a short sli bridge and a ton of ty sound coming out of your speakers, do this to solve the problem.


I sure hope this helps someone enjoy their 3000$ in parts.

Have a good day!

-Cody D

[zemzelett]

Good fix for people having that problem.

However, do keep in mind that the blue slot is only 8x electrically, so you have 1 card running on a 16x bus, and the other running on a 8x bus, having them in SLI it will drop down to 8x for both, IF its taxing the bus beyond 8x. So you MAY take a hit on your framerates, still i suppose thats better then no sound, least a temporary fix until NVIDIA is able to fix this.

[dinos22]

Good fix for people having that problem.

However, do keep in mind that the blue slot is only 8x electrically, so you have 1 card running on a 16x bus, and the other running on a 8x bus, having them in SLI it will drop down to 8x for both, IF its taxing the bus beyond 8x.

performance hardly suffers

we've seen and tested this time and time again on all platforms......it's pointless even mentioning that i reckon

[zemzelett]

I wouldnt say its pointless, its been tested many times before, but it hasnt been tested since the new 8800's, i wouldnt be to quick to boast that claim.

[dinos22]

I wouldnt say its pointless, its been tested many times before, but it hasnt been tested since the new 8800's, i wouldnt be to quick to boast that claim.

we'll obviously have to see actual results but the guy even mentions that he only lost 100 points in preliminary 3DMARK06 tests which is insignificant

whoever is benchmarking will run it without sound anyways so 24/7 will have to be middle slot for now (unfortunately)

obviously for temps it would have been better to have the wider slots but hey....i'm sure there will be a fix

[X.T.R.E.M.E_ICE]

we'll obviously have to see actual results but the guy even mentions that he only lost 100 points in preliminary 3DMARK06 tests which is insignificant

whoever is benchmarking will run it without sound anyways so 24/7 will have to be middle slot for now (unfortunately)

obviously for temps it would have been better to have the wider slots but hey....i'm sure there will be a fix

I got a optic sound lead and used on board sound at it works fine now.

[JoeBar]

Experiencing a minor perormance decrease is way better than having probs with sound.
Nice find CodyDewey!

[linflas]

Too bad it is unrealistic for me, as I do not have a short sli connector laying around.

I applaud cody for his determination in finding this fix, who knows, maybe the techie's at nvidia have not found this yet, and they will learn from this.


Thanks again cody for your hard work, and I for one appreciate, although I cannot take advantage of it

[CodyDewey]

Well, for what it is worth, you are welcome.

ZERO performance hit. In fact I only had 100 fewer 3dmark06 points when I set it up in the middle slot. I then realized that I was running 2t instead of 1t on my memory, and once I changed that, I got back up to where I was before the switch.

For those of you too negative to appreciate this, please realize that this solution does indeed fix the sound issues. Although not the ideal fix, I know it will carry me over until the problem is corrected. As I said before performance does not suffer.

Besides , the problem will be fixed soon right? I mean it only took a couple days for Nvidia & Creative to solve the sound ppopping and hissing on NF4, NF3, and NF2 motherboards...Oh wait, they never DID fix it did they?

LOL


Buy an SLI Bridge (Flexible) - http://www.techonweb.com/products/pr...=C52760&src=FG

[davidm71]

I have an IN9-32X with two Evga 8800GTXs in sli. Plugging the Xfi Fatality extreme in the middle causes the system not to boot past bios if at all. Seems like I've had no problems using my old Audigy card instead. Anyone experience such a conflict? Creative said I was the first one to bring this to their attention!

I feel so lucky ...

Thanks.

[virtualrain]

Why would putting the sound card in the firstPCI slot help? The only thing I can think of is IRQ assignment. Perhaps its worth noting what IRQ your sound card has now in the first slot and then moving everything around and manually assigning that IRQ to the sound card in BIOS if that's an option. It may also be that your graphics cards have different IRQ's now and you may need to note those as well and manually assign them. I'm just guessing here though... I don't even know if IRQ's play a role in our modern setups.

Perhaps then you can have your graphics cards in the right slots and good sound?

[davidm71]

No, my bios doesn't give much choices in the assignment of irqs. I want a better bios...