NO SLI MODE?!!!! WTFFFFF!!!

[S0ULphIRE]

I've narrowed down the problem to 'something weird is happenin yo'
The problem is the card in the second slot isn't detected. I tried puting my old GTX 285 and 4870 in the second slot, and the monitor lit up just fine for both cards (thus ruling out the possibility of the slot being bad)

Both cards work just fine in the first slot, but neither will work in the second slot. I've checked clearance on the card, made sure it's seated correctly a million times. But no matter what, if only one card is installed and it's in the second slot, the monitor never lights up.

 

[Sean W.]

so if its not your cards, its not your mother board, it has to be software right?

 

[S0ULphIRE]

ZING! Problem semi-solved

I figured the card must not be getting any resources allocated to it, so I googled along those lines and discovered I had to remove the drivers, boot into safe mode, and then click on the recognised card and scan for hardware changes. Which worked! The second card popped up

So now I've booted back into windows, installed the nvidia drivers. Both cards are still detected BUT one of the cards in Device manager says "This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. (Code 12)" so it's not starting

edit: gonna try updating my BIOS and realtek drivers

 

[Sean W.]

nice sounds like you are onto something!

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I've also had issues with the Realtek Network Adapter Drivers conflicting with the Forceware drivers. Try rolling the Realtek Drivers back to the original Win7 drivers.

You're on to something with this. As soon as I reinstalled the realtek drivers, boom the second card disappeared again.

edit: WOOT! Got it working
I got fed up with trying to get SLI going this morning, so I just played some DAO. Then this evening I decided to give it another go, so I opend up device manager, scanned for new hardware and voila! out of nowhere the second card shows up
I have no idea why that happened, but hey it's working and that's fine with me
Thanks for the input guys

 

[Slaymate]

Bring on the Benchmarks

 

[Poizen22]

you mean the scan for new hardware actually worked for once??? this is a miracle in itself grats man lol enjoy those beasts

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I still can't install the realtek sound drivers, and as a consequence my 7.1 surround doesn't work
Also, I had to disable a 'HD Audio Controller' in device manager to free up enough resources to get the second 480 to work. I'm gonna try installing the latest drivers tonight, hopefully it'll provide a fix.