Thanks for the ideas daveyd007.. I'll be sure to get back with ya on that sometime tomorrow night.. gota spend the day tomorrow installing my nephiews water cooled rig tomorrow. He's totally syked as its my older quad core/8800GTX SLI rig. Hopefully get that runing.
 
Gota get all this out before i forget.. didnt get to start testing the other 3 cards till after midnight. Dead tired.
 
Ok.. card 3 was good. Card 2 was the weakest link as it was artifacting in Heaven at max overclocks of 950Mhz. No biggy as i'm fine with lowering clocks if need be.. I'm sure it just is more thirsty for voltage then the other 3 at that Mhz.  Card 1 was perfect as expected. Its default voltage is the lowest of the 4 at 1.000v and the other 3 are 1.012v defualt.
 
One thing i was noticing alot but didnt pay too much attention to it durring the time was the ton of stuttering while testing the cards. Here i brushed it off as "its just a single card and its runing lower frame rate then i'm used to seeing and thats why as its runing 60-80 fps at times other then 100+.  Then the last card i tested was card 1 in PCI-E 1.  Here i see nothing but smooth frames regardless of the frame rate. That to me was pretty alarming!  Here all this time i and everyone else thats ever noticed stuttering in SLI is trying to figure out why in the hell our games/benchmarks are stuttering and i can give you a pretty good idea.. the other PCI-E slots other then the first one are weak!  No idea if the timings is different or theres some setting in the bios to allow great pull or what not to get the other slots up to par like the first one.. but the stuttering is from slot 3 and down.
 
I doubt many people have tested multipal cards individualy in slots other then slot 1... i know how i tested is prob not the norm.  So if you want to see for yourslef and have many hours to test like i did have at it and see for yourself. :)
 
So i tested every card in there slot alone 1 at a time.. all at my stable 4.5Ghz bios settings and everything checked out perfectly. No shimmering tarp in Jane Dash in the first test of Vantage.. no lock ups on the last Vantage test.. No lock ups in Heaven and tested everything first at stock speeds then max voltage for 903/930 and 950Mhz overclocks on the cards. No probs.
 
Then i go back and reinstall the cards one last time with all 4 activated and in Quad SI single monitor.. Test both the Jan Dash and the last test in Vantage. Right away at stock speeds i see the shimmering tarp once again in the Jane Dash test when the cargo splashes the water. Then i run the last test in Vantage and it makes it through no probs. Try it all again overclocked to 903Mhz and max voltage.. No probs. Try it again at 930Mhz.. no prob. Then again at 950Mhz.. Locks right away in the last Vantage test!
 
Ok..ok.. When it locks i mean the computer reboots. So i try agian at 940Mhz.. reboots! Try agian at 903Mhz.. REBOOTS! Crap!
 
Wonder if its the power supplies.. or more spacific, the newest Ultra X4.. Who knows.. the P/Ss were getting pretty hot as i could just hear the fans.  So i thoguht on the last reboot i'd turn the system off and wait a min and turn it back on.. so it turns on and then powers off by itself and then 5 secs after it powers back up?  P/S?  No idea.. could be the wiring in the walls as well i guess.  I live in a condo thats only 6 years old.. 15 amp breaker. Cant change that. Cant move to another room either.
 
I think thats everything for now.. 

Try running Aida64's voltage monitoring program in the background while you bench 3DMarkVantage, this way you can see any voltage fluctuations that may be happening. This will help you determine if the power supply is going bonkers. ;)
Take a break bud, there's always tomorrow. At least you've been making progress.
 
I will try what you did earlier by individually testing my gpu's to see what's causing me to hang up while overclocking them too. My temps are low, so I do know that heat isn't an issue. I'm just curious like you said, if there's possibly a mismatched card somewhere along the lines as I seem not to be able to go higher than 815 on the core. Besides I've never ran them individually or as a pair. It will be interesting to see how they play out.
Here's the aida64 program (screen shot) I was referring to, with the voltage tab in action:

 
  If you don't have the program, you can download it here:
http://www.aida64.com/
PM me if you do need a key.  ;)
 
 
 

Have you managed to get past the last test in vantage with your max gpu overclocks? lol..No pun intended, I feel ya! ;)
 
Let me know what you've gathered thus far. Right now I'm at 4.76Ghz on air, and benching vantage while stuck on that part too. Temps and voltages are fine, it must be those vrms in the 500 series GPU's. I tell ya what, they are some sensitive bastages!! ;)
Benched fine with stock gpu clocks at 4.76Ghz, with less than 65c temps on them, but no dice w/gpu overclocks on the last vantage stage.

Right now the sun is dropping below the horizon as I look out the kitchen window, a good indication that ambient temps will drop slightly tonight. This might help me achieve 5Ghz on air if I can overcome this barrier in Vantage.
Push comes to shove, my Rheem heat exchanger will be waiting for me in the garage, and will make it happen. Just don't feel like moving my pc right now and hooking it up. :)
Any progress over there yet? What's cookin?

Damn you were stuck at the same test on Vantage?? DId your computer just basicly reboot like mine?
 
Starting to wonder if its just something to do with either the newest nvidia drivers 266.58 or maybe having 3Dmark11 on the system as well.  Maybe its letting the cards get too much juice in that test.. who knows.
 
I didnt get a chance to touch it at all.. got home about 2 hours ago and didnt get the system runing over at my nephiews house.. Got as far as getting the water lines on and thats it.  16 year old kid is gona go crazy without a computer for a few days.
 
Gota  massive headache so.. i'm stuck going doh for the night till its gone.
 

Damn nice score there!  Well, if other people see the same prob with the tarp i will stop worrying about it..  I normally dont even think twice about stuff like that but i was just putting 2 and 2 together thinking it might be a bad card since the lock ups on the last test and seeing that tarp issue at defualt timings and voltage.. Its prob just drivers and SLI.
 
 

Alucard666

Any luck with breaking past 4.5?

Yeah i believe i got 4666Mhz good enough to bench.. though i'll play with the voltages some more to see if i can get away with lowering some.
 
 

What nvidia drivers are you using?  Were not talking flickering.. its more like a texturing prob.
 

AHowes

Damn you were stuck at the same test on Vantage?? DId your computer just basicly reboot like mine?

Starting to wonder if its just something to do with either the newest nvidia drivers 266.58 or maybe having 3Dmark11 on the system as well.  Maybe its letting the cards get too much juice in that test.. who knows.

I didnt get a chance to touch it at all.. got home about 2 hours ago and didnt get the system runing over at my nephiews house.. Got as far as getting the water lines on and thats it.  16 year old kid is gona go crazy without a computer for a few days.

Gota  massive headache so.. i'm stuck going doh for the night till its gone.

 
Yeah, same test as the one you referred to. However, it didn't reboot, the nvidia driver 'disengages' or my screen 'hangs' at that same point when the GPU's were overclocked?!? I managed to get past it simply by letting the machine idle for an extended period of time, then rebenched. I'm using an infared digital temperature gun to get precise temp readings. The gun is made by extech, and you can find it at Lowe's for fifty bucks. Very handy to have around for those that like to tinker. ;)
 
Anyway, I hope you're feeling better this morning. I'm making some coffee to start my day.  

I'm not sure which driver is better suited for vantage, I'd be interested in knowing what your findings are. One way to cut to the chase, is to look on the 580 vantage thread and check out the "Validate" links posted by others. The links provide data as to what drivers were used to bench during that session.

3DMark11 is causing the probs! Uninstlaled that and i could run the last test in vantage no prob!
 
Might just be the install order.. and will check that as i installed vantage after 3DMark11.
 
EDIT: NOT!  :( :( :(  Figures.. FIrst time i just ran the last test.. this time i ran the first and last test and as soon as the last test started.. the computer reboots.  Left to thinking its either the drivers or the P/Ss.
 

 

AHowes

:)  FIGURED OUT!

Damnit!  I've been thinking of what i've changed in my system when this started happening.

I replaced the 2nd P/S and added a EVGA Power Boost to my 762 on the 6th PCI-E port. Plus got the newest 266.58 drivers installed and installed 3Dmark11.

Well.. not sure yet but i'm guessing its the fact that i had a Sata wire connected to the Power Boost using a Sata to Molex connector.  Maybe its pulling too much juice for the Sata cable or the rail that its connected to.

So what i did was change the connection recently.. Before i had a molex wire connected to the Power Boost.. but since i was having probs overclocking i thought that maybe i had too much juice being pulled from the main P/S.. So i removed the 2 pumps/6 fans from the main and moved it over to the 2nd power supply and since i didnt have enough molex connectors left i had to use the connection i had on the Power Boost. And then just used a Sata connector and the Sata to Molex connector.

So i just unplugged the damn Power Boost and ran the last test in Vantage and what happends??? It runs.  Then i ran a 3x loop with it and no probs.. Then ran a loop of the first and last test and its fine.

FIGURES! lol.. Was thinking something was up as i just noticed i was able to run the last test as long as i didnt set the voltage max on the cards. So i ran it at 903 at 1.112 and it ran.. ran it again at 1.125v and it ran.  IF i set it at 1.138 it would lock right away every time.

Had to tell what the hell was going on when it started happening as i was trying to max my CPU overclock at the same time.

Sweet.. Now on to some damn CPU/GPU overclocking.. FINALLY! lol

Thanks for the help guys!
:)

 
Good news, glad you got it figured out :-)

AHowes

Tonight i'll bench it a few times and post the highest i get.

 
Can't wait to see the final score.

AHowes

Yup.. forsure its good now as i ran Vantage with the system at 4.666Ghz and the cards overclocked at 940Mhz @ 1.138v and scored my new high so far at 67,000+.

Tonight i'll bench it a few times and post the highest i get.

Though someone mentioned some tweaks in the Nvidia control panel for Vantage?? :)

 
 
I find that these tweaks work best:
 
On the maximum pre-rendered frames, if you're using gpu's in multiples of 4, increase this number to the highest multiple of four. So, it will be set to eight. If three GPU's, then use a setting of six. If two gpu's- a setting of eight works best. Try it and see what works for you. There's no such thing as a wrong config here as the results vary slightly between each machine.Here's the bottom half of what's not pictured above. Texture filtering anisotropic optimization - set that to OFF. I know I have it on ON, my bad.
 

Let us know what works best for you. Good luck benching. :)

My pleasure. You want to loosen it up a little bit @ higher CPU clocks. I've noticed while benching that higher Mhz on the RAM pays off more than having tighter timings. Mind you this isn't something we can physically feel, but the number do reflect improvements. The 2K sticks work magic in this department. If you don't already have them on hand, you might want to invest in some. It certainly helps gain much higher cpu overclocks too by running at them lower voltages. Look for DDR3 ram with the lowest voltages & highest clocks as the timings can be tweaked. :)