SLI now slow and unplayable in surround

[Genocide_Jim]

OK, so I had 3 x 480's in sli in a 1366 ud3r rev 2 gigabyte mobo running fine for quite some time.
My house mate had issues with his card so i let him borrow one of mine. Now I cant get SLI to run
games in 3 monitors (5760x1080).

I've tested the following:
Temps of cards all good
CPU temp and mobo fine
3 x 480's Saints Row -Ultra-(5760x1080) = Hangs on load
2 x 480's Saints Row -Ultra-(5760x1080) = Boots but suuuuuuper slow
2 x 480's Saints Row -Ultra-(1920x1080) = Much better but still dipping below 60fps to 40's
1 x 480's Saints Row -Ultra-(1920x1080) = Almost normal but gpu working hard and a few skips

I cannot for the life of me figure out what's changed to make my system run this poorly.
I also notice that in using non sli, tri screen, 2 cards or three, watching a 720p movie ill get small hangs
and stutters after a while. I also replaced the sli bridge thinking this might be damaged
but to no avail.

Furmark burn in test with 2 cards on one monitor works well, so psu isnt about to crap out either.
On the new 295.73 drivers but moved back to the prev 2 with no improvement.

Any further tests or ideas would be fantastic!!!

Cheers,

Jim.

P.S - Just ran 1 pass of memtest with no errors

[mapoetti]

the last driver MHQ of nvidia not are good.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Try 285.79, everything since had caused me headaches in Surround - not sure why, as when it works it works flawlessly.

I've reached the point where I don't update my nVidia drivers unless I'm desperate for a fix for a game. Otherwise I just leave them and be happy in the knowledge they're working...

[scavvenjahh]

Check stickers for bios/rev number of each card and pick the oldest (smallest number) as your main card.

I'm saying this because I suppose you lended your friend your main card as it was the first one you could remove, then used one of the other cards as the top card for your SLI, etc.
Connecting cards to the mainboard in the "wrong" order can cause all sorts of weird SLI issues.

[Genocide_Jim]

Thanks guys. Bare with me while I test this out tonight. Let you know soon.

P.S - Kinda worried that this might be a mobo issue... any thoughts or ways to test this???
...
Ok, so both cards im using have the same BIOS and I'm on 280.26 drivers but still facing issues.
I've also tried booting L4D2 and have massive slow down and stuttering just on the intro vid, so it's not a SR3rd issue.

*Reinstalled SR3rd so not a dodgy install)
*Also, Skyrim on tri screen seemed to work really well considering all the issues. What the hell is going on!?!?!?!?!
*Finally, updated ud3r rev 2 1366 bios to FH (new version). was on FF which worked fine till all these issues.
Had to upgrade from original to FF as I was getting a whinny sound from NB (not uncommon I hear).

[Genocide_Jim]

Unplugged all but two of my hard drives and things are much better... still not 100% sure though... running error scans on drives now.

[Bifurk8]

If removing hard drives has improved your issues, and if those hard drives did not contain anything game related, could you be having issues with your power supply being overtaxed or going bad? Unplugging the hard drives would have at least slightly lowered the power being drawn. You could further test by removing any other non-vital components.

Alternatively, if those drives were in a raid setup, I'd focus on the drive integrity or maybe try using a different RAID card.

Sorry, these are complete shots in the dark, but might be worth looking into if all else fails.

*Edit: I see you've already done some testing on the PSU. Ignore me! It's damn strange that removing the hard drives would have any effect. Did they just store data or did they contain executables that are no longer running on your system? Did any of the hard drives you removed contain a paging file or swap disk?*

[Genocide_Jim]

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for all the help ppl.

Let me see, I replaced ALL of my sata cables and this really seemed to help. I think some of them were dodgy and that was throwing off the controller quite a bit. Think its getting a bit old and tired though as I still find it a bit sluggish these days compared to when it was new.

Also, having 10 devices plugged in might be asking too much of the old board.

Thinking of getting a Hotway H82-SU3S2 8-bay USB 3.0 non-RAID Enclosure from PC Case gear to lighten the load.

Cheers,

Jim.

[Haldi]

So it was not realy the GPU's causing a problem. But the Harddrive not beeing able to load the Games correct?

[Genocide_Jim]

Someone correct me if im way off, but I believe that one ormore of my sata cables was shot, this was then sending errors to the controller, jamming it up and making ALL transfers really slow.

Moral of the story... buy new sata cables for each build... they are sooooo cheap AND they do break occasionally.

[Genocide_Jim]

Someone correct me if im way off, but I believe that one or more of my sata cables was shot, this was then sending errors to the controller, jamming it up and making ALL transfers really slow.

Moral of the story... buy new sata cables for each build... they are sooooo cheap AND they do break occasionally.

[Genocide_Jim]

UPDATE: I have just reverted back to the FF bios for my ud3r rev 2 gigabyte mobo. I looked up my mobo on the gigabyte site and clicked on cpu compatibility... turns out that only 1 cpu shoud actually use the FH bios. Things SEEM to be running much better now!!!!!!!!!!