Functional 4-Way SLi PASCAL Titan X

I tried removing the SLI bridge and reattaching it twice.

I still keep getting that "A higher performance SLI bridge..." message! :bang:

I pushed as hard as I could on the bridge - made sure it's connected well.

I'm not sure what else I can do to make the 'clips' attach - not sure if I can even tell if they are making contact or not(?).

Other than removing the bridge and reattaching it firmly, is there anything else I can do? Did you get it working with this 'hard' bridge or only the ribbon bridges?

 

These clips
The V before installation should have the tips of the prongs almost touching each other

 

Do you know how to mod the driver to remove this software limitation ?

 

I have done nothing to the 372.54 driver to "make it" work.

I've experimented with all the different bridges and such, but I've done nothing to this driver.

well, one small exception or change in how I install:

before i install new drivers I do a uninstall from the control panel for the driver.followed by a ddu pass.
reboot
When I download the driver, I unzip it, I delete the uncore folder, and run set up as administrator, (always refuse to use the geforce experience, never got the point of that software constantly running in the back ground and providing no benefit), I have a check mark in clean install, and no check mark in geforce experience, and during install - i disconnect pc from lan. Reboot

I select 10 bit in the resolution setting tab of the nvcpl
I enable 4 way SLI
I install an additional physics legacy driver for older games (in control panel, uninstall software/ it shows the current new physix driver as well as a separate line having the legacy physix)

I use inspector (latest) and set up profiles or import prior ones back in.

Thats the routine for the 372.54 driver.


a physical difference as noted before in my set up but should not bare any issues to the rest:

--> my pcie order is reversed from other motherboards. Primary card is on the bottom, 4th card is at the top near cpus. On boot, the card on the bottom is the one that displays the bios and boot. I do run full uefi. In order to get 4-way sli without the warning, I install my v2 bridge upside down since my card order is in reverse. if I install my card right way up - then i get 3 way sli and the bridge upgrade warning.

(I have also made manual bridges were all 8 connectors are used in a specific pattern, but that was not used in this exercise)


That's all

for driver 369.05 there was more considerable effort. But this is a clean load with driver 372.54

Other than the fact I'm NOT running windows 10, not much else is different
(well, also I have different cpu sockets addressing alternating pcie lanes, but again, that won't effect the bridge warning)


V

 

Ok ty very much for your reply. So it's just a matter of your bridge being detected as HB to unlock the limitation. I'll try to find someone to lend me a card to try

 

@Venturi

Some great news: :banana:

(pls check your email - just sent you something)

 

What exactly did the trick ? Is it working now ?

 

I have been stalking this thread for abit, Have you tried to see if 4 card utilization is working now that the system has detected the HB bridge? and how did you manage to get the bridge to work in the end?

 

There's something being overlooked here...

If the Supermicro motherboard works the same way as the Asus dual CPU socket SLI mobo's do, such as Z9PE-D8 WS and Z10PE-D8 WS, CPU 0 controls pci-e slots 1 to 4, and CPU 1 controls pci-e slots 5 to 7, and both CPU's have 40 lanes each.

On my Asus Z9PE-D8 WS slots 1,3,5,7 are pci-e 3.0 x16. Two dual slot GPU's controlled by CPU 0, and Two controlled by CPU 1.

4-way has always worked flawlessly on my system, but I am using old Titans.

It could be that the Pascal drivers are seeing 2-way SLI per CPU, and tricking it into 4-way SLI....

Just a theory... ;-)

Would like to see a screenshot of your system running a decent AAA title such as doom 4, or fallout 4 with the SLI indicator on showing its actually utilising 4-way sli

I was also considering building a new super workstation with 4x Titan XP for GPU rendering, but will definitely be water cooled. GPU rendering puts the Cuda cores at a constant 100% load until the render complete so the GPU's get hot fast. Should cut my render times down to a third replacing my old Titans.

Work is the priority and these cards will pay for themselves in a few months like my last ones did. But shame to miss out on SLI when gaming.

I have a suspicion that once the yield rate has come down, we will be seeing a fully loaded Titan X Black next year, and with the new motherboard platform coming next year with Purley CPU's, is now the best time to be building a new super workstation? Probably not...

I'm itching to buy 4x Titan Pascal, and upgrading to the Asus Z10PE-D8 WS with E5-2687wv4's or 2697A's, but my spider sense says wait...

On the Nvidia and SLI issue, its a load of BS in my opinion. The Pascal architecture is capable of 8-way scaling, but using NV-link, and look at the Tesla P100 NV-Link and P100 over PCI-e 3.0, you are loosing almost 10Tflops of SP compute, but both are using the same chip and HBM2 memory.

Nvidia trying to convince everyone that 2-way is the way to go is BS, if a developer utilises 4-way, its no problem. Yes the performance benefits get less and less the more cards you add in SLI, that's just how scaling works, but for people like me that need more than 2 GPUs for work, but also game, why should we loose out on SLI? Isn't that supposed to be the target customer Nvidia made the Titan XP for in the first place?

NVidias pushing to change to 2-way really translates as Pascal>PCI-E 3.0> more than 2-way, serious compatibility problems!

Once PCI-e 4.0 hits the mainstream it will be, oh did we say that? must have been a typo....

 

Sure,

No problem

Here's UT3, Ethan carter and Dying Light

 

Nice thanks a lot !

I'd probably go for the Asus Z10 over the Supermicro, although Supermicro's technical support is way better than Asus's. Asus's is near useless, usually recommending to clear the cmos or reinstall the O/S, never followed their advice and always solved the problem myself without doing either recommendations. I had an X8dai platform a while back and Supermicro's support is one of the best.

I'm in two possibly four minds about upgrading though.

1.

Dual socket 2011-3 SLI board ( probably Z10Pe-D8 WS), Dual E5-2697Av4 or 87Wv4, , and 4x Titan Pascal for an all round CPU / GPU render powerhouse. Full custom dual radiator liquid cooling.

2.

Keep the old system, and build a single socket 2011-3 motherboard ( Probably Asus X99-E WS USB 3.1 ), i7 6950X CPU, and 64GB of 3200 DDR4 RAM, 4x Titan Pascal, and again full custom dual rad loop.

Its rare now that I use CPU's for rendering, mostly GPU's now, but when I am asked to do an animation using CPU's my current rig still can complete the frames in half the time a high end single socket can, so maybe I can keep the old system minus a few GPU’s just for CPU rendering and build a new system purely for GPU rendering and occasional gaming...

3.

Option 2 but with a single 16 core 32 thread Xeon v4 CPU so I still have the same CPU rendering power if needed and sell off the old rig components.

4. Wait for Xeon Skylake Purley, and possibly a fully loaded Titan X Black next year?

I know there is always something better around the corner and if you always wait you'll never upgrade, but I'd rather upgrade at the start of a new platform than and the end of one, and the X99 2011-3 platform will definitely be nearing its EOL next year...

Great to know that some games can be tricked into 4-way SLI, thanks for that Venturi, although I think it may have something to do with the SLI being shared over two CPU's on your MoBo...

 

Maybe you can help me out with a problem. Running three 980's and when I test a game like Skyrim I get as good or a bit better results running it with one card. .

Skyrim maxed out with three cards = 56 to 58 fps in my test scene. Same scene with one card = solid 60 fps.

I have no bridge warnings and running 372.54 driver. Have set to max performance, single monitor, nvidia sli.

What is wrong?

 

The profile is not correct
You'll need to go into Nc inspector, look to make sure the cards and AFR and afr2 are correct, you'll need compatibility bits enabled for that app and the specific compatibility buts enable, you need the items in the "unknown" section to be populated and you'll have to mess with thme various dx parameters and so forth.

You can build it yourself or maybe someone has already built one up. I don't have skyrim or I'd be happy to give you more specific guidance


I went through this last weekend trying to get We Happy Few to run butter smooth, probably an hour of trial and error

 

Now that you have got your world's 1st 4 way video, would you care to explain what exactly did you have to do to make it work ?
Thanks.

 

on driver 372.54
no driver modding necessary

option 1
you must use the 4-way v2 evga bridge or the v2 msi bridge --> please see all the earlier pictures in this post on bridges (about a 2 minute effort)

visually, these bridges have the metal connectors with the additional prongs on the outside of the metal connector

those are the only bridges that will work, period!
no the asus rog will not work

If you actually look at just one of those metal connectors and then look at your card insert, you'll see why, also see the picture in this thread.





option 2

you can craft a bridge that has higher bandwidth than any of them.
needed: (4) 150mm or 160mm ribbon cables , and (2) evga v2 4-way bridges to destroy
make 4 ribbons with mental connectors on each end.
this gives 8 connections instead of 6 and it doubles the bandwidth to the primary card. (about a 2hour effort). Hook them up in the correct sequence


Option 1 is the easiest and works every time
Option 2 is not necessary to make it work, but it it does what a future manufactured HB 4 way bridge would do.


IMPORTANT

if you want 4-way really liquid smooth functional 4-way with full utilization of all 4 cards
1. Have a beefy rig, 2 socket even better, period. You have to feed each card fully and equally.



2. You have to make your own custom profile (and no, using inspector to click on "use 4 cards" is not enough)
this is not optional, you're going to have to understand how to make profiles.
takes me about 10 minutes to make a profile, and about 30 more minutes to tweak it and balance it and get the most out of it.

here is an example of "any" game:






and here is a U4 engine game (folks are always saying you can't 4 way-sli the U4 engine)



if you do it right, and you benchmark any game afterwards, you can tell.
here's almost 400FPS at 4096x2160 max eye candy and physics
many folks have 4-way enabled, on pre-pascal cards -even if it shows for them, they are not actually using the cards or scaling in 4-way.

 

That's a cool video you posted, congrats on being the first one to get 4-way pascal to work.

Love the bugatti

 

Alright thanks a lot again for the detailed explanation and for sharing. I take it that you have to get rid of the HB bridge alert in the control panel, that's the key to unlock it.
The EVGA bridge I have, and custom profiles I master.

 

was an enthusiast key needed from nvidia to get the sli working?

 

always glad to help!

 

No, but it does require you to make your own custom profiles