Remi,
I am sorry to say that your video cards are not SLI enabled, they are only PCIE.

Remi, to help you out...Russ is right your cards have a problem from the factory....however there is a solution at gainward:

http://forum.gainward.de/viewtopic.php?p=5785#5785

Back to square one for me. I cannot believe that this is problem! My video cards do not have the same BIOS but in order for me to resolve this I have to void my warranty, what’s up with that. I guess the best advice is to make sure that you buy both video cards at the same time. I purchase my cards a week apart, one was bad and I had to RMA it. The new one has different bios; make and model are the same but different bios. Everyone suggests flashing the bios, the more I read about this the more concerned I become. If I flash my video card bios and things go south I'm out of luck, I have just blown 200 bucks. If the card has to have the same bios they need to specify these things. Maybe they could sell video cards in SLI sets like dual channel ram is sold. I wish I had known about the bios thing I would have been more adamant about that when ordering! Sorry for venting but this is somewhat frustrating. Everyone seems to be very happy with their machines and that is a good sign. I have not had any problem out of mine while running a single card and for the sake of argument when running two cards either. Just no SLI, the whole purpose in buying the board in the first place. If anyone has any Ideas or suggestions that wont void the warranty I would again really appreciate it.

Totally frustrated,

My system:

AMD 64 3000
A8N SLI Deluxe, 1003 Bios
Corsair ram 3200 1 gig Dual channel (I could not resist the LEDS)
Swiftech heat sink (very happy)
Western Digital Raptor 74 gig HD single
2 ASUS EN6600GT SLI ready (I guess!!)
PC Power and Cooling 510 SLI powersupply (very nice)
Basically that’s it. I’m trying to keep it simple for now.

I ran into the dreaded DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL problem today. I had just added a Maxtor drive to my system so I thought that was the problem.

It wasn't. The fix was to turn the NVidia Firewall back on. I had turned it off temporarily and rebooted. I'd get BSOD a few minutes after booting Windows. Error was in HTTP.sys--odd.

So I took the Maxtor out. Same problem.
Turned firewall back on--works.

Thought about moving back to a previous Nvidia driver but things are working.

--Steve

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (1004.001 Bios)
1GB (2x512) Kingston HyperX 3200/400Mhz Memory
Leadtek 6800 THX
2 Raptor 74G-Striped (Boot)
2 Maxtor SATA/150 300G drives mirrored
Audigy ZS 2
Plextor PX-230A EIDE 52x CDR/W
Sony DRU-710A 16x DVDR
Dell 1800p 17" LCD
Samsung SyncMaster 770TFT LCD

Randy: flashing the bios on a video card should not void any warranty. Furthermore expect such things to be required more and more as hardware runs closer and closer to bleeding edge everyday.

If you have the proper machine setup and on an ups you should have no problems flashing any BIOS.

Just to play devils advocate, why then don’t more video card venders support this. On the ASUS website a BIOS for my video card is not even listed. Every site I found that has any information regarding the use of the nvflash tool or other tools always warn you that you maybe voiding your warranty. I realize that flashing is no big deal for a motherboard and really should not be a big deal for a video card either; I just don’t understand why nvidia does not support flashing their video cards. If I am wrong, I apologize, but from what I can gather from the research I have done this will void most warranties. I have no idea if ASUS will support this or not, but there is nothing on their site mentioning flashing your video BIOS. When you have just one video card no problem but get two into the mix, bang you have a problem. I just don’t want to be out 200 bucks. I'm very surprised that this has not been more of an issue. Does everyone who is running SLI have the same BIOS for both cards?

Remi Holm I have the same cards, with 6565 Bios, you can read it from sticker on the cards.. I woundered why there was an issue when I could get things to work, Windows seen the card but everytime it went to install the system crashed, I took it out and tried running the card by its self, and it was a no go, 1 long two short beeps = one dead card, tried it on another PCIexpress and its was a no go..

the Neopower2 seams a little low, Its fine on single 6600GT the gainward is a powerful with one of the fastest clock speeds, there is no on card power so its essential to have a good PSU with these cards. there are a few 600W PSU's or 550's would be idea..
I was going to test some but the asses put the prices up but there £80.00 which puts them as a lower cost than the antec and has more power..

Work out the PSU has a 15 and a 12 Amp rail which is really low - to power most hardware, considering a HDD requires about 7 Amps
The cards are required to run 109Watts each, and some CPUs about 98Watts then add the rest..

"Darragh Sinnot"

"Quote" I myself have XFX 6800 ultras (no other reason than the GT's were out of stock at the time and ultras were the only SLI compatible cards I would trust).
IMHO 6800GT's are the sensible choice for an SLI system, just make sure the memory is the fastest possible, otherwise under some conditions they will only be marginally better than a single Ultra."

Really, that's news to me. I have 2 6800GT's and at stock speed it's almost performing twice as fast in SLI games than my old AGP 6800Ultra. 2 6800GT's in SLI is only slightly slower than 2 6800Ultra's in SLI.

Check this out.
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2284

Also what exactly do you mean by make sure you get a 6800GT with the fastest memory. All 6800GT's have a standard stock memory speed of 1Ghz. If your talking about overclocking potential, well that's just luck of the draw. I feel very fortunate that both my 6800GT's run stable at Ultra stock speeds, but there is no way of telling that before you make your purchase.

Looks like a healthy discussion thusfar, thanks guys! I've again pointed both Asus and NVIDIA towards this thread this week, but they both remain tightlipped about any issues whatsoever. I've stumbled across an issue myself over the past few reinstalls which I can't seem to fix so I thought I'd use your collective minds to see if we can tackle this one.

I reinstalled the system with the A8N-SLI deluxe motherboard after upgrading to BIOS 1004-001, but now I have a unknown device, tied to the nForce4 chipset, in device manager I can't seem to get rid of (see image at below url), any ideas? None of the chipset drivers take care of it, not even when going back to any older versions, switching back to the 1003 final BIOS and reinstalling from scratch again didn't either.

Unknown device in device manager
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/image/11450/

I had that in my device manager after 1004

The driver installed with me putting the motherboard cd in the drive and selecting what I wanted to install in update driver, I said yes to checking the internet for it as well.

The driver is C:\windows\system32\drivers\ASACPI.sys

The device is called ATK0110 ACPI Utility.

Sander

Looks like it's related to your COM1 and LPT1 Ports.

Mike

As some of you know I received my Prometia Mach II GT today and got it running. If you would like to see this unit hooked-up to an A8N-SLI Deluxe with FX55 then just visit this link and look for the MACH II Project album. I will be submitting data regarding super cooling on the SLI in the very near future, temps at the present time are CPU -30C not moving, and -53C, was -62C for the Mach II, at stock. Still have some work to do, tie wrapping etc.. but overall ok.

Mike

PS: As there is an @ sign in this web address the link doesn't work in the forum.
You must add the http:// in front of the address below.

photos.yahoo.com/thellendfamily@rogers.com

i have the same problem with the unknown device in device manager. flashed mb to 1003 final when i recieved it,installed xp a few times now, and it has always been there. bios set to sanders specs except
- ACPI APIC Support : disabled
- Plug & Play O/S : No
and no sp2.

a8n with amd 64-4000
2x1gig corsair ddr400
2xevga 6800 ultras
sb audigy 2zs
enermax nosietaker 600 watt-only one pci-e connector
2x74gig raptors on nvidia sata-no raid (ncq enabled)
1 160gig seagate sata, also on nvidia raid
sony dvd-r-dl
dvi to epson 57" lcd rptv
6.39 chipset drivers
71.81 nvidias
WMP 10
nvidia decoder

still cannot get 3dmark 03 and 05 to play at 1280 x 720 without bad shimmering
slow play back with wmp especially hdtv content
must run wmp on single card, afr and sfr dont work
all games run, some only in single card mode
other than that, all good

great thread, thanks for all the effort

Thanks for solving my problem!
I am in awe.

Changing the bios on both vga cards did the trick.

However one horisontal line an one vertical line appears when I played Farcry.
I think I saw something about that previous in this faq, so I am going to look into it.

Remi Holm

***UPDATE***

The Taiwanese website of Asus was just updated with the latest 1004 final BIOS, grab it while it is hot.

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe BIOS 1004 final
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A8...ype=Latest

And beta 1005 is now available on one of their FTP sites:

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Socket_939/NVIDIA_Chipse...05sd01.zip

Hi all from Italy! Really first post here. Great faq, really the best on the net about this MB!
I’ve the no post problem and it seems really hard to resolve. I’ve tried -all-: minimum system boot, clear cmos, another VGA, switchin ez-plug... nothing happens, my monitor is still without signal. Finally i’ve send the pc to my shop and i suggested to test it with a different psu than mine, that is no good, i think. If the problem is the psu, and i hope so, i’ll buy a new psu, and i have thre choice (consider the prices, thanks) what do you suggest?:

1- Enermax noisetaker al-054 (maybe it’s italian code) 485w silent (102 euros) – or with 600w (but 155euros) all pfc active
2- Enermax coolergiant al-042 480w aluminium (115euros) pfc active
3- Coolermaster realpower 450 ultrasilent (99euros)

My system:

Asus A8N-SLI deluxe
Bios 1003
2x512mb v-data
Gigabyte 6600gt
Case TT Tsunami
HD Maxtor 60gb eide
PSU no brand 400w (15a only on +12v -I know it’s no good, but at the beginning it worked well for 2 weeks... now no... hmm I hope that this is the problem and not the MB -)

Thanks

Sander and Guys,

firstly, excellent FAQ, keep it up. Secondly. Bugger. Just found this place!

My problem is related to my brand spanking new OCZ 520W PSU. I know yours didn't even boot but mine had been okay until I started to notice some serious voltage drops on the 12v line. It now appears that it's not powerful enough and despite help from OCZ (thanks to them for the help) it would appear this model isn't going to cut the mustard.

I have 2 ways to go and both are more expensive than I can afford really (esp. seeing as I will be charged a restocking fee to rma the ocz psu when there's actually nothing wrong with it). Either the PC P&C 510 SLI or the OCZ Powerstream 600W. Looking at the numbers there is little to choose between the two and the OCZ is slightly cheaper and has pot variable voltage rails. With the P&C only being rated at 510W, I need to be convinced before I sell out the money for another PSU. When I'm told that my setup draws about 530W according to a power calculator.

Please help and give me some info.

Thanks

Lee,

As you probably have read my first OCZ PowerStream 600-watts fried after 15-mins when running my testing rig, the second never coped with the load, hence it is not on the recommended list for PSUs. PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 SLI is the only way to go if you want to make sure your PSU is up to spec.

The PSU calculator I referred to (OCZ use this to make quick calculations when chekcing peoples PSU's are up to snuff.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp