Help needed on running 2xVoodoo2 cards with SLI

[mfred]

I have 2 Voodoo2 cards from the same manufacturer(Helios) that can be run together with a SLI connection.

I tried to do this last night, but my system continually locked up.

This happened trying to access Desktop properties and CM and when I checked Directx diagnostics, the spinning cubes most forward face was broken up with horizontal lines.Th is also happened in CM, with the game not wanting to start and when it did, it locked with a pink screen or all of the picture had horizontal lines running through it.

The system ( don't laugh to hard )

Cyrix 300mhz CPU

TX98 motherboard

128M 133SD Ram

Win98

I am running the only updated drivers from 3Dfx and was wondering if I should use the original drivers because of SLI arrangement

Or does my BIOS settings need to be altered.

There is no information in the installation guide on this arrangement other than you can do it.

Windows 98 accepted the new card and Voodoo2 properties had listed as SLI being detected.

Any help would be much appreciated

mfred

[Juardis]

I thought TX motherboards were limited to 64 MB of SDRAM? [correction, not limited, but they won't use anything more than 64 MB. if you have more than 64, it slows things way down]. Maybe I'm getting that confused with HX motherboards?

Anyway, which 2d card are you using? Are you V2s capable of running DX7.0? CM was made with DX7.0 IIRC and your V2s may not be compatable with DX7.0.

Just some thoughts.

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Jeff Abbott

[This message has been edited by Juardis (edited 02-12-2001).]

[mfred]

To Juardis

Thanks for your reply.

I have been running the One Voodoo2 card with DirectX 7 for so long that I forget.

The brand of V2 is Helios.( both of them)

Memory count on booting reads 128M and windows98 reads 128M. I know that 133mhz for the ram is way faster than the motherboard.

Next upgrade is a motherboard and cpu?

mfred

[Juardis]

OK, SLI works by having each card draw every other line. Since one of your symptoms was horizontal lines running through the onscreen picture, it sounds perhaps like one card may be bad or not working properly.

Now, it's been awhile since I had my SLI setup, but some of the things I remember trying when problems cropped up were: swap cards around into different PCI slots, leave an open slot between them (if possible), get the 1 inch or 1.25 inch SLI cable instead of the 2 inch ribbon (the 2 inchers caused problems on some systems). Don't overclock your CPU or your cards if you are. Set your monitor refresh rate to 60 MHz. Set your screen resolution to 800x600 (you do know that the max is 1024x768 if you have 12MB cards don't you?).

And finally, check out the CM specs. I haven't lately but maybe it requires more than 8 MB of texture memory?

Good luck.