Can't display SLI status under Vista !

[Vikendios]

I just set up a would-be powerful new rig using an ASUS P5N 32 SLI SE DELUXE board, an Intel 6700 core duo CPU, and a couple of NVIDIA GTX 7950 graphic cards. A new SATA hard drive and fresh OEM Vista (not upgrade) completed the rig.

The problem is that the Nvidia display control panel (now fused under Vista with the Vista display panel) does not show SLI options where it should according to Help ! I'm using the latest Nvidia for Vista 97-46 driver...

I'm under the impression that the Asus motherboard does not recognize the SLI set-up. It came with a CD that is labeled "SLI drivers", whatever that means, but that CD won't load under Vista ("unsupported OS !!!")

No update for Vista of BIOS and/or drivers was to be found on the Asus site for this board. Could I be right about this, and what is Asus doing about it ?!

 

[Lord Evermore]

Asus doesn't write the drivers for SLI or for the chipset, they just package nvidia's drivers with the mainboard. The mainboard doesn't need to "recognize" SLI, it's all in how the drivers direct the data to each card/GPU.

nvidia's drivers apparently do NOT support SLI in Vista right now (it's there for development and not performance). They do have a beta driver available that appears to support SLI.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_100.59.html

 

[herbiehancock]

Lord Evermore, nVidia still hasn't produced any Vista SLI drivers for any cards other than the 8800 series......they have consciously chosen to start their SLI driver development at the end of their gpu line that has the least number of users out there, leaving the vast majority of SLI users out in the cold so far.

DirectX 9 and OpenGL NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs and DirectX 10 NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available in a future driver

Wonder why they cannot get them out yet........ATI managed to produce a complete set for all their Crossfire setups on Vista's release. Makes you wonder what in the heck nVidia has been doing for the last few months/years.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Crap. I misread the release notes there. I saw the line about beta support for the older series, didn't see the part that said it would be available in the future.

 

[Vikendios]

Thanks very much for the info. I think nVidia is being really uncouth, particularly as I did not even have the choice to buy an XP OEM OS after Feb 12 and had to go Vista !!!

 

[Lord Evermore]

The driver model for Vista is significantly different than for XP. All manufacturers are struggling to get drivers working as well on Vista as on XP. nvidia's first priority is to get their flagship product line working properly with all of its features, and previous versions will eventually be taken care of. Luckily SLI only goes back a few generations, so they are willing to work on it for all the cards that support it, instead of leaving out support for the oldest ones.

As for your OS choice, that's the computer manufacturer's decision, not nvidia's. You can still go buy WinXP separately if you want it, and actually I think the license for Windows operating systems allows you to choose instead to install a previous version.