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Why does the Asus GTX480 not play nice with the other GTX480s?

Retired
Not applicable

‎10-20-2010 09:51 PM - last edited on ‎03-05-2024 06:44 PM by Community Admin

Hey guys, I have dual GTX480s running on my R3E rig and have run into an issue while running SLI. One is an Asus GTX480 and the other a eVGA GTX480.

In non-SLI mode, the cards work perfect and have similar temps (within 1c of each other). In SLI with either card as the master (ie, top pcie slot) the SLI will go out of control thermally, to the tune of temps being 15c higher than the other card. And to verify the Asus card is that much hotter under load than the other card regardless of which card is in the top slot.

As a test I flashed the eVGA card with the Asus BIOS and the setup ran SLI just fine with temps within 1c of each other once more.

So, for the Asus support people, why doesn't the Asus GTX480 play nice with other vendors GTX480s that are running plain vanilla nVidia BIOSes???
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xeromist
Moderator

‎10-21-2010 08:41 AM

Interesting. Did you check the clock speeds on the cards to see if they changed somehow?
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Retired
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In response to xeromist

‎10-21-2010 09:59 AM

xeromist wrote:
Interesting. Did you check the clock speeds on the cards to see if they changed somehow?


Yep, and they are always both at stock speeds...
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ottoyu34
Level 9

‎10-21-2010 04:06 PM

Which slots on the R3E are you using?
Have you tried manually setting the fan speed to see if they can idle at the same temps?
with their stock VGA bios according, can you vertify using GPU-Z that reason why Asus card is idling hotter than the other? rpm speed, 2d clock speeds?
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Retired
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In response to ottoyu34

‎10-21-2010 05:05 PM

ottoyu34 wrote:
Which slots on the R3E are you using?
Have you tried manually setting the fan speed to see if they can idle at the same temps?
with their stock VGA bios according, can you vertify using GPU-Z that reason why Asus card is idling hotter than the other? rpm speed, 2d clock speeds?


Again, sorry, losing my patience here, as I already stated, THEY ARE AT THE SAME CLOCKS!!!

The Asus BIOS causes the Asus card to run 15c hotter than by itself or SLI'd with another Asus GTX480 whenever it is SLI'd with a GTX480 that is a NON-ASUS GTX480...

The fans run the same, the temps are perfect when running the same BIOS on both cards.

The commentary here was NOT for further troubleshooting as I gurantee it is done. It was posted to get an answer from someone at Asus, NOT ANYONE ELSE.

Sorry, I guess everyone assumes everyone else is a noob but without getting into a ton of detail of my life or career, lets just say I am the guy everyone consults to get answers and fixes for everything they cannot figure out.

Rest assured that it is an Asus BIOS problem. It can be replicated by flashing a non-Asus card with the Asus BIOS and that card will exhibit the same 15c increase in temps.

I just want someone at Asus to fess up to why it is doing it, or fix it because it is a PITA if you try to SLI an Asus card with a non Asus card. That is all.
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Retired
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‎10-25-2010 10:32 AM

hey beast, unlock most vendors out on the market taking Nvidia's reference cards and vanilla bios, ASUS actually does the homework to make a much more improved bios. because we use a custom bios, it is possible it may not play nice sometimes with other cards. could be something with the voltage tweak. so the premium you pay with ASUS VGA cards is because we improve on top of what Nvidia will release to push the cards further. which is also why some people will take another brands 480 and flash an ASUS bios.

-shows how the ASUS bios is the preferred choice.
-to those that buy a cheaper VGA on purpose just to flash asus's bios is lame. (give us credit for the hard work that has gone into the hardware)
-to those that have both ASUS and a different vendors card without knowing the difference and flashed the bios after, its alright, just hope you can consider ASUS in the long run =]
-for the 1c difference, its most likely due to the SLI bridge. there are vents at the top end of the card. The SLI bridge will cover one or two of the card's vents depending on your SLI configuration.
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Retired
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In response to Retired

‎10-26-2010 07:22 AM

Thank you Brian for the reply. I pretty much figured that cross-compatibility was not a major consideration, but was hoping, for the future, it would be something to strive for, as it caused at least 2 full days of constant testing and messing around to try to figure it out. (a $500 video card is not something I just slap in and don't test, as I was majorly concerned I had a bad unit when it started to thermally freak-out)

Also, the 1c difference between cards is not even a concern, just saying that they are both that close to each other, that is all.

Oh, and the reason I picked an Asus card and an eVGA is because they didn't have another Asus in stock (plus you guys only allow for 1 rebate per household), so I chose an identical card from eVGA to pair it with.

Considering in the last year I have purchased a G73Jh-A3, Asus GTX480, Rampage III Extreme and Crosshair III Formula just for myself (not including another $3k+ in Asus products for clients), I think it is obvious I like the brand, the features and the engineering put into Asus products, especially the ROG series.
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