Disabling one of three cards in SLI
This question falls between two forums, so I'll just post it in both. I have 3 980ti's in sli connected by a single water block. From what I understand, 3d surround can only utilize two cards, and subsequently disables my option within the nv control panel. Is there any way I can disable the card to attempt to run 3d surround? I'm running the most current drivers and using win 10. my monitors are 3 ROG swifts running at 7680x1440 Thanks in advance for any advice/clarifications!
This question falls between two forums, so I'll just post it in both. I have 3 980ti's in sli connected by a single water block. From what I understand, 3d surround can only utilize two cards, and subsequently disables my option within the nv control panel. Is there any way I can disable the card to attempt to run 3d surround? I'm running the most current drivers and using win 10. my monitors are 3 ROG swifts running at 7680x1440

Thanks in advance for any advice/clarifications!

#1
Posted 10/22/2015 04:03 PM   
On some motherboards, there is a switch to turn off an individual PCI Express lane. This is typically found on higher end motherboards. You could also designate it as a PhysX card I think, but I'm not sure because I do not have SLI or Surround. EDIT: you can see an example here http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/365/images/overclocking.html Scroll down to "OC PCIe Switch" EDIT: one thing you "do not" want to do is unplug the power from the GPU, unless the card is being removed.
On some motherboards, there is a switch to turn off an individual PCI Express lane. This is typically found on higher end motherboards.

You could also designate it as a PhysX card I think, but I'm not sure because I do not have SLI or Surround.

EDIT: you can see an example here
http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/365/images/overclocking.html

Scroll down to "OC PCIe Switch"

EDIT: one thing you "do not" want to do is unplug the power from the GPU, unless the card is being removed.

#2
Posted 10/22/2015 04:20 PM   
Nice! thank you, I'll try that when I get home. The designation to PhysX option is greyed out tho.
Nice! thank you, I'll try that when I get home. The designation to PhysX option is greyed out tho.

#3
Posted 10/22/2015 06:16 PM   
Did you disable sli first? Disable sli, the dedicate a card to physx, then enable two way sli
Did you disable sli first? Disable sli, the dedicate a card to physx, then enable two way sli

ImageVolnaPC.com - Tips, tweaks, performance comparisons (PhysX card, SLI scaling, etc)

#4
Posted 10/22/2015 10:46 PM   
For Nvidia Surround and SLI cards the dedicated physics option doesn't work anymore to force only one or 2 cards into surround (depending on your setup). I used to run 2 GTX 690s when they made that change and I had to find an ingenious way of getting 3way SLI to work and disabling the 4th GPU. With my 2 970s sometimes I needed Surround on one card but I didn't feel like disabling my second card. What I have done for that is Disable one GPU (You need to identify the specific GPU and make sure none of your Surround monitors are connected to it) in Device Manager while SLI/Surround is disabled. Then Enable Surround with the remaining GPUs (in my case 1), then re-enable the other GPU and set it as a Physics card. That has worked for me very well with my current setup. You can try that with your 3 980tis and see if that works for you. Just remember once you disable Surround you would have to go back through the entire process to re-enable it in that way.
For Nvidia Surround and SLI cards the dedicated physics option doesn't work anymore to force only one or 2 cards into surround (depending on your setup). I used to run 2 GTX 690s when they made that change and I had to find an ingenious way of getting 3way SLI to work and disabling the 4th GPU.

With my 2 970s sometimes I needed Surround on one card but I didn't feel like disabling my second card. What I have done for that is Disable one GPU (You need to identify the specific GPU and make sure none of your Surround monitors are connected to it) in Device Manager while SLI/Surround is disabled. Then Enable Surround with the remaining GPUs (in my case 1), then re-enable the other GPU and set it as a Physics card.

That has worked for me very well with my current setup.

You can try that with your 3 980tis and see if that works for you.

Just remember once you disable Surround you would have to go back through the entire process to re-enable it in that way.

Intel Core i9-9820x @ 3.30GHZ
32 gig Ram
2 EVGA RTX 2080 ti Gaming
3 X ASUS ROG SWIFT 27 144Hz G-SYNC Gaming 3D Monitor [PG278Q]
1 X ASUS VG278HE
Nvidia 3Dvision
Oculus Rift
HTC VIVE
Windows 10

#5
Posted 10/23/2015 09:19 AM   
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