6800 Ultras Sli mode and Apple 30 inch display

[kene66]

Hi

Im running a pair of 6800 Geforce Ultras in SLi mode on an Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe motherboard. Im using Windows XP media center edition. All the latest updates have been installed for XP.

I bought an Apple 30 inch cinema display. Its very pretty and I like it a lot BUT (and its really frustrating!)

The problem is that I cant seem to get windows to see a screen resolution above 1280 X 800. It doesnt see the Apple monitor it just reports a "plug and play" monitor which cant go above 1280 X 800.

I cant find a specific windows XP driver for the Apple display.

Im using version 7.1.8.9 of the Nvidia drivers.

Has anyone else had this problem please and if so please how do you fix it?

Many many thanks.

Ken

[GlowStick]

Yes, you need a Quadro class card that supports Dual-Link DVI out.

Or

A Geforce 6800 Ultra 512mb has exactly one Dual-Link DVI port on it.

Rember, Dual DVI ports DOSE NOT EQUAL Dual-Link DVI.

Edit, to avoid confuseing here is a link to a card that will power your screen no problem. Newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133141)

[kene66]

A Geforce 6800 Ultra 512mb has exactly one Dual-Link DVI port on it.

Rember, Dual DVI ports DOSE NOT EQUAL Dual-Link DVI.
[/URL]

Thanks. I am using a XFX Geforce 6800 Ultra DDR3 Dual DVI TV PCI-E (I was using 2 in SLi mode on my Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe motherboard but I was worried that the SLi bit might be confusing the issue).

According to SFX http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=41

their GF 6800 Ultra's output is Dual DVi. They say on their web site "Dual-Link DVI Support Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays."

I dont know what Im doing wrong. The XFX code for the card is PV-T45-UDF7. Its all bit confusing.

Sigh.

[GlowStick]

I dont know what Im doing wrong. The XFX code for the card is PV-T45-UDF7. Its all bit confusing.

I cant find that code, but i do see a PV-T45-UDFX witch is a 256mb version of the card. A competely Stock, Nvidia Geroce 6800 Ultra 256mb will not have a Dual-Link DVi port on it. Could it be added on, YES. Will a manufacuter add it on, most likely NO.

Assumeing you do have exactly one Dual-Link DVi port, did you try both ports on your card?

their GF 6800 Ultra's output is Dual DVi. They say on their web site "Dual-Link DVI Support Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays."

I only find that on their 'general geforce 6800' page. And it is probly very misleading, however I feel they are only talking about the Geforce 6800 Ultra 512mb witch infact do have exactly one Dual-Link DVi port.

Basicly, try both ports on your card. If it still fails, return your cards and buy a 512mb version or buy a Quadro.

[dogbait]

If it turns out that your card does not support dual-link DVI you can try running the panel at a very low refresh rate (Rivatuner might help in doing that). Otherwise the following cards have been known to work:

- Asus V9999GE
- Dell 6800GTO
- PNY Verto 6600GT

Otherwise hold on for a week or so and see if the new nvidia card comes with Dual-Link DVI as standard. Or buy a Quadro (FX2000, 3000 and 4000 all suport the 30" panel I believe).

[katzha]

I am having the identical problem, unable to drive an Apple Cinema 30 to anything above 1280x800 with an nVidia 6800 Ultra 512K. I disabled SLI and removed the second board, but still no high resolution. Have you come up with anything?

[kene66]

Its a bit frustrating. Ive done some research.

The Nvidia web site is very misleading. ALL the 6800 Ultra's (and that includes the 512MB model) are NOT dual DVI, in other words NOT DDL. They have two DVI ports but they are both single. They simply cannot drive the Apple at full resolution, they dont have the capacity. Thats ALL the 6800 models currently available for the PC, ultra or otherwise.

The distinction is between Dual DVI (true DDL, either 1 port or two on the card) and confusingly what Nvidia also want to call Dual DVI (just two single DVI ports on the card). It would seem that Nvidia do NOT make that distinction which is a shame.

What is even worse is that their web site is deliberately innacurate.

"Dual DVI Support
Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays including 1900x1200 resolution and the new Apple 30" cinema display. (Support for Apple 30” cinema display available on the GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB only.)"

This came from http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20040406350192.html

According to Nvidia themselves the Geforce 6800 Ultra 512MB CANT DO THE JOB any better than the 256MB, I checked. Both cards are single DVI albeit with two ports. They are NOT Dual DVI.

None of the 6800's for the PC can run the Apple 30 inch display according to Nvidias own support staff. They are still checking if the 7800 will be proper actual dual DVI (DDL) rather than two single DVI ports. If you were thinking of getting one I wouldnt buy one till they have promised in writing that it is.

I am tempted to send an email to Nvidia letting them know that their web site is in direct contradiction with their support staffs advice.

Hope this helps. Sorry its mostly what I havent been able to do. The Quadro IS true DDL but Im not sure it will run games.

Ken

[GlowStick]

Did you try both dvi ports?

[GlowStick]

Its a bit frustrating. Ive done some research.

The Nvidia web site is very misleading. ALL the 6800 Ultra's (and that includes the 512MB model) are NOT dual DVI, in other words NOT DDL.
You coudlnt be more wrong sir!

Again, I dont think I can put this into your brain, most people can simply not comprehend this but. Dual DVi dose NOT equal Dual Link DVi.

So your question do all 6800 ultras have Dual Dvi, YES THEY DO!!!!! YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW WHAT THAT IS!
They have two DVI ports but they are both single.That is the DEFENITION of Dual DVI

They simply cannot drive the Apple at full resolution, they dont have the capacity.That is correct, a video card with Dual DVI can not drive the 30". However Nvidia states that on their website (read on).
Thats ALL the 6800 models currently available for the PC, ultra or otherwise.Wrong! Nvidia states that the Geforce 6800 Ultra 512MB model can drive ONE 30" Apple Cinema Display.

The distinction is between Dual DVI (true DDL, either 1 port or two on the card) and confusingly what Nvidia also want to call Dual DVI (just two single DVI ports on the card). It would seem that Nvidia do NOT make that distinction which is a shame.Not quite, lets get some definitons out of the way.

Dual-Link DVI: A DVI port that has two TDMS transmitter that can worth togehter to power high resolution displays.

DDL: Dual Dual-Link, a card witch has exactly TWO Dual-Link DVI ports. As seen on the Macintosh editions and select Quadro 4400 cards.

Dual DVI: Two stanard DVI ports.

The distinction is quite clear to me, however, I would hope that someone who is going to spend $3,000 on a monitor would research, THEN buy. So looking at the correct definitions, Nvidia stated the truth, while you misread them. They also do plainly state that your card will not run the 30" Cinemadisplay, however again, you have to READ what they put on their web page.

What is even worse is that their web site is deliberately innacurate.
"Dual DVI Support
Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays including 1900x1200 resolution and the new Apple 30" cinema display. (Support for Apple 30” cinema display available on the GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB only.)"According to Nvidia themselves the Geforce 6800 Ultra 512MB CANT DO THE JOB any better than the 256MB, I checked. Both cards are single DVI albeit with two ports. They are NOT Dual DVI.Um what?
Can you not read? It planely states that ONLY the 512mb model supports the 30" Cinema. I am baffled at how you could of missed this, but this explanes why your research has found nothing LOL. And again, you misuse Dual DVI.

None of the 6800's for the PC can run the Apple 30 inch display according to Nvidias own support staff. They are still checking if the 7800 will be proper actual dual DVI (DDL) rather than two single DVI ports. If you were thinking of getting one I wouldnt buy one till they have promised in writing that it is.Support staff? Right, meanwhile they bluntly state that the 6800 Ultra 512mb supports one 30" Cinema Display. They probly just dont want to deal with you.

I am tempted to send an email to Nvidia letting them know that their web site is in direct contradiction with their support staffs advice.Please do.

Hope this helps. Sorry its mostly what I havent been able to do.Honestly, it did not help because it was full of wrong information.

So, lets try to sum everything up!

You own two Geforce 6800 Ultra 256mb models
Nvidia states that they will not drive a Apple 30" Cinema Display
To your amazement, they do not. Case closed on that one.

To anyone else, I would recomend buying a EVGA 7800 GTX, to drive it, but I feel there is no way to gaurentee my self that you could properly install and use it. Find someone who knows what they are doing and ask them for help!

[kene66]

Glowsticks posting doesnt answer the central point which is that none of the 6800 Ultras FOR THE PC has DDL which means they wont run the Apple 30 inch display despite what the Nvidia web site says. If anyone who actually HAS an Apple 30 inch display working at full res with a 6800 Ultra would care to respond I would be grateful. Actually if anyone who actually has an Apple 30 inch display working at full res would care to help with this Im sure that katzha and I will be equally grateful.

For Glowsticks benefit I set out below extracts from the emails between myself and the support staff who were unfailingly polite and helpful.

[you - 20/6/2005 13:52:31] Do any of the current model 6800`s have the ability to drive the Apple 30inch cinema display please? (for PC not Mac please)

[Support - 22/6/2005 11:29:2] Hi, not at the moment, but we are expecting new products. Regards

I shall therefore NOT be buying a 6800 Ultra to run my 30 inch display as the current models FOR THE PC DON’T have DDL.

One more point. Im going to assume that Glowsticks lamentable lack of civility flows from English not being his first language rather than an inherent rudeness on his part. I therefore forgive his rudeness. I will however read any subsequent postings from him with a fair degree of technical skepticism. Lets just say that once bitten, twice shy.

[ricercar]

Glowsticks posting doesnt answer the central point which is that none of the 6800 Ultras FOR THE PC has DDLUnfortunately you appear to continue to misunderstand the difference between Dual-link and Dual DVI. The cards mentioned by Glowstick--the ASUS V9999 Ultra, et al--all support Dual-link connections. Go back and read the post more carefully.

Many folks here have x86 GeForce 6800 Ultras driving our Apple 30" Displays. Your inability to do so suggests that you have a misunderstanding, not Glowstick.

One more point. Im going to assume that Glowsticks lamentable lack of civility flows from English not being his first language rather than an inherent rudeness on his part.I suspect Glowstick's tone is because you are not paying sufficent attention to people's attempts to guide you away from your misunderstanding.

Some people refuse to be helped. Are you one of them?

Let's try this: in simple terms, dual Link is an electrical function, having no relation to whether a card is physically equipped with dual-DVI (e.g. two DVI connectors). Dual-link electrical connections can be supported with one DVI physical connector.

All NVIDIA GPUs since GeForce4 support one dual-link and one single-link connection. Read that again: 100% = All. No exceptions. This means even the NVIDIA chips on your 6800 cards support dual-link DVI.

However, your problem arises because the OEM (MSI, ASUS, etc.) decides what functionality is activated for their video cards, not NVIDIA. The Dual-link capability goes unused, unimplemented on most video cards on the market (this appears to be true for your 6800 cards). Most OEMs do not support dual-link connections with their consumer "GeForce" cards, including the 6800 Ultras. Most OEMS for workstation "Quadro" cards do support dual-link connections.

The cards mentioned by Glowstick--the ASUS V9999 Ultra, et al--all support Dual-link connections. You MUST use one of these models, or a Quadro workstation card, to support the Apple 30 display in the maximum resolutions on an x86 platform.

[kene66]

Thank you ricecar. I am grateful.

You explained the situation very well and clearly without feeling the need to be rude.

I clearly need to find one of the few card manufacturers that has enabled the Dual DVI capability of the Nvidia chip. All 6800 Nvidia chips have the capability. Only the 512MB Ultras power the Apple 30 inch display. Therefore I need to find a 512MB Ultra with DDL enabled. The XFX 6800 Ultras 512 MB do not have DDL enabled.

One small thing, while I appreciate your being supportive of another regular contributor to this forum I do not consider it acceptable behaviour on any civilised forum to scorn or ridicule another contributor just because they misunderstood something. It defeats the object and moreover its downright rude.
:)
Thanks again for your reply which was very helpful.

[ricercar]

You're welcome. I find most disagreements among smart people are not because they think differently, but rather because they communicate differently.

[GlowStick]

http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/77.72/77.72_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

Read page 6 carefully!

[katzha]

GlowStick is exactly right, and this solved my problem. There are two DVI connectors on my nVidia 6800 Ultra 512K's, and they look identical, but one is dual-link, and the other is not. When the Apple 30" monitor is connected to the wrong DVI connnector, it comes up as a "Plug-and-Play Monitor" and will not run above 1280x800. But when I connected it to the other DVI connector and rebooted, the monitor came up as a "Cinema HD Display" and runs at 2560x1600. And I am having no compatibility problems running SLI (although I am not sure I am getting any speed boost from the second processor, either).

BTW, the 30" Apple monitor is about the most beautiful electronic product I have ever seen.

[GlowStick]

GlowStick is exactly right, and this solved my problem. There are two DVI connectors on my nVidia 6800 Ultra 512K's, and they look identical, but one is dual-link, and the other is not. When the Apple 30" monitor is connected to the wrong DVI connnector, it comes up as a "Plug-and-Play Monitor" and will not run above 1280x800. But when I connected it to the other DVI connector and rebooted, the monitor came up as a "Cinema HD Display" and runs at 2560x1600. And I am having no compatibility problems running SLI (although I am not sure I am getting any speed boost from the second processor, either).

BTW, the 30" Apple monitor is about the most beautiful electronic product I have ever seen.
Great info! Glad to see it works.

Could you possibly post your brand and where you purchased the cards for refrence to others?

[katzha]

As indicated the cards are nVidia 6800 Ultra 512K's. They were part of a new Alienware Aurora system.

[GlowStick]

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1027877310&postcount=426

Zing!

[Kamel]

i don't mean to be rude or anything, but you are actually just very hard headed and despite the fact that people have told you several times the exact nature of your problem, you deny to accept that fact. this can, and normally does, induce rudeness and hard feelings.

not our fault that you didn't do your homework, no more than it is your fault that nvidia's manufacturers decided not to add support for this feature.

on a lighter side, i am thinking it's possible to get a bios update which may enable this feature. like ricercar said, it does exist, it's just disabled. on an unrelated note, i am 90% sure i saw one (1) 6800u which supported this, but i am not sure what it was.

[asudoug]

Hello,

Just to clarify, could someone explain the relationship between "sli" "dual-link dvi" and "sli chipset"? I understand the difference between dual-link dvi and dual dvi.

Also, are there any laptops that have dual-link dvi? I don't care about having two graphics cards (which is what people usually talk about with sli chipsets). I want to find a laptop with a single graphics card that has a dual-link dvi port so I can use it in 2560x1800 for my 30"dell monitor.

Thanks!

[ViN86]

i wondered who dug up this relic lol. oh well, as they say, always better to add to an existing thread than start a new one. heres some answers for ya

SLi - nVidia's technology bought from voodoo that allows two video cards to be run at the same time for increased performance. by splitting the rendered frame and combining them together, it allows two video cards to work simulataneously and theoretically double framerate (although in reality its about a 33% performance increase). there is another form of SLi called AFR (alternate frame rendering) which allows the cards to alternate rendered frames. this SLi mode is more compatible with games.

Dual Link DVI - a feature that allows two DVI ports to be used simulataneous and output respective parts of a screen. allows ultra high resolutions on large screens (eg 30" apple display). it uses both DVI outputs, and an internal link synchronizes them, allowing the large resolution.

SLi Chipset - a chipset made by nvidia. all SLi chipsets (for now) are referred to as nforce4. their capabilites can be determined by their suffix. here are some examples:

nforce4 sli- first made sli chipset. it has two x16 PCIe connections, and splits them into two x8 electrical connections (so it splits the slots bandwidth's in half, which doesnt matter cause they arent saturated anyway) allowing two video cards to be used. only supports socket939 amd cpus.

nforce4 ultra - a non-sli version of the nforce4 chipset. it only has one PCIe x16 connection

nforce4 sli Intel Edition - exactly the same as the first sli chipset, however this is for intel and its LGA775 socket.

nforce4 sli x16 - this is the second sli chipset. it has two x16 connections which each has its own x16 electrical connection for full bandwidth (great for ultra high resolutions and AA/AF, err "eyecandy")

nforce4 sli x16 intel - this is new, its intel's version of the x16 chipset

hope that helps some ;)

[Redeemed]

only supports socket939 amd cpus.


Incorrect. Epox makes a motherboard sporting the NF4 SLi chipset for s754. And, SLi DOES work on this motherboard. Granted, the PCI-e X16 is split so each card runs in x8- but that isn't much of an issue (as you mentioned).

Here is a link to the Epox board at Newegg.com:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123257

Infact, I purchased that board and am currently saving up to purchase the rest of the system to be built around it. In most current gaming scenerios, it very well may rival some of the top s939 base SLi setups. Then again, were multi-threading and memory bandwidth are greatly needed, it will probably fall behind by quite abit compared to dual core CPUs and systems running dual channel ram.

But, in regards to the original topic, doesn't the 7900 series support the the larger monitors? I mean, if not, what are all these gamers using to power these monitors with silky smooth framerates (in most cases)? If the OP is running a PCI-e 6800GT, getting a single 7900GT or GTX should solve the problem.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/7_series_techspecs.html

Advanced Display Functionality
Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85Hz
Dual-link DVI capability to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution digital flat panel displays up to 2560x16001
Integrated HDTV encoder provides analog TV-output (Component/Composite/S-Video) up to 1080i resolution
Full NVIDIA® nView® multi-display technology capability

You'll notice that little "1" at the end of the 2560x1600 resoltion- here is what that is all about:

1 Requires NVIDIA® ForceWare® Release 90 driver

^^Found at the very bottom of the page.

So, plug a 7900GT in there and enjoy that honkin' huge monitor! :D :D