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New GPU problem - Please help

AlpineYoda

n00b
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
4
I have an Intel DX58so2 motherboard and an XFX 7970 GPU. I just bought an XFX R9 290 Black which I want to add to this set-up. I upgraded the power supply to 1250w.

When I plug in the power to either card, it boots just fine. No problems at all.

When I plug in both cards and try to boot, the post process hangs and the motherboard lights indicate that memory and CPU initialization get stuck in an endless loop.

There aren't a lot of other drains on power - a few fans, a SSD for boot, a pair of HDDs for internal RAID. 1250w should be way more than enough.

Any suggestions? I contacted XFX Support and all they could come up with was "not us, must be the motherboard" after 5 days of thinking it over.

Thanks a lot in advance for the help! (If people think this is a motherboard problem, please let me know what you think about replacing mine with a Gigabyte GA-Z87Z.OC. I will also change the CPU from an i7-960 to an i7-4770)

Thanks!
 
why the need for both at the same time? i would just sell the 7970 and get another exact 290 if needing 2 cards......i figure your gaming if running the 290 and having a 7970 with it to me just doesn't sound ideal

at any rate i had to fix mine recently by resetting the cmos, pulling the battery and power, holding the power switch for a bit with the cmos jumper switched......its like my x58 bios gets glitched some times.......maybe its just getting old but i swear to god mine was spinning up for a few seconds and shutting down. I thought it possibly the power supply but in the end just resetting the cmos properly (and redoing all the bios settings) did mine wonders.....heck its worth trying

i was really thinking my board was dead from to much overclocking so many years....lastly im not bashing you for using 2 different cards but i know i would sure like to crossfire if i had 2 in my system...obviously if you don't have the latest bios do that first but in the end it could just be related to that weird compatibility issue some x58 people have had using 290 cards (even though it works by itself)
 
Thanks for the input. I'm going from 1 monitor to 3, hence the addition of the 290. I've been using the 7970 with a 27 inch display for a year with no issues on the flight sim DCS. I want to add 2 more 27 inch monitors to get a panoramic display, and I added the 290 to drive them. I can replace the 7970 with another 290 if I need to, but that plus a motherboard (if the x58 board is the problem) starts to get a little expensive - especially considering that the 7970 has been working just fine on a single monitor (I have been using a second monitor for work, photoshop, etc, but it wasn't active for DCS.)

Yes, I checked for a bios update yesterday. None since July 2013.

Is there a known x58 issue with the 290? I've heard mentions to that effect, but I haven't seen much on it so far.

Thanks again.
 
Just an fyi the 290, should be able to drive all three monitors, like 2 dvi and 1 hdmi. But I have heard issues with 290s and x58 chipsets but don't know if its really true or not/ root cause. When I was coin mining I had a 280x (7970) and two 290s together in the rig, but it was an AMD chipset FM2 board with no troubles (well other than having two mining profiles)
 
Sell the 7970 and buy any necessary adapter ($50-$75 max) Put the rest of the cash in your pocket. The 290 can drive all 3 monitors and avoid you from having the problem and trying to figure it out.
 
Sell the 7970 and buy any necessary adapter ($50-$75 max) Put the rest of the cash in your pocket. The 290 can drive all 3 monitors and avoid you from having the problem and trying to figure it out.

in theory you should be using less power as well...so i would agree if thats doable
 
Thanks for the input everyone. I didn't think the 290 could drive 3 2560x1440 displays at a reasonable speed for a flight sim like DCS. I will give it a shot.
 
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post. It's not like you could crossfire the 290 with the 7970 to get better performance in that flight sim. I'm not familiar with that game but if all your talking about is driving 3 displays the 290 can do 3 all by itself.
 
Yes - I'm not looking to crossfire these cards. All I want is sufficient horsepower to drive three displays at a reasonably high level of detail and fps.

I ran a HDMI cable to the third monitor last night and I can get eyefinity across all three, but the third was running at 1900 lines, not 2560. Someone said earlier that there is some kind of converter. Is it male HDMI to the gpu and then you plug DVI into that converter?

And it runs at full resolution that way?
 
Depending on which ouputs your 290 has and what inputs your monitor has, you could probably find a displayport to dvi adapter.
similar to this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=displayport_to_dvi-_-12-119-558-_-Product
That one I linked is a passive adapter. I know older AMD cards needed an active adapter, I don't think the new ones require one, but I'm unsure on that.

Also to note, I don't think HDMI 1.2 and older support 2560x1440 resolutions.
 
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