PCIe 3.0, cannot enable w/o black screen

A

Archangel7

n00b
Joined
Jan 7, 2010
Messages
57
Having a curious issue, that I am having a hard time figuring out due to lack of information on the web. When I enable the GEN3 in bios on my ASRock x79 E9, the system will post and apparently boot to log in screen, but this a guess because the monitors go in power save for lack of signal from cards.

I was wondering if any others are experiencing this problem? Or better yet, a solution?
 
Maybe need an updated bios to use it, and possibly thoug the cards are capable of pci-e 3, thier drivers may not be allowing it properly as they have been just release after all.

From what I have seen so far, pci-e spec 3, really doesnt help the gpus from a performance standpoint, there was only one or 2 examples of them actually doing anything worthwhile, one was a specific decoding app using gpu, the other was a synthetic bench, everything else showed 0 performance improvment or loss.

My bet, its either the boards bios, or the vid cards drivers, I am sure it will be fixed, but I would leave it pci-e spec 2, and not worry about it, seems you are not losing anything anyways :)(yeh I know it should work afterall it wasnt cheap)
 
Yes, you need to update microcode in your BIOS for PCIe 3.0.
 
I believe I have the most recent bios, but I admit I have not checked since the release of the 7970. But I will check.

I hear ya, and my thoughts exactly, no diff, why worry, oh yeah cuz I paid money for a board that is 3.0 compliant, and have video cards that are 3.0 compliant, but they do not work.

I tired to see if disabling cxf would help, and now it just keeps cycling through post and shutdown, quite annoying.
 
bios being for the motherboard itself, not the firmware for the gpus they are hardcoded to use pci-e whatever version as defined by its drivers that interface with the gpu.

So
Bios for motherboard go to vendors website i.e ASUS, Gigabyte whomever makes your motherboard.
Drivers for vid card there should be a new one out in a few days current I believe is 12.1 preview A or something like that.
and just to double check go to the manufacturer example, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc and look on thier driver list for your card, there may be some special driver cited for it.

I believe it is probably the motherboard bios though, alot of X79 boards have had issues in many different ways, unstable bios, pci-e locking and such.

I hear you on the issue at hand, and I would feel the same, unfortuantely, its like beating your head against a wall, should have seen the issues trying to get voltage tweak to work for my 6870 form ASUS, never did work, cannot work, its posted on the box as it should work as intentioned, try arguing with them, thier responce "format you OS, and sometimes things just do not work as intentioned" if you look at the bios of the card, guess what, it is a non adjustable pre-set limit, that WILL NOT CHANGE.

So yes, I understand where you are coming from on this, but I believe it is the motherboard not the gpu`s, after all pci-e is a spec that gpu makers use that is handled by the motherboard. The card are backawards compatible with any version of pci-e but if the motherboard is acting up as it doesnt know how to enforce the use of spec 3, then thats the problem, pci-e slots are only capable of what they are "wired to" cards are "wired" for back compatiability i.e spec 1-2-3.
 
I have the EXACT same issue. When enabling GEN3 mode on my 7970's, the screen goes black, but the computer will boot into Windows normally. Setting the slots back to GEN2 resolves this issue. This in on an EVGA X79 SLI.

x79_IOH.jpg
 
I have an accell active mini display to dual link DVI adapter x2 on my system and my 2 screens that i'm using them on will go blank.. I've read on there web site that there adapter needs a firmware update to fix the prob.. no idea what connection your using or adapter but something to think about just encase you are.

Fixed my issue.. Did not need a firmware update.

My 2 active mini display port to dual link DVI cables were not getting enough power threw the motherboard USB connections.. I read that its best to use a high powered USB hub. So luckly i had one that i never used. Its a switchable hub as it gets a power singal through a USB connection to the usb header on the motherboard to turn on or off. So at first it still didnt work cause windows was lowering the power to the USB for power savings. So i also had to change the power settings to always stay on.. Was easy enough to notice cause the hub has a LED when on. When one of the screens would black out i looked at the hub and it was off.. Once i changed the usb power to always stay on its working perfectly now! Gona test it again without the hub and see if it was just the windows power options that was messing it up.
 
Last edited:
Intel never said that Sandy Bridge-E support PCI Express 3.0. They said maybe support it, or maybe not. The Sandy Bridge-E has a PCI Express 2.0 controller as PCI-SIG officially certified it. On the motherboard side, the Gen3 link is supported, but it need a CPU, with officially certified Gen3 controller. In this case the Gen3 support is not insured.
The present SB-E CPU-s are uses the C1 stepping, which is a faulty revision. It has problems with PCI Express 3.0, and VT-d support. The C2 stepping will fix these.
 
zlatan said:
Intel never said that Sandy Bridge-E support PCI Express 3.0. They said maybe support it, or maybe not. The Sandy Bridge-E has a PCI Express 2.0 controller as PCI-SIG officially certified it. On the motherboard side, the Gen3 link is supported, but it need a CPU, with officially certified Gen3 controller. In this case the Gen3 support is not insured.
The present SB-E CPU-s are uses the C1 stepping, which is a faulty revision. It has problems with PCI Express 3.0, and VT-d support. The C2 stepping will fix these.
Click to expand...

Wow.. so people that bought the newest 2011 CPUs are screwed? I'm out a $1000 if intel dont exchange mine when the newer stepping comes out.
 
umm, thats more or less false Zlatan, X79 "supports" PCI-E spec 3.0 as it more or less is the electrical/physical connection on the motherboard itself that allows it, they were waiting on the gpus that could utilize it or for that matter raid cards and the like that could saturate it.

I believe it hass 99% to do with the motherboards themselves, apprently EVGA has a few that have zero issues using PCI-e 3.0 with 7970, but it shows next to no tangible performance benefit except in cases where the extra "gained" bandwidth can help, such ae encoding/decoding/AES and the like.

Although to my knowledge, you will not be utilizing multi-gpu setups all running at pci-e 3.0 higher then 8x speed, which ends up litterally a hair faster then spec 2 at x16 link. The only major thing X79 adds is more ram support, sata 3 or 6gb and USB3, there still is only X lanes available for pcie no matter if it is 3.0 speeds or 2.0 speeds, so once again, from all the reviews I have seen, and the actual performance "gain" or hope of performance gain, it is negliable and should not be seen as such.

If anything, what spec 3.0 and X79 would allow, is the ability to use X lanes at 1/2 speed( x8 3.0) or full speed(x16 2.0 equivalent) and you would still have enough left over for other things. Ivy Bridge will be the first to support 3.0 throughtout to my knowledge, for now, users have to rely on Vendors(asus, evga,msi,asrock) to enable or give spec 3.0 compliance, just like the vendors did for Sata 6Gb or USB3 through add in chips, bios tweaking and such.

Yes it sux, but, this was known for quite a few months, Intel said they would have some kind of spec 3.0 compliance, but it would not be hardware driven support, it would be given by thier vendors, Ivy bridge will support it, they made this decision months ago, to make sure Sandy-E was not pushed back further.
 
Yes, the motherboards are support Gen3 link, but SB-E C1 stepping is a faulty revision. Intel didn't released the server platforms for this reason. They are waiting for C2 stepping, because the server market is different. They can't say it maybe support PCIe 3.0.
The real problem with C1 stepping is not really the functionality. It does not meet the speed requirements what PCI-SIG specificated on Gen3.
 
well, the Intel DATA sheet does state support for it but with a * meaning as of yet, no official support hardware cpu wise(though the cpu can support it up to x8 speed currently as the functionality is there, just not officialy from Intel just thier vendors as add on chip support), "apprently" when the higher end 8 core sandy-e models come out, they will be bringing it with them, so in other words, if the motherboard you have does not allow it, either send a hatemail to them saying you want your $ back cause they lied, or send a hatemail to Intel allowing thier vendors to see it as a feature THAT WILL NOT WORK :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top