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Wierdest Problem Ever

JacobC1983

JacobC1983

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 4, 2006
Messages
2,609
I have a new weirdest problem in the main rig in my signature. Apparently, when I put my second XfX 5870 in the third slot of my X58 motherboard, my pc won't boot or even see the hard drive with Windows 7 on it (2 hard drives in system). when I take out this second 5870, the pc sees this hard drive and boots just fine.

When the pc has both cards in, one in the first slot and one in the third slot, the pc either hangs in the bios after it says the ram frequency and before the sata ports show what is connected, or it continues and eventually says DISK BOOT FAILURE.

Any ideas?

PSU is corsair 1000hx, OS disk is a WD 640 black - on ccc 10.4

And I will try the card in the second slot but I want it in the third for better airflow. it should work in this slot.

thanks for the help
 
Hm, first thing I'd try is reset the CMOS and make sure 'PNP OS Installed' option is set to yes if your bios has such an option. If that fails try putting the XFX in primary slot and your other 5870 in the secondary, just cuz.
 
Also stop by the motherboard manufacturers website, search for your mobo and goto the support section and see if you can find a BIOS update, read the release notes for all the latest BIOS updates and see if any of them mention this issue.
 
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Does that mobo actually support Crossfire btw? Not that it should prevent it from booting.. but it looks like an SLI only mobo.
 
What happens when you run a single card, but put it in that 3rd slot instead of the 1st one?

If it still fails to boot, it might be a bad PCIe slot...
 
noquarter said:
Does that mobo actually support Crossfire btw? Not that it should prevent it from booting.. but it looks like an SLI only mobo.
Click to expand...

I thought X58's were sli AND crossfire capable? I could be wrong though.

I second the idea of attempting to boot with just one card in the 3rd slot and see if maybe you have a bad slot. Also, have you tried it in the second slot. I'm guessing you're going 3rd slot for airflow/cooling, but give the second slot a go just to see if it works.
 
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different BIOS versions on the video cards maybe?
 
The X58 is crossfire capable, and I have the latest BIOS on the motherboard. I will check the video card BIOS tonight, but I bought them at the same time and they are the exact same cards.

I tried resettng the CMOS with both cards installed with no luck.
 
JacobC1983 said:
The X58 is crossfire capable, and I have the latest BIOS on the motherboard. I will check the video card BIOS tonight, but I bought them at the same time and they are the exact same cards.

I tried resettng the CMOS with both cards installed with no luck.
Click to expand...

like said above, try swapping slots and try booting with each one by itseld in the 3rd slot. start eliminating possibilities.
 
Ok, here is an update

I flashed both cards - they both had the same revision and continue to have the latest bios

Also, the motherboard has the latest bios on it

I tried both cards in the first slot, and both work in the first slot

I tried one card in the first slot and one card in the second slot and it gets stuck in the bios on bootup
I tried one card in the first slot and one card in the third slot and it gets stuck in the bios on
The cards were switched for this

I also unplugged the card while still leaving the card in the third slot, and the pc boots fine,

And leaving a card in the third slot and running off of it works fine as well

Is something wrong with my boot options? I am really at a loss here
 
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thats really weird. the pci slots all seem to be functioning. it seems like maybe theres something wrong with the board. i think you should RMA it. the pcie controller might be borked. did you try calling the manufacturer and describing your problem? evga has good support. you can also register at their forums and ask there and get some more knowledgeable help.
 
Indeed that is very weird. Sounds like it would have to be something with the mobo then if both cards are functioning on their own in each of the slots.
 
did u try unplugging all usb devices during boot with both cards installed?
 
I tried unplugging everything except the hard drive with both cards installed and it still wouldn't work.

Here is a brain teaser for you. I put my two GTX 285s back in the machine and the damn thing boots just fine. No problems.

Now I feel like I received a colonoscopy trying to get these damn ATi drivers off my PC. I think it will be easier to just reformat and start clean.

I have two HD 5870s for sale. Never doing this again. So long ATi.
 
JacobC1983 said:
I tried unplugging everything except the hard drive with both cards installed and it still wouldn't work.

Here is a brain teaser for you. I put my two GTX 285s back in the machine and the damn thing boots just fine. No problems.

Now I feel like I received a colonoscopy trying to get these damn ATi drivers off my PC. I think it will be easier to just reformat and start clean.

I have two HD 5870s for sale. Never doing this again. So long ATi.
Click to expand...

pm sent. :D
 
That's definitely an odd problem. Did you try redistributing your rail load for the graphics cards, i.e., attach your PCI-E power connectors for one or both cards to a different rail? The HX1000 rail diagram is here:

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70317

If each card works fine in any slot, then you'd think that neither the cards nor the slots are at fault, which leaves a PSU problem as the only possibility - but then I don't know how much more power the 5870 consumes than the GTX 285 in idle mode.

I had a strange problem myself - not this strange though - where both GTX 470s would boot up fine individually, but one of the cards would refuse to boot if I put it in the primary slot and had ANY other video card in the system; it also wouldn't show up if I ran it as a secondary card. I RMA'd the card and problem solved, but it still makes no sense to me how that is possible.
 
Yeah ideally you need to test all combinations of cards and slots.

card1 slot1
card2 slot1
card1 slot2
card2 slot2
card1 slot3
card2 slot3
card1 slot1 - card2 slot2
card2 slot1 - card1 slot2
card1 slot1 - card2 slot3
card2 slot1 - card1 slot3

Look at the patterns and see if you can determin if 1 card consistantly fails, 1 slot consistantly fails or if it's a combination of any 2 slots being used at the same time irrelevent of card orientation.

After that i'd start testing similar with power cables to the cards, see if you can handle both cards in specific cables from the PSU, if they both end up on the same rail it might not deliver enough power.

Disk boot failure is an interesting message, I wonder if one PSU rail is shared between the graphics card and the power to the main hdd?

What about the crossfire bridge, are you using that? Do you have another one to test?
 
This almost sounds like an IRQ problem. Did you double check to make sure you have enough IRQ slots remaining?
 
if this was true, why do the two gtx 285s work fine? And I have no idea how to check this, nor do I know what it means :)
 
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