Hi friends.

This morning I purchased the above gfx card to replace a pair of 6800s that were running in SLI. To begin with I plugged the monitor into 1 of the sockets & my screen went pink, so I tried the other socket & everything was normal again. I proceeded to install the latest drivers followed by running Crysis. After only 5 mins the PC locked up, rebooted & on POST it was giving me a number of BSODs. To be able to boot back into windows again I had to turn off the switch on the power supply. This was enough for me to RMA the card & get a replacement. This card is also causing me the same problems although now its locking me up when not playing a game. I've taken it out & put a single 6800 in & the PC runs stable again. Could anybody help me to identify what the issue is likely to be please?

Athlon64 x2 6400 Black Edition
ASUS M2N32 WS Professional
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix 1066 @ 5-5-5-18 800Mhz
Enermax Noisetaker 2 600w
2xSeagate 200GB SATA2

Thankyou.

1- Check your power supply first, amp on the 12 volt rail.
2- check your Bios, may you have too enable some options to work in SLI
3- Try one card only, one 8800. If the BSOD comes again try te ohter.
4- Sorry to said that but check if the card is really clip in the pci-e slot.

Assuming that everything ran fine before you took out the 6800's, this kind of thing is most likely a driver issue. Did you un-install the old drivers before installing the new ones? It may be a driver conflict. nVidia has a driver removal tool, I recommend removing any and all video drivers using this utility and then re-installing the 8800 drivers .

The 8800 should be plugged into the blue PCIe slot. Check the BIOS settings to make sure the blue PCIe (PCIEX16_1) is the Primary Display Adapter.

From your description of what you did, you did not even reinstall any video drivers. This will not work even if the driver is supposedly the same. It installs differently based on the video card it finds during the installation and will not change just because you change that card to a different one. So, if you didn't reinstall drivers, that probably is the problem.

Thanks guys.

@jive: its 1 card to replace the pair in SLi, the PSU has 2 seperate 12v rails for pci-e & its sat nicely in the slot.

@chunky, I've tried a google search for the tools you mentioned but nothings come up. Could you please provide a link?
The bios settings say exactly what you suggested above.

I do find it hard to believe that I've been sold 2 bad cards on the same day so I'm wondering if the 8800 is incompatible with my board or with the memory or that its simply sucking so much juice that even the expensive enermax I have cant feed it.
I've never seen a card this big before, it only just fits in the case.

http://www.bfgtech.com/MHandler.ashx?proimageid=2216

@cardio: I uninstalled the drivers for the 6800s then removed the cards. Fitted the new 8800 & installed drivers from the supplied CD then went to nvidia site & d/led & installed the latest 169.25 drivers.

Here's some links to driver removal tools...

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=865
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3233

If not a driver issue, then it could be the psu. According to the BFG site, the 8800GTS OC requires a minimum of 28a on the 12v rail. If your psu (expensive or not) has less than that, you'll have issues.

As a last resort, you can always re-install windows and start fresh.

Good luck!

Damn thought I found it in the PSU spec but had the wrong numbers.

http://www.enermax.com.tw/english/ [...] sp?PrID=42

Thanks to everyone for all the advice.
I've used the driver removal tools & removed the card in device manager & reinstalled again with the 169.25 drivers & its running nice & smooth at last.
Looking at the figures on the enermax site (thanks Breetai) I've got 35A to play with so I dont think I'll be able to add a 2nd card to SLI at a later date with this PSU.
I'm amazed at how friendly & helpful you've been on here & I appreciate it.

@OP: That PSU is cr@p. Get s good top tire PSU listed here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] p?t=108088
I would recommend a Corsair 520HX or 550VX.

There is nothing wrong with an Enermax PSU. I've never had a bad one. Unless you need a new one, stick with it. And if you are going to spend the money on a Cosair, I'd skip the middle man and buy a Seasonic.