3870 X2 Not working

Huumm...what a sucky board. I hated that chipset

- First off, all 6 or 8 pins are connected to power the card ?
- Second off, Upgrade bios !!! Read the release notes !!!
- Third, plug your monitor on your GMA 950 and see if its THAT card that is working !!!
- Fourth, if everything fails, go to friends house and test your GPU in another PC !! If not, it is a DOA !!!

Now do that before i call the Typo police !! Or iluvgillgill or thunderman in that spectrum.

Mine didn't work for me when I first got it because I needed the 8 pin connector. One of the reviews at Xbit Labs said that if it wasn't overclocked, then 2 6 pin would work. So I had to get a new PSU as the Antec Neo 550 only had 2 6 pins.

Once I had the 8 pin connector, everything was fine. Haven't looked up his PSU, but if it has an 8 pin connector, he needs to use that. I can't see how it would be a bios issue as you don't need to enable Crossfire for a 3870x2 to work. It could also be the old fashioned snafu of not having the card set right or the monitor cable not screwed in right, but I assume he can avoid those issues.

I think radnor was wodering if his onboard video is enabled.

For the record, my 3870x2 worked with 2 6 pin connectors and a 600w powersupply. I'm not sure of the quality of the EZcool. It might be lacking for the x2.

Yup. i hated those chipsets. If that GMA is working the PCIE 16x just doesn't work. Working on customer support for a major brand gives me some scope.....those small errors are way more common than you think.
Or that or the 6/8 power pins.

Listen to the sounds that the card makes when it boots up, and pay attention to your lights on the pc. You should be able to tell if it completes post or not.

If the fan on the GPU sets off at full speed and doesn't shut off at all, the GPU probably isn't getting enough power for it's own post (it will do this is only one of the 6-pins is connected)

If the fan comes on, then goes off and you hear your PC post like normal (if you hear a singal beep and the lights on your keyboard flash once), then the bios probably isn't recognising that the card is there, or it is giving priority to the integrated card.

Lots of things can happen in between. If you can't tell what's happening, just be obersvant and give us as much data about what you see as you can. The sounds from the card and PC are ussually the biggest indicator of where it is getting hung up, though.

For the record, my x2 has always worked with 2 6-pin connectors, and they didn't come with the power supply either. I went and bought the molex to pci-e adapters (yes, it's a pain because I have to use up 4 molex connectors just for video card). The 8 pin is only needed if you are going to want to overclock your card (with overdrive)

Let us know how it turns out..........

My bet is also on the onboard video being in control

It must be the stock clocked versions of the card. You need the 8 pin if you overclock. Factory overclocking is in the same territory. My card's factory overclocked so it wouldn't work without an 8 pin connector. So, I guess the Xbit Labs article was right but they should have made it clear that it was only at stock.

I'd forgotten how bad Intel IGP's are. I don't have to worry about the IGP being "under control" on an ATI (or Nvidia chipset for that matter) motherboard when I install a graphics card in the PCIe slot. They're designed to work together with at least two monitors with some chipsets and in power saving mode with others.

I should have remembered from a recent experience. I'd gotten my sister in law an 8400gs for her Gateway Pentium D 2.8 system so her kids could play Guitar Hero with a card at least as good as the minimum 7600gs. Well, since she lives in another city and I had Newegg ship it to her, she took it to Best Buy's Geek Squad to set it up. They did and showed her it worked at the store.

When she got home, it didn't work. I went down the next weekend and discoverd that she'd attached the monitor to the Intel IGP. Obviously Intel thinks that their solutions are so elegant that their IGP's have to be deselected in the bios for a GPU to work.

The power color only has two 6 pin connectors on the card.And the bios is updates.But if the complience test pattern is enabled on the motherboard the screen doenst switch on but if its disabled the screen switches on with the grapics card but then it doensnt want to boot from any HDD, not even SATA.Maybe the board just isnt compatible with the grapics card?