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Powercolour Radeon HD 3870x2 GDDR4 and Asus A8N-SLI Premium problems..

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Evening Gents, my first post on this great forum so… Hi all! Thought it was about time I joined this community but just wish it were under happier circumstances… Sadly I’m having a bit of a problem and hoping you guys might be able to lend me a hand… Just today I upgraded my video card (have been using till this point an Nvidia 8800gts) but I cannot for the life of me seem to get my new Powercolour GDDR4 version of the 3870x2 (tri-DVI, 1 HDMI) to work with my Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard running Bios version 1303 (the latest). The problem is simple really… no display output at all, zilch, nada, nothing. Not even the BIOS displays. My PC is booting into Windows (Vista Ultimate x64) in the background perfectly. I even logged in blindly and started playing an MP3 I knew was on my desktop. Everything seems normal just no display, my monitor light just flashes every two seconds. I have confirmed that the video card’s fan is spinning and the red led’s are on so it is “alive”. It has worked fine in another PC anyway.

Before physically removing the 8800GTS I ran Driver Sweeper in Safe mode to remove any left over remains after I uninstalled the Nvidia Display Driver. I have even installed the Cats 9.3 full package and restarted with the card fitted to see if I could coax it in to working but still nothing.

I have a 1000w PSU with 4 6-pin video card power leads so this should be just fine for the card.

So far I’ve tried...

Resetting CMOS using Jumper
Resetting CMOS by leaving the battery out for 3mins.
Re-flashing the BIOS with the latest version
Trying the different DVI Output’s
Tried Disabling and Enabling the PEG options within the BIOS
SLI Switch Key is correctly set to Single Video Card

I’ve had a very good search around on Google and it seems I’m not the only one with a problem like this with the 3870x2’s however, and this is a big however… my variant of the 3870x2 is unique in a number of ways compared to the others (2x 6-Pin Power sockets for example). But most notably it doesn’t have a particular “switch”. The only thing I can think of is incompatibility between the video card and my Motherboard because my card seems to be lacking something the “stock, Visiontek and GeCube” variants all have… the SW1 switch on the back. And because my motherboard uses an Award Bios apparently I would need to flick that switch to “ON” to make the card display.

It would be great to hear your opinions and ideas to see if we can sort this problem.

Cheers.

More about : powercolour radeon 3870x2 gddr4 asus a8n sli premium problems

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Is there a way to test the video card in a different system? I have a a8n sli deluxe. you should be able to post with speech to see if an error is occuring. Since you could get into the mp3, i am thining it is a defective card.
Graphics card Master

Could be a defective card. Since it's an SLi board try it in the other PCI-E slot since it may just not be seated properly. The 3870X2 is also a power hog so make sure you have properly connected the PCI-E power connectors or it won't do anything for you. Too bad you just didn't SLi your 8800GTS.

Hey guys, thank you for the replies. That was something I forgot to mention, I already have all the BIOS Speech features enabled and “she” reports everything is fine “... now booting from Operating System...” etc. So everything seems Ok. The card itself belonged to a good buddy of mine so I have seen it working in his system (he is using an X38 motherboard) the card was working perfectly, he was even using it the day I came and picked it up.

Thanks for the advice on trying the other PCIE Slot and checking the Power connectors. I was using the PCIE Power cables direct from the PSU so l’ll try using adaptors and see if that changes anything. I’ll give those a try tonight and post the results.

Thanks.

Hey guys, thank you for the replies. That was something I forgot to mention, I already have all the BIOS Speech features enabled and “she” reports everything is fine “... now booting from Operating System...” etc. So everything seems Ok. The card itself belonged to a good buddy of mine so I have seen it working in his system (he is using an X38 motherboard) the card was working perfectly, he was even using it the day I came and picked it up.

Thanks for the advice on trying the other PCIE Slot and checking the Power connectors. I was using the PCIE Power cables direct from the PSU so l’ll try using adaptors and see if that changes anything. I’ll give those a try tonight and post the results.

Thanks.
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