Gtx 670 and a old p5n-e.. Did I just waste my money..

[cadric]

Hi.

I got an old p5n-e sli motherboard with a quad Q6700 cpu.
I have been running with two gt8800 in sli.

Recently I got enogh money to buy an Gigabyte GTX 670.

I knew that it would throttle seeing as the p5n-e sli only has pci-e 1.1, but even so pci-e 3.0 should be backward compitable as I understand it.

But after I bought it and put in the computer, I get a black screen.
No beeps, all fans running and I can hear it is booting into windows.
The monitor does power on, but newer shows anything and goes back to sleep when I boot the computer..

I have reset the bios, tried a bigger power supply. Nothing seems to work
Unfortainly I have no way of testing the gtx 670 in another computer.
The old gt8800's works fine.

So.. did I just waste several years of savings for my computer or does someone have ANY idea of what I can do.. ?

Thanks in advance for suggestions..

 

[willard]

A couple things to think about.

1. PCIe 1.1 is going to bottleneck a GTX 670. It provides one fourth of the bandwidth PCIe 3.0 does, and half the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0/2.1. You will not get the card's full performance on a PCIe 1.1 board.

2. PCIe 1.1 delivers half the power through the slot, 75W versus 150W for PCIe 2.0/2.1/3.0.

If the card needs more than 75W through the slot, it's not going to work. It's also possible that it's relying on some features implemented in 2.0/2.1/3.0 that aren't available on 1.1, but issues like that are pretty rare.

You really need a new motherboard to use that card properly. You can try to update the BIOS on the board, but even if that makes the card work you're not going to get its full performance. If I were you, I'd return the card and get something more appropriate for your computer. Replacing the motherboard doesn't seem to be an option, as you'd need to replace the CPU and memory as well, which in total will cost about as much as that card did.

 

[cadric]

I am well aware that the pci-e would be a bottleneck. But I got this card as I do want to upgrade the motherboard and cpu later. Unfortainly I can't return this card.. (well I can, but it would be an pain in the *** for me to do it )
So it might just be put on the shelf for a good while. ah well.

But thanks for the reply

A couple things to think about.

1. PCIe 1.1 is going to bottleneck a GTX 670. It provides one fourth of the bandwidth PCIe 3.0 does, and half the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0/2.1. You will not get the card's full performance on a PCIe 1.1 board.

2. PCIe 1.1 delivers half the power through the slot, 75W versus 150W for PCIe 2.0/2.1/3.0.

If the card needs more than 75W through the slot, it's not going to work. It's also possible that it's relying on some features implemented in 2.0/2.1/3.0 that aren't available on 1.1, but issues like that are pretty rare.

You really need a new motherboard to use that card properly. You can try to update the BIOS on the board, but even if that makes the card work you're not going to get its full performance. If I were you, I'd return the card and get something more appropriate for your computer. Replacing the motherboard doesn't seem to be an option, as you'd need to replace the CPU and memory as well, which in total will cost about as much as that card did.

 

[tomskent]

Willard did a great job in explaining everything fully.

Just a fyi, PCIe 2.0 is 75watts via slot, 2.1 is when it jumped to 150watts

also, what resolution do you game in?

btw, you can get a new 2500k/3570k cpu and mobo combo for $300, not to bad, hope it doesnt take you years of saving up for that to get your card running.

 

[Sunius]

Did you uninstall drivers before switching the cards? The cards have 5 generation difference. There's no way same drivers will work. Do you see BIOS screen?

@Willard where did you get info that newer PCIe slots deliver 150 watts of power? Their maximum is 75 watts.

Thirdly, it will bottleneck, but not much. Here's benchmarks for HD 7970 (note, PCIe 1.1 x16 speeds match PCIe 3.0 x4 ones):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa/1

 

[cadric]

Yeah I did uninstall all drivers. And no. The bios is newer shown. (but as I wrote. The monitor does power up, but shuts down before anything is shown.)

Did you uninstall drivers before switching the cards? The cards have 5 generation difference. There's no way same drivers will work. Do you see BIOS screen?

@Willard where did you get info that newer PCIe slots deliver 150 watts of power? Their maximum is 75 watts.

Thirdly, it will bottleneck, but not much. Here's benchmarks for HD 7970 (note, PCIe 1.1 x16 speeds match PCIe 3.0 x4 ones):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5458/the-radeon-hd-7970-reprise-pcie-bandwidth-overclocking-and-msaa/1

 

[cadric]

Willard did a great job in explaining everything fully.

Just a fyi, PCIe 2.0 is 75watts via slot, 2.1 is when it jumped to 150watts

also, what resolution do you game in?

btw, you can get a new 2500k/3570k cpu and mobo combo for $300, not to bad, hope it doesnt take you years of saving up for that to get your card running.

I run games at 1920x1080

I will get a new cpu and motherboard much faster. It wont take me years of savings next time around, as I got a much better income now (and also the reason I felt I could spend the savings on the gtx 670 now )

 

[bucknutty]

Many of the specs posted on line state it is a PCI-e 3.0 (backward compatible) but they do not state how far back.

The nvidia site does not state if it is backward compatible or not. This could be up to the gpu board maker.

That said the 670 is a 170watt part. If they were indeed pulling 150 watts from the pci-e 2.1-3.0 port then why would they choose to outfit the card with 2 6pin pci-e power connectors.

Any way i got 2 ideas.
Flash the board bios, My asus p5n-d would not work with a hd5850 with out a bios update.

Try to out the 8800gt in the top slot and the new card in the lower slot. Boot to windows and see if windows sees the 670.

Look in the bios to see if there is any options for the PCI-e slot or clock. Sometimes the board has a compatiblity mode that might work, or the option to lower the PCI-e bus speed from 100 to 99. Try the board in the other pci-e slot.

 

[cadric]

uhh good idea's. I will definatly try to put it in the lower slot. Why dident I think of that >_<

I have looked in the bios for pci-e options. Don't look like there is something that will help me there.
(edit: I got the lastest bios from asus.)
I might try an custom bios I have found. ( I have two p5n-e's, so I can afford to burn one with the custom bios if it totally wreaks the board. )

Any way i got 2 ideas.
Flash the board bios, My asus p5n-d would not work with a hd5850 with out a bios update.

Try to out the 8800gt in the top slot and the new card in the lower slot. Boot to windows and see if windows sees the 670.

Look in the bios to see if there is any options for the PCI-e slot or clock. Sometimes the board has a compatiblity mode that might work, or the option to lower the PCI-e bus speed from 100 to 99.

 

[willard]

@Willard where did you get info that newer PCIe slots deliver 150 watts of power? Their maximum is 75 watts.

From reading the PCI-SIG documents uncarefully it seems.

Dug up the relevant documents, and indeed all revisions of PCIe provide 75W through the slot. The confusion is in the fact that they occasionally refer to the combined power output of external connectors and the slot as simply "slot power" and in the 2.1 specification, they published a 150W spec which does exactly this.

I was able to find a breakdown of where exactly the 150W is coming from, and it states clearly that only 75W comes from the slot. They then provide a couple of configurations to provide an additional 75W using 6 pin power connectors providing varying amounts of additional power.

In a similar vein, they published a 225W/300W spec which provides even more options for increasing power output using 6/8 pin connectors, but all of them still only provide 75W through the slot.

Thanks for the correction, I've apparently been spreading misinformation. Somebody should probably go edit the Wikipedia page, which was one of the first things that popped up in my search. Their "source" is actually a Tom's Hardware article that also got it wrong. I saw the same mistake made in countless places, but for reasons that are now abundantly clear, nobody could cite a source from the PCI-SIG about it.

 

[bucknutty]

You could always get a new 775 intel ich7 board for around $50. That would allow you to run the card. Challange will be finding one that is ddr2 that will work with your existing ram. Bu tthen a single 4 gig stick of ddr3 can be had for $30 so I guess you can do that.

Then in the future when you choose to buy or build a new PC you can take the video card and ram with you.

 

[cadric]

Try to out the 8800gt in the top slot and the new card in the lower slot. Boot to windows and see if windows sees the 670.

I put it in the lower slot as you suggested
And.. Windows sees the card. And so does nvidia control panel. And the driver install just fine...!

Now I just need the bios to boot it >_<
If nothing else, then I have a really powerfull physX card.. heh

 

[Sunius]

What if you tried switching the cables to GTX 670 while the PC is on? If that does not work, try booting with removing 8800 GT and having just GTx 670, but in the bottom slot.

 

[bucknutty]

Hey Willard, don’t sell yourself short. You were correct that a PCI-e2.1 can deliver 150 watts. Take a look at this video card. It is a 150 watt HD6850 that is powered solely from the buss.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/af6850-1024d5s1-ngt440-1gqi-f1-n450gts-m2d1gd5,2949-2.html

 

[bucknutty]

So you know the card works with your board you just cant boot... Try to use only the lower slot.

 

[cadric]

What if you tried switching the cables to GTX 670 while the PC is on? If that does not work, try booting with removing 8800 GT and having just GTx 670, but in the bottom slot.

he.. that accually works..

brb with rebooting with only the gtx 670 in the lower slot.

 

[cadric]

Aaand it boots in the lower pci-e x1 slot..

wth.. hmmm..

And while I'm still working on this, let me quickly say thanks for all the great help and information you all have been giving. It as helped me alot

 

[Guest]

a little graphic . . .

my point?
even if you have to configure the 670 in the second PCI slot (1 x8) you can still game with real no loss in frame rate, compared to x16 on your board . . . an excellent review to dis-spell some myths.
Ivy Bridge PCI-Express Scaling with HD 7970 and GTX 680

 

[cadric]

Update!
I just put the card back in the first slot and for whatever reason the board now shows bios and boots fine in the first pci-e slot. !
Awsome.

So this can be marked solved. Even if I'm not sure what fixed it.

And thanks for the picture looniam. If my problem ever returns, I will just continue using it in the second slot and not feel like I'm loosing anything.

And again. Thanks for all the help guys. I would have given up by now, if it not was for all the great suggestions you gave me.

Thank thank thank you.

 

[bucknutty]

Haha... Glad it works.

 

[Guest]

speculation:
card just needed re-seating(?)

 

[willard]

So this can be marked solved. Even if I'm not sure what fixed it.

Glad you got your problem solved without too much trouble. To mark the thread solved, you need to pick a best answer. Seems like Bucknutty should get that honor here for the suggestion to swap the slots.

 

[cadric]

Glad you got your problem solved without too much trouble. To mark the thread solved, you need to pick a best answer. Seems like Bucknutty should get that honor here for the suggestion to swap the slots.

hmm. not sure how I do that :/

 

[Mousemonkey]

hmm. not sure how I do that :/

Try it now.

 

[cadric]

Best answer selected by cadric.