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Ok so I have run out of ideas and I need help. I'm using a 890FXA-GD70 mobo with sapphire 5850's. I know that all the extenders are working, all the cables powering items are working, all graphics cards are working. When I try to run any gpu I own in the second x16 slot the graphics card shows up in trixx and afterburner but is labeled as "video controller (vga compatible)" but wont let me mine on it or over clock.

https://i.imgur.com/cztZZ.jpg

If you can help me figure out whats wrong I would appreciate it. Thanks.

I feel your frustration, but sorry, but I don't have any answers for you. I've been trying 5 GPUs on a very similar MSI mobo, a 890FXA-GD65, and it is unstable as hell. I also have a good PSU (Antec HCP 1200W Gold). Frequent difficulty booting into Linuxcoin and wildly fluctuating hashrates with only 3 GPUs connected. After adding two powered PCIe extender cables it managed to boot into Linuxcoin with 4 GPUs active and the hashrate is more stable. But I'm RMA'ing the damn thing and replacing it with an ASRock 890FX Deluxe4 AM3 AMD 890FX mobo which will hopefully work with 5x GPUs.

Yea when you go above 4 cards things begin to start acting unstable. I was using 11.6 and decided to try 11.7 since making the first post. It made things a lot more stable. You should try 11.7 I was avoiding it at first because it generated more heat on my 5830's but it made things much better for my 5850's.

i remember a post somewhere on ocnet. Basically, the 24 pin provides enough power for 2 PCIE slots. Basically, if you want to use more cards with stability, you need additional power (such as a molex) whether it be on the mobo or on a extender.

I run 4 5830's and they are completely stable. These 5850's though freak out at just about everything so you have to walk around delicately.

unlike the GD70, the GD65 has an extra 6-pin power plug that you plug in directly into the motherboard for additional power to the pci-e slots. so with this additional power, i'm not sure what else is making the instability of this board.

Yes, I thought that would make this a great mobo. I did get a good discount on it from Newegg as an "Open Box" item. Perhaps it's just a bad board. Anyway, RMA is in the works.

Did you install all the mobo drivers?  All my MSI boards have been very picky about that.  Each of my rigs is on the same mobo as you with 4 x 5830 + 1x 6950.  I had no problem with Trixx or whatnot...my only problem is one card is kinda unstable...it will stop reporting to my guild but still runs and doesn't crash the computer...usually runs a few hours before there is an issue. 

I think its strange that your "video controller" shows up with 4096MB of ram...almost like its detecting all 4 as one card...bus width is double also.

I thought windows was limited to 4 video cards. Linux can operate 8 IIRC.

the new drivers can support 8 GPUs

In case anyone was wondering going from 11.6 to 11.7 fixed things. I guess I'll just have to deal with the extra heat.

Ah...makes sense...I was using 11.7.

You're saying Windows can now support 8 GPU's ?

That's ... huge news, right ?

I've never had any stability issues with my XFA-890-GD70's, and I have three systems running, mostly the same configs.

Three XFA890-GD70's
three Corsair AX1200 PSU's
11 various brand (mostly visiontek) 5870's
4 different branded 6870's

All running linux,
 no modified PCI extenderes with external molex power supplies. (Just standard issue 16x - 16x extenders)

Really I haven't had a single hardware related issue, except for getting a bum 5870 on a ebay buy, but that doesn't affect this.

Yep...problem was the OpenCL drivers I guess.  Windows would support them but the drivers would not (just what I was told).  11.7 solved that and the need for dummy plugs.

This would be huge news..  is it tru that windows DOES support 8 as long as the drivers are 11.7 ??

I just installed one of my GD70's with linuxcoin on flash drive and 5 cards. .  it only saw 4 of my gpus

I thought 11.6 did as well thats why I started on 11.6 but I may be wrong.

11.6b supports up to 8 video cards, although I've not personally heard of more than 5-6 being in use (only a few very expensive motherboards have that many PCIE slots)...