Problem adding second video card

[tospace]

I don't know if I'm missing something because I've never had 2 video cards before.  I have a 5850 and a 9800gt but I was giving the 9800gt away anyways and I was going to get a 5770 for my second card.  My power supply is an antec earth watts 500 so it should be good (defiantly enough to boot up at-least right?).  When I tried adding in my 9800gt my computer gets stuck on the windows 7 booting screen, It wouldn't take 10 minuets the first time would it?

I have an old 135 watt (idle) psu with 4 pins on it so I have a booster if I need to use it.  and my 9800gt works fine when its the only card and my 5850 of coarse.

My system is an AM3, 2 crossfire slots, a pheonom ii dual core but its oced to 3.5 and uses 3 cores, 3 ram sticks, a sata hardrive, 5 fans and not much else (using power)

I should note that I have to change back to dual core in bois in order to install windows so I thats another thing I can try.

I guess I'll try another 500watt psu combined with myn from another computer to make sure power is not an issue but I wanted to ask first.

Thanks

[red_dog007]

It should be able to boot at least.  

Power cables are plugged into both cards right?
If the 9800GT boots by itself, and you are getting rid of it, why do you need to make sure it boots with the radeon?


You have a bootable CD, like a WindowsPE disc or UbuntuLive disc?  See if that works.  Could be a power issue.  It might be 500watts, which should be enough to boot at least, but could be an amp issue maybe?  Does the PSU have different rails, and each GPU on a different rail?



Suggestions might seem silly, but sometimes something obvious could and can usually be overlooked.

[Chrstian]

That is very strange. 500 watts should be more than enough to at least boot up the pc. If the computer was booting up fine before the new card was added I don't see why there would be an issue. If the 500 watt power supply is old though that could be the cause. Try using the "booster" for a few power slots , perhaps some pins on your main 500w supply arent transferring enough energy or are simply broken. Were you using the same pins earlier?  Hopefully everything is working fine seeing as you haven't replied yet ..

[tospace]

It should be able to boot at least.  

Power cables are plugged into both cards right?
If the 9800GT boots by itself, and you are getting rid of it, why do you need to make sure it boots with the radeon?


You have a bootable CD, like a WindowsPE disc or UbuntuLive disc?  See if that works.  Could be a power issue.  It might be 500watts, which should be enough to boot at least, but could be an amp issue maybe?  Does the PSU have different rails, and each GPU on a different rail?



Suggestions might seem silly, but sometimes something obvious could and can usually be overlooked.

Hey thanks for pointing that out.  I thought it only had 1 rail but I looked it up and it has two.  Need to look inside again, seems like it was balanced tho since I wasn't using any 4 pins and I was using them for my 9800gt and the 2 6 pins for my 5850.  Will try a different way maybe with more power from booster psu.

Also for some weird reason I had problems installing windows when I had my 5850 installed, but it worked with my 9800gt fine.

And the power supply is only a few years old, seemed like I was buying a quality one..80plus bronze and its still a common one on newegg.

[tospace]

Ok I looked at my psu manual and every single connector is on the 1st 12V rail except for the 4+4 pin one and I connected that to my motherboard.  I'm no expert but that seems retarded.  Doesn't that mean my power supply is going to be overloaded when I use more than 250 watts on the first rail?  I might be using around that much right now without the second video card and around 100 watts on the second rail maybe because 4+4pin is for cpu?

going to try 2 power supplies now.

[tospace]

Ok, sorry to keep on replying. 

I just tried each card in both slots and both cards simultaneously in differint orders also testing it like that while powering one card with another computers 6pin that was more than enough power.  I don't think wattage is an issue since I can go in bois and use the windows boot menu no matter what before it trys to boot forever.

Since both card slots work I'm hoping that its some issue with windows, maybe I can test it with a bootable cd?  I could try ubuntu I guess.

Maybe Nvidia and ATI just don't work together in my motherboard or has any body ever done this?

[live627]

Did you turn off Crossfire? Nvidea cards don't support it...

[tospace]

Did you turn off Crossfire? Nvidea cards don't support it...

nope, would that be like a bois setting?  Of course I didn't try to connect them together so I just thought it wouldn't matter.