Spacing out GPUs (solved)

[M_Nation]

Hello everyone,
I have 2 7970 GPUs with 3rd party air cooling, and the bottom one is choked of air when the other one is in the PCI-E slot just above it. I moved it to my 3rd PCI-E slot since I don't use it in crossfire to give them more air. However, I can no longer get the card to detect in any mining application, or in sapphire trixx. I did read about dummy plugs, and that you can get around it if you plug your card to another monitor. My question is, can I plug that card to the same monitor with a different cord to get it to detect? I have tried using HDMI on the primary card, and DVI on the secondary, and vice versa with no success.

My current config is:
2x 7970 (1 in first slot, 1 in 3rd)
MSI big bang z77 1155 motherboard
i7-2600k
8gb g-skills 1600
1tb HDD
750w seasonic PSU
windows 7 x64 premium
Catalyst 13.1 (fresh clean install, no install over previous version)
bitminter mining client.

Hope I have provided enough information, thanks in advance for the help.

[e521]

I think if you use Windows you have to plug 1 monitor for each card or dummy plugs,
linux should work without

[M_Nation]

Darn, I thought I read somewhere that AMD fixed that. Was hoping I could get by with 1 monitor and 2 cables. Oh well, guess I'll go buy some resistors for a dummy plug. Thank you.

Edit: Hope I can get it to work with the cards spaced out like this.

[M_Nation]

I just went and bought some 68ohm .5w resistors to make a dummy plug. Unfortunately this did not work for me. My software still does not detect the video card. I also checked registry for the ULPS but there were no entries for ULPS (I believe trixx already disabled it for me). Anybody have any ideas? Do I have a dead PCI-E slot? Do I need to change something in the BIOS? The card works fine without a crossfire bridge while in the second PCI-E slot.

[avive]

Im using three GPUs with no dummy plugs or monitors (except the main GPU).

Check the AMD Catalyst Control center, under "Information" -> "Hardware" you should see two cards (Primary one and Disabled one).
If you don't see the other card, check your BIOS settings.

[M_Nation]

Nope, I see no disabled card.. The motherboard has slots as follows, slots closets to CPU socket first:

1x slot

16x slot (primary card)

1x slot
 
1x slot

16x slot (secondary card works in here with no corssfire, dummy, or monitor, but too close to primary for my liking)
 
1x slot

16x slot (secondary card, card is powered but doesn't detect)

Just wanted to make that clear

I checked BIOS and didn't see anything that stuck out to me that might help. Do I have a dead slot? Or am I skipping too many slots? I appreciate the effort.

[avive]

Some motherboards has a jumper which disables the 3rd PCIE slot. Check that.

Sometimes flashing the latest BIOS version fixes some issues. Try that.

[Kruncha]

I spaced out mine by blowing smoke on them....

K.

[M_Nation]

I spaced out mine by blowing smoke on them....

K.

I knew somebody would comment something like that.

I do have the most recent bios.

I checked the manual and saw nearly no info no jumpers, however I will check my motherboard physically in a moment.

Edit:
I see no jumpers on the board indicating of PCI-E functionality. I did change an option in the BIOS regarding PCI-E 3.0 however no change.

[avive]

It seems this configuration is not supported:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=817&Itemid=69&limit=1&limitstart=1

[M_Nation]

Ah thank you very much for finding that, I've been looking for something of the sort for hours! That is unfortunate

[Kruncha]

I spaced out mine by blowing smoke on them....

K.

I knew somebody would comment something like that.

Sorry 

K.

[M_Nation]

I spaced out mine by blowing smoke on them....

K.

I knew somebody would comment something like that.

Sorry 

K.

It's ok lol

[FiatKiller]

I have no dummy plug on my 2nd card. Really helps to start MSI Afterburner first with the option to apply the same settings to all similar cards in the system on startup.

[M_Nation]

I have no dummy plug on my 2nd card. Really helps to start MSI Afterburner first with the option to apply the same settings to all similar cards in the system on startup.

I don't need a dummy plug either when the card is in a functioning slot. And unfortunately the two cards are slightly different, one is the 6gb model and one is the 3gb, and they clock a little differently. I have no problems running the two, only when the card is in the 3rd (nonfunctional without ivy bridge) slot. But thank you all for your help.

[Kruncha]

I spaced out mine by blowing smoke on them....

K.

I knew somebody would comment something like that.

Sorry 

K.

It's ok lol

Thank-you, I was only trying to be funny, not annoying - I guess i accomplished both.

K.