to run 4 5970's i 'think' you need 'powered' riser wires / assuming you know what i mean here .....
does the board you are trying to plug these multiple gpu's in have .....how many inputs
i.e. what model is it, post a pic with the stats.... i assume running an older version of win x
guys, guys, I really appreciate your interest to help me
but I see some of you don't fully get my situation.
just to clarify one thing. I do not have 4 physical 5970 cards.
I have 2 physical 5970 cards, and since a single 5970 card is a dual gpu card that means I have 4 cores altogether!( 1x 5970 = 2x gpu cores => 2x 5970 = 4x gpu cores)
as you can see 4 gpu cores doesn't necessarily always mean 4 graphic cards. most graphic cards out there in the market are single core, 5970 happens to be one of the rare ones to be dual core, among some other rare few...(such as 6990, 7990, 295x2...)
next...
one particular reason why I don't believe my drivers are problematic is that...you see... 5970 is as of now...fairly old card(2009 - but still has a good kick in terms of hash power for it's age)
and as some of you may or may not know amd stopped releasing new drivers for these 5xxx models, the newest crimson drivers are not intended for 5970(they are intended for new generation gpus such as 2xx, 3xx and newer...) so I've got the last best working catalyst driver for this older card, it just so happens to be CCC 15.7.1 that I have(preferred driver for this card) note that I have win7.
I managed to find few people on some forums having this kind of problem I'm facing but never got the clear answer, most of them doubted it's the problem in 1x to 16x risers not having the ability to detect both cores on dual core graphic cards but only one core, unlike 16x to 16x riser which could do that!(you see now that this is not the problem at all for most graphic cards which are single core, only dual core cards face this kind of problem hence not many people discuss or know this)
also I don't know how much truth is there because I haven't had the chance to try 16x to 16x risers nor I have any specific proof from other people, all I know is what i gathered from other people's posts
to answer your question cinnamon_carter I have 6 pci-e slots 2x x16, 2x x4 and 2x x1 pci-e slots, theoretically that's 6x physical cards connected at once (this mobo officially supports 4 cards - 990fxa chipset look it up)
I dunno if you ever had experience with dual gpu cards but let me tell you head on they can be tricky to deal with unlike single gpu cards...