Does anyone use all 6 PCI-e slots on GIGABYTE 990fxa-ud7???

[katsaplias]

Hello I just signed up although I have read through the forums for some time in the past without ever being a signed member.

Great Forum BTW!




I've been having alot of trouble with my setup.   (gigabyte 990fxa-ud7 / athlon x2 251 / 2gb ddr3 1066 / Thermaltake Toughpower grand 1200watt + Corsair HX 1050watt connected with add2psu)

Initially I was using 4 slots with 1X5870 stock pcb and 3X5850 (XFX non-stock pcb).  Everything is connected with PCI-e extender cables of course.

At first I used LinuxCoin 0.2b on a usb and despite the crashes and lockups i was eating in the face while trying to setup (I now think it may be due to USB booting on Gigabyte board) I managed to mine for about 2 months succesfully. 

I later decided to add 2X5970's in the 2 PCI-e slots I had left.
I Added the cards in booted into linuxcoin tried to start mining.
System crashed.
And from then on wont boot with all 6 cards connected to the mobo... (I get error code 25 on the little digital display on the mobo which is described as the following in the manual:
         "Early PCI Initialization
          -Enumerate PCI Bus Number
          -Assign memory & I/O resource
          -Search for a valid VGA device & VGA BIOS, and put it into C000:0"

I CANNOT get it to post with all 6 pci-e slots connected. If I remove any one of the cards the system will post.

Bios has been updated to latest version also.

Thanx

[oldDirty]

Try it with other Pci latency timing, it's accessible in MoBo Bios. Default is 64 i guess, set it to 96 or 128, may be this help out.

[katsaplias]

Thanx for the reply oldDirty!

I just checked the bios settings and there is no option to alter the pci latency unfortunately...

I found an option called Init Display First which specifies the first initiation of the monitor display from the installed PCI graphics card or PCI express graphics card. It was set by default to PCI and I changed it to the first PCI-e slot but that did not help...

[oldDirty]

Oh, on my MSI FXA890 there is this option right under init Display first. This option can improve the performance of the pci components.

[katsaplias]

What exactly is the name of this option you speak of. Just in case It's somewhere on the menu and I'm missing it...  thanx

[katsaplias]

This is the conversation I had with the ever so AWESOME gigabyte support team:

ME:
 I have connected the cards using pci-e extender cables. The system was working just fine without the 2X5970 cards for bitcoin mining. After adding them in, the system would boot but linux would get stuck loading. I reinstalled linux and it initially booted succesfully. When i restarted, the computer would not even post. Now the computer will not post if i have all 6 pci-e slots connected! I updated the bios but it did not help. I get error message 25 on the motherboard led. Thank you very much for your help!
 
GIGABYTE:
Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. We appreciate your patient and understanding of the late response due to national holidays.

Sorry but as we mentioned on the driver download page of GIGABYTE website, due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, and we do not receive proper driver from chipset vender, we cannot guarantee Linux to work on our system.

Kindly use genuine Windows OS to see how it works. You may also test with other VGA card and see how it works.

Regards,
GIGABYTE

ME:
 the problem is not the operating system. The computer does not POST when i use all 6 pci-e slots. It gets stuck BEFORE it loads the operating system. And the LED on the motherboard shows the number 25. I cannot even enter the bios setup. Do you understand?

GIGABYTE :
Thanks for your update about the platform information. Kindly confirm if the system will work if you do not use all 6 PCI-E slots at once? If the system can run while not having so many hardware, please try to see if you can verify it one by one. Sometimes it can cause by hardware compatibility issue among the hardware you install or even some parts.

Therefore, please first remove unnecessary hardware and see if computer can POST. Then add more cards to test.

If the motherboard doesn't work even without cards installed, then please clear CMOS to see if it helps. If problem remains or the test result was negative, kindly contact your original purchase retailer and see if they can arrange further testing to find out the root cause. In this case, sorry that we are not able to isolate problem through Internet without looking at the hardware.

Regards,
GIGABYTE


I'm pretty close to taking it back to the store I purchased it... I was hoping to avoid the downtime but it doesn't look like thats going to work out for me LOL...

[flatronw]

possibly disable excess onboard devices? every resource on the motherboard has to be mapped somewhere, exclude some resources on the motherboard if you can - onboard audio, serial, usb, anything you will not use. It may or may not help.

I second that suggestion. There is a post somewhere on the Forum where there was a similar issue with a Gigabyte board that was solved by disabling all unused items in BIOS ie stuff like SATA3, Audio, etc, etc. Apparently the BIOS does not have enough resouces to deal with all the Cards and all the other non essentials at Boot-up.

Mike

[oldDirty]

possibly disable excess onboard devices? every resource on the motherboard has to be mapped somewhere, exclude some resources on the motherboard if you can - onboard audio, serial, usb, anything you will not use. It may or may not help.

I second that suggestion. There is a post somewhere on the Forum where there was a similar issue with a Gigabyte board that was solved by disabling all unused items in BIOS ie stuff like SATA3, Audio, etc, etc. Apparently the BIOS does not have enough resouces to deal with all the Cards and all the other non essentials at Boot-up.

Mike

Oh yes this is good option i guess, try it.

[katsaplias]

Needless to say YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!


It worked. I disabled sata, extra usb ports + onboard audio and VOILA! it posts with ALL cards installed!


Wow! Thanks a lot for your help guys. I think I just learned about the power of a cooperation firsthand.

Extra props to forum member jcpham for coming up with the solution! You da man!

[lorbocaust]

hey, can you tell me what slots you have your risers in? i am basically stuck where you are.

[LunarLuna]

ive no idea what this is but would love to be pointed towards a link to learn