Weird PCI Express x16 @ x1 problem

[baholete]

Still need help over here
I wanna buy a his 5770 1gb tomorrow BUT i wanna be sure that my mobo is working fine. Cause if the the mobo is busted, ill have to replace that first.

[FreedomEclipse]

ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 System Requirements

* PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
* 450 Watt or greater power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
* Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
* Minimum 1GB of system memory
* Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
* DVD playback requires DVD drive
* Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
* For an ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required

no point buying decent hardware if your not going to get a decent power supply to run them. with that said, it seems we are going in circles here & you dont seem interested in listening. so I shall leave it here & wish you the best of luck which ever path you choose to take.

[baholete]

Originally Posted by baholete

What should i buy? A new psu (this will be changed certainly anyway)? A new mobo? A new videocard?

I already said i'm gonna change this, ofc ill buy a new psu with the new v.card. From the answers i got it seems that almost no one is carefully reading what i say and THAT'S why we move in circles.

[jagd]

relax man take a look here you are not buying anything until visit that page http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.a...tno=522&pgno=0

[baholete]

I've visited that page before i created this thread and tried what it said there. The only thing that worked was changing the slots frequency. From first try i modified it to 110 and the pc worked fine for 1 day. It was started about 5-6 times and every time it worked fine.
The next day the problem appeared again and changing the pci express slot frequency didn't help this time.
I really REALLY don't know what is wrong and what component to replace.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by baholete

Ok, so, why did i have the same problem with the ati card? Does it have exactly the same problem?
And this ati card works perfect on his pc.

Originally Posted by baholete

I've visited that page before i created this thread and tried what it said there. The only thing that worked was changing the slots frequency. From first try i modified it to 110 and the pc worked fine for 1 day. It was started about 5-6 times and every time it worked fine.
The next day the problem appeared again and changing the pci express slot frequency didn't help this time.
I really REALLY don't know what is wrong and what component to replace.

I'm telling ya man, ya have a bad mobo and that iffy PSU certainly doesn't help. Your comment about moving the card nails it.

Look, I work in IT and repair and troubleshoot PCs as part of my hobby and as a living. So I know a thing or two about this and I like nothing better than helping fellow enthusiasts, especially if they're just starting out. So, please listen to my advice. It isn't possible to tell with certainty what the problem is by leaving all the components together; there's just too many possibilities.

All this crap about changing frequencies and it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, just tells me that it's on the way out. Even digital electronics can go haywire and semi-random; I know, I've been there. You shoulda seen that mental digital answering machine I had a decade ago. The little fucker was possessed, I tell ya. Out of warranty, it found its way to the bin pretty sharpish.

You need to troubleshoot it by separating the damn things. You've already done part of it by trying the graphics card in another PC and seeing it work right. This tells you the mobo's bad; it can't be the PSU - it would crash solid instead or shutdown, stuff like that. It's even better to get a double verify by using another card and seeing it do the same thing. Unfortunately, these problems are often marginal, temperamental and intermittent, making this difficult, but you have to try. There's lots of little things you can try when you swap your cards too, such as wiggling them and so on, but there's too much to go into here, so just have a think when you fit the spare card.

To get a properly functioning PC, you need a new mobo and PSU, no doubt. This is good advice and please listen to the others in this thread too, they obviously have experience as well.

Good luck m8.

And you still haven't filled in your system specs. You really should do that when asking for troubleshooting help. You can't expect people to scour the thread to find this out in order to help you.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by baholete

Ok, so, why did i have the same problem with the ati card? Does it have exactly the same problem?
And this ati card works perfect on his pc.

i missed that, it may be on the motherboard side then.


remember that you can have more than one problem at a time, so its possible that the PCI-E slot and video card crapped out at the same time

[baholete]

Ok i've put fast some stuff in that profile.

First of all, i've tried my video card on 2 other systems and both of them had the monitor not starting like the pc was turned off. Yes, you could hear windows loading but the monitor wasn't starting. Don't know exactly what mobo's they had, but one was an older asrock one and the other was a pretty new intel board.

And second, i've tried 3 graphics cards on my system. One is mine, 2nd is an older asus ati card (somewhere on it, it says "EAX550HM512/TD/256M/A") and the third is an Asus 8800GTS 320M model.
And this is were the sh1t hits the fan. While both the 8600gts and the older ati card were starting the pc, they both had the problem i laid out in the first thread. PC failing first boot and pci express slot running at 1x speed.
The 8800GTS on the other hand, worked PERFECT. The PC started from first try every time and the pci express slot worked at x16 speed every time, all of the time.

I don't know what to make of this. Anyway, i've decided to get the new HD5770, a good PSU and a new mobo with crossfire support for a 2nd HD5770 a little later down the line.

BUT! I would love if someone can tell me what is broken from my components taking in consideration what i said above.

[Mussels]

the X550 is a radeon X550

http://www.summagoods.com/product/17...1897491_7.html


with the information you gave, i think power. the slots wonky (inside the mobo perhaps, bad capacitor, whatever) and therefore, only cards which draw most of their power from an external source (8800GTS) work.

[qubit]

Ok, baholete, firstly, thanks for filling in those specs - 'crap system 9000' is a nice touch. I don't blame you.

From your latest description, it's beginning to sound like your original graphics card is bad for sure and your mobo likely. Your PSU is very likely causing funnies too, judging by that 8800GTS working fine. It could also be an issue with the mobo BIOS... see what I mean about endless possibilities?! lol

The thing to do now, is to beg, borrow or steal a decent* branded PSU (420W or higher) from a friend and see if those three graphics cards start up normally. It really wouldn't surprise me if you have three duff components there, my friend; it does happen unfortunately. Heck, you could throw in your original card, now confirmed bad... bet it works fine just to have you tearing your hair out!

The other thing you need to do, is to have the barest minimum connected to make the system boot and give you a picture ie only CPU, mobo, one** stick of RAM and graphics card. Unplug literally everything else, including the mouse. This eliminates the possibility of a duff component screwing with your mobo and confusing it. Heck, you can even remove the keyboard, but then you obviously can't control the PC. Again, there's too many fine details to try, so can't go into all the possibilities here and is the sort of thing that becomes apparent to one as your fiddling with the system.

Another thing to do is to clear the CMOS RAM, as in removing the battery, using the clear jumper and loading defaults. This one's quite important to do (and don't forget to put the battery back!) Also, if you have any other jumpers on that board, set them to their safest or default positions. I would like to recommend you flash your BIOS to the latest version too, but your system is too flaky for that right now and a bad flash will brick it instead, so don't do it. You may want to consider it if the system is running stable with that spare PSU though, but please run it past us first.

At the risk of you having answered this earlier, your system isn't overclocked right now is it? Everything must be running at stock speed for troubleshooting.

*Corsair, Enermax etc (not so keen on Antec anymore; tend to have problems, from experience and forums)

**You can try swapping sticks if system still acting weird

[baholete]

I've changed the bios to the last 3 versions and with all of them i had the same problem.
What i want to do, and wanted to do some time ago is to clear the CMOS RAM.
BUT, i didn't knew how to remove the battery. What i mean, is that it wouldn't come out easily and i didn't wanna force it out (stupidest thing that can be done) so, please, can someone show me an walkthrough or something on how to do this. Exactly the steps that i need to take.

And no, nothing is overcloacked. I tried a few months ago to use the mobo's bios overclock profiles but whatever i choosed, after reboot, i got an error that looked something like this:
"overclock failed, loading default values".
The profiles were like this:
"5% overclock"
"10% overclock"
"etc."
So i gave up : ). Didn't dared to try manually if even the built in profiles weren't working.

[baholete]

Ok, cleared the cmos memory too, even have a new PSU from a friend 450W and still the same problem. The only time when it worked fine was when i had the 8800gts plugged in. Maybe it was just a weird coincidence that it worked so i'm gonna repeat that test as soon as my friend gets home.

[qubit]

Ok dude, looks like you've tried everything reasonable to nail the source of the problem. I'd say your mobo is bad - and with confidence, too. That little m/f sounds like my mental answering machine.

Time to byte the bullet and get yourself a nice Gigabyte Ultra Durable board.

Is this Asus POS still under warranty, perhaps? <crosses fingers>

It's kinda weird how that Asus board works with the Asus video card only though. Could just be coincidence though - mixing brands isn't normally a problem.

[baholete]

Posting with the ASUS 8800GTS 320M installed aaaaand...... everything works perfect. Yep, i'm either crazy or the computer is.
The POS is out of warranty but i don't care, fack it.

Btw, both the 8600gts and 8800gts are ASUS. Difference is that one is silent (passive cooling) and other, 8800, has active cooling.

[baholete]

And now i'm posting with the "ASUS en8600gts silent" installed. As u can see on the pic in this post, same problem again :|

I'm gonna buy the hd5770 and if the pc works fine with it, i'm gonna keep this mobo until i buy the 2nd 5770.

[Corduroy_Jr]

did u attempt what qubit requested, with only the basic's one stick of memory/cpu/video card, if so this 450watt psu u borrowed from friend, whats the make and model?

[jagd]

I heard x550s refused work on x1 before ,it is probably why did not work on your mobo.I think you have 2 problems , first died 8600gt 2nd mobo working at x1 not x16 .

Originally Posted by baholete

And second, i've tried 3 graphics cards on my system. One is mine, 2nd is an older asus ati card (somewhere on it, it says "EAX550HM512/TD/256M/A") and the third is an Asus 8800GTS 320M model.

[baholete]

just a little heads up, i've just tested a gigabyte 8500GT also, and the card worked perfectly.

So the verdict is: busted ASUS 8600GTS card.
What really made this seem like a very weird problem is, the ati x550 which had the same problem like my 8600gts. Very odd ...

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by baholete

just a little heads up, i've just tested a gigabyte 8500GT also, and the card worked perfectly.

So the verdict is: busted ASUS 8600GTS card.
What really made this seem like a very weird problem is, the ati x550 which had the same problem like my 8600gts. Very odd ...

while its very unlikely, its certainly not impossible to have two bad cards

[jagd]

Welcome to PC world ,paradise of weird problems .

I think x550 is ok and still working ,problem was your x16 slot working at x1 and it refused work at x1 .Do me a favour test this x550 on another pc and write result .x550 was one of the first pci-e cards it should not surprise anyone if has this kind of problem ,especially hyper-memory models

Btw working at pci-e x1 can be signal of failing card ,some users experienced this before their card failed (at my google search) .And finally this pci-e bug is a combination of a series things and you may not face with 5770.

Originally Posted by baholete

So the verdict is: busted ASUS 8600GTS card.
What really made this seem like a very weird problem is, the ati x550 which had the same problem like my 8600gts. Very odd ...

[<<Onafets>>]

Does anyone think his CPU will bottleneck the new card?

[baholete]

Last update:
Got the new card and a poor mans PSU, a raidmax 500W, and everything worked fine until now. Yes, most probably the cpu bottlenecks it, but it will be upgraded also as soon as the budget allows it (new mobo -> 2nd v. card -> new cpu).

I'll test that x550 on other pc when i have the chance and tell you the result.