4890 - monitor is blank

[Nic_James]

First of all, yes I'm a new user. Thank you for your time even though I'm just a newbie around here.

I'm building a new computer, and I am unable to get my Gigabyte Radeon 4890 to show anything on my monitor. When I power it on, everything starts up, but the monitor acts like it isn't getting a signal and it just says its going into power saving mode. I don't hear any beeps, and although I cannot leave out the possibility that I've got a faulty GPU or Motherboard, I am leaning toward thinking this is a PSU problem. Please help.

Here's my stuff:
ASUS P6T SE Motherboard
Intel i7 930 (no OC) Chip
Kingston tri-channel RAM 2gb x3
Samsung DVD RW
Seagate Baracuda 1.5TB 5900 x2
Antec 850w Quattro PSU
Gigabyte Radeon 4890 GPU

Here's how I got to this point:
1) I had not yet received my 4890 in the mail, so I installed an older PCIE MSI 512meg GPU. (can't recall its exact name right now) I plugged an older 15" ViewSonic VA520 flat panel monitor.
2) Power on, change to RAID in bios.
3) Reboot, change to RAID 1 mirroring.
4) Insert Windows 7 Ultimate disk. Reboot.
5) Install Windows.

From here, everything was fine. I left the comp on for a couple hours, and didn't really get around to doing anything further. I shut down. I never did plug in my LG 27" 1080p LCD monitor, I figured I'd wait till I got my 4890.

I received my 4890 in the mail yesterday.
1) I removed the MSI GPU, installed the 4890 GPU, and plugged in my 15" ViewSonic.
2) I plugged in the PCIE power plugs (this card takes 2 of them).
3) Powered on, and all of the fans and everything kicked on. The GPU was definitely powered, as its fan was spinning.
4) My ViewSonic power light turned orange, and the screen said there was no connection.
5) I unplugged the ViewSonic and plugged in my LG 27".
6) When I turned the monitor on, it immediately told me it was going into HDMI power saving mode. Again, acting like there was no connection.

Here's what my research tells me:
1) I didn't notice that on the outside of the box on my PSU it says "NVIDIA". So even though its an 850w PSU, it may just be incompatible.
2) There is a list of approved PSUs for Radeon GPUs. I was unaware of this, and am rather perturbed that I didn't think to check this when I was piecing my baby together over the last few weeks.
3) I looked up my Antec 850w on this list, and the 4890 was not listed.
4) I see very few PSUs are listed as compatible. One is the Thermaltake 700w.

Here's the list: http://ati.amd.com/products/certified/powersupplies.html

If you click Antec, you'll see there's not one listed that says 4890.

If you click Thermaltake, there are plenty that say 4890.

I know it sounds like I answered my own question, but I'm just tired of trying random things and was hoping for some support / advice regarding this issue. I sure hope that all I need is the right PSU, and that its nothing more serious. Any insight on the possible cause of my problem based on the evidence would be greatly appreciated.

nic

 

[MatTheCat]

I had a similar problem with my 4870.

I ran the card on the same two power connectors for almost two years without problems, but then when I was sizing out my system for a potential CF configuration, I ended up swapping the the power cables around in order to ensure that they worked.....and same problem as you.

What I done was swapped the power cables back to the originals, and the everything worked as before. I then shut down my PC, and then without shutting off the power, I swithced one of the 6-pin PSU connectors. Everything came on. Then I did the same with other 6-pin connector, and voila, everything ran as normal. So I was using the same two 6-pin connectors that never wanted to work before, that were now working totally fine.

My mobo wasn't broke
My PSU wasn't broke
and my gfx card wasn't broke.

Sometimes with PC's inexplicable things happen for reasons that nobody can really explain.

 

[OnBoard]

There are no ATI or NVIDIA power supplies. They might stick crossfire or SLI (or both) words on them, but it doesn't matter.

If the power supple gives enough juice for the graphics card it's fine no matter what compatibility lists say. Your PSU should be fine for even two 4890.

I'd try it like this.
Plug in the MSI card that your setup worked. Then plug in the 4890 to lower PCI-E slot. Stick one monitor to each and boot up. You should at least see the 4890 in the device manager once windows boots up and then you could try to extend desktop to the other monitor/card.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

As an example,my psu (corsair hx520) has SLI on the box,but is running my 4870 fine.

Can you try the 4890 in another machine to verify it is indeed working ok too?

 

[Nic_James]

Thank you everyone for the replies so far.

@MatTheCat: So are you suggesting I do something in particular with the way I power the card, or just relating a story to help ease my pain? hehe either way thanks for the reply.

@OnBoard: That's what I thought, I have never had any issues with PSUs like this, but then I've been out of the hardware game for about 5 years and am just now catching up to the newest stuff. I will try what you suggest tonight.

@tigger: Thanks for the example. Hmm, yeah I really don't know if my older Pentium 4 3gig would be a good machine to test the 4890 on. That's about all I have access to.

 

[Nic_James]

Well, I tried plugging just the MSI in. It works, and I see my BIOS post.

I then put both cards in, and plugged the monitor into the MSI. The screen showed nothing at startup.

 

[OnBoard]

Well, I tried plugging just the MSI in. It works, and I see my BIOS post.

I then put both cards in, and plugged the monitor into the MSI. The screen showed nothing at startup.

Weird stuff, it would seem the card doesn't get enough power then and hangs boot? Was first boot PCI-E set to the MSI card in bios?

Is there power lights on the ATI card? Mine (nvidia) has a led in the back showing power status.

You could try without the power cables what happens then. Some of them have buzzers, mine sayd "power cords not conencted" or something liek that on screen when I once forgot to plug them.

You could also try and use one molex to PCI-E adapter in place of the power supple pci-e cables.

 

[Mussels]

as has been said, make sure you try alternate combinations of PCI-E power plugs, assuming that PSU has more than two. You could be overloading one rail, and drawing very little off another.


If no go still, odds are the card is bad.

 

[Nic_James]

It works!!!!

Thank you OnBoard and Mussels for your recent replies.

@Mussels: I rearranged my power cables so that I wasn't daisy chaining anything except the fans on one line, and my 2 HDDs on another.

That didn't do it, but was certainly a valid point.

@OnBoard: When you said "Was first boot PCI-E set to the MSI card in bios?" I didn't quite understand what that meant, hehe. But I took the hint and tried moving my cards around.

1) I put the MSI in PCIE1, and the 4890 in PCIE2. I plugged a monitor into each.
2) Powered on, still no action on the 4890, but my MSI showed me a screen! This was a great first step.
3) Started windows, and per your original suggestion, just went to see if I could find the 4890 listed in Device manager. It was there! Another great sign. It was listed as generic VGA. That gave me the confidence to go ahead and move forward.
4) I shut down, plugged all my junk in, and booted with everything powered. No problems, but still no action on the 4890.
5) Now that I could see the 4890 was being detected at least as a video card, I figured I just needed to update my drivers.
6) I put my ASUS mobo drivers disk in and let it do its thing, and restart twice.
7) I ran windows update, and it automatically grabbed my 4890 drivers!
8) I restarted and my 4890 screen was still blank. But when I went to display settings, it showed 2 monitors. I clicked Identify and saw a HUGE number 2 on my monitor. Sweet!!

You guys rock! I am a web developer, and just not patient enough with hardware to try all of these random things.

@Matthecat: It helped to know that there were plenty of random situations and to not give up.
@Tigger: It helped to know that my PSU was certainly not the issue.
@Mussels: It helped to think about how I was distributing power. As I said, it has been 5+ years since I've gotten my hands dirty like this.


I can't thank you enough. Especially OnBoard. Your insight was very accurate, and I'm going to be able to put the door back on my case for the first time in 2 weeks!

I'd like to say I'll see you guys around, but I don't know how often I'd get back in this forum. If I don't see you - thanks again. I hope this post can help some other random soul in the future.

nic