4870x2 and GA-EP45-DS3R

[cadaveca]

Not all asus boards work, but they did deal with this issue with expressgate, and then 975x boards that had the bios issues with the PLX chip. Now we have a new chip, and I do not think the boards are switching to PCI-E 2.0, staying in pci-e 1.1a, and hence the issues.

[SKYMTL]

Should be interesting to see if / when they fix this. It really makes you wonder if this is why [H] still doesn't have their review up...

Anyways, I have yet to see any reports of the no video problem on ASUS or Gigabyte boards though I guess that it is possible that other boards will exhibit the problems differently.

Until then, I am in the process of moving all my testing over to an ASUS P5E Deluxe.

[cadaveca]

P5E!?! Not P5E3? Is DDR3 not cheap enough yet? Just curious about your motives for that choice...it's definately not wrong as most people will buy DDR2, not DDR3, but...you know...

Anway, we got gigabyte board from this thread. Symptoms either no screen at all, reboot upon driver loading, or no image, but successful boot. All the exact same issues from 3870x2's PLX chip and System BIOS not setting PCI-E up properly. I'm seeing alot of bios issues coming out of ASUS as of late too...did they fire someone or someone quit, or something? Seems very odd and out-of-place.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

P5E!?! Not P5E3? Is DDR3 not cheap enough yet? Just curious about your motives for that choice...it's definately not wrong as most people will buy DDR2, not DDR3, but...you know...

This is to tide us over until i7. Plus, I have not quite "accustomed" myself with DDR3 overclocking yet and I have a ton of reviews I need to get done, so no time for it. I needed something price-wise that wasn't going to break the bank and I could get right into with minimal impact on review timeframes.

I actually picked it up as a last-ditch effort just in case my DFI BIOS flash didn't work when reviewing the HD4870X2. So, I kept it, have been fooling around with it for the last week or so in my spare time and really like it. You will see DDR3 back into the GPU reviews here in the future but not right now.

[kawai]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

Symptoms either no screen at all, reboot upon driver loading, or no image, but successful boot.

Never no image for me, just boots past first bios screens, loads dvd and hd drives, memory tests then next screen with only an "_" character flashing.. then restarts... loops and does it again.

[kawai]

No luck with F9, i will try raising southbridge and northbridge voltages and try again.
Does any1 have information about the diagnostic LED's on the 4870x2?
I see 5 red leds and 3 green leds at bootup. then the middle led in set of the 5 blinks before restarting. this led is R819

[cadaveca]

Do they stay on? The red ones?

[kawai]

No they blink red and then turn off, then r819 blinks before it restarts. the 3 green ones blink once at start-up

[SKYMTL]

That sounds like a normal startup to me.

[kawai]

So the blinking of the middle led labeled r819 is normal at start up? Mine shuts down right after that.