Sapphire A9RX480 did not give any video output?! WTF!

[caps_buster]

After a longer pause, I wanted to fire up my main rig just to realize, that it does not work! Grrr! The Sapphire A9RX480 board is pretty nice one, I like the design:




However odd as it seems, the mobo seems working. Keyboard LEDs are working, HDD is spinning and it all looks like it just boot right up, however absolutely no output signal. Even tested, I re-tested the PCIEx graphic, even tried to use PCI GF2 graphic card (in both PCI slots) and no difference. Tried the VGA outputs as well as the DVI one on the PCIEx graphic card, a MSI GeForce 210 589/1024MHz 512MB DDR2.

No luck. Different monitors - no change. Even analog ones claim, that there is NO output signal.

Anyone ever experienced that? Any ideas what to test?

Sapphire "Grouper" A9RX480 (ATI RX480)
Opteron 148
2048MB OCZP4001G
500G Western Digital 16MB cache (WD5000AAKB)
MSI GeForce 210 589/1024MHz 512MB DDR2
X-Fi Fatal1ty
DVDRW NEC DV-4551A (16x DVDRW)
IDE 100MB zip
floppy with 7+1 USB2 reader Mitsumi FA404
Powered by Enermax Liberty 620W PSU

[StinkEye]

I had that board when it came out! Had to order it from UK, but I thought it was worth it, I still think it is one of the best looking boards ever made. I had a lot of trouble with stability from the very beginning with it, very sensitive to any tweaking, and then one day it just stopped outputting video, everything powered up, no video. I never tested a pci graphics card to test if it was the pci-e slot, but I just thought that is what it was. You have had that combination in your post working before, yes? I wasn't sure if your main rig stopped working so you are trying that board, or if that is your main rig that is no longer working.

[caps_buster]

It is (or it was) the main rig that is no longer working now I not had much stability issues, unless I overclocking too much... It just worked great for me and now it is a dead brick. It seems like to post, but nothing is visible. If your mobo ended up the very same way, then I probably should not expect to get mine working too Witch is a very sad news indeed.

[Speedy-J]

Mine is still working as new ,it has some odd ram issues but after tweaking it will run just fine in single channel.
Dual channel is broke by the board ore cpu.

[caps_buster]

Mine seems working, all the led tests are passed, w/o ram is squak like it should, etc. Just absolutely NO video output signal in any circumstances at all. I have no idea what to do now. Even just the mobo alone, with just a PSU, ram and PCIEx card - tested in another PC and working - and no output signal. Same with a PCI graphic card, tough...

Any ideas greatly wellcome. The mobo seems to work, but just no output signal on the monitor


The CPU LED indicators show the Vcore is going well. The five LED's from the ram slots looks like this:
OFF - ON - ON - OFF - OFF

At power-on it briefly flick like this:
OFF - ON - OFF - OFF - ON
...and then it go like I explained before. The CPU is Opteron 148, IIRC 1.40Vcore... is this right? Or where the the voltage table for these LED's?

Also the LED near the PSU main 24pin connector is lit well. And the LED near the battery. These two are lit since the PSU is connected and on.
On power on, the LED near the battery flick there times and then the BEEP should show like the board is posting. But, of course, nothing is on the damn videocard output AT ALL. That is what driving me mad.

W/O the rams the mobo beeps like mad, like it should, so... it looks everything is working - except the video output is just not there. What to do???



PS. the GFX card is hot, it had just a passive heatsink, so... the power is getting to the GFX card, so things should work!

PS2. after some time (like 20 sec or so) when the mobo is on OFF PSU by switch and I choose to use the reset bios switch, the LED near the PSU main 24pin connector flick. Is that a confirmation that the BIOS is cleared? And can be of any significant issue, that the BIOS is probably pretty old of moded one? Can and should I consider new BIOS? And how should I flash a new one, when I did not see a thing? IIRC the bios is from there: http://ax2.old-cans.com/grouper/ ...but not even an idea, witch one...

[caps_buster]

I tested the mobo and when connecting a floppy, then waiting about 20 sec after the beep, pressing enter once or twice - and surprise - the boot floppy start booting the DOS and end up, when it is booted. So, except that I did not see a thing, all is working

Now that way I can made a blind-flash real easy, if anyone did not have other ideas, about what to do with the mobo... to get it shown on the screen the damn imade

[caps_buster]

Tried the blind flash, but except that one LED is now no longer ON, no change. Perhaps I did tried too old bios? Anyone can help or suggest something? The flashing seems to worked well... But I used the uld unofficial bios and flashed by the Grouper BIOS "f32a" 12. 5. 2006 unofficial moded by Tony by this F32A app.
Other suggestions?



Interestingly, nothing can be downloaded from there:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presenta...006&lid=1&os=7
...it just does not work, nothing is downloading in the BIOS section at all That kinda suxx.

Does it work for anyone?


PS. Ah, they told me, that the downloads are disabled on purpose: "Sapphire disabled the bios downloads as many found issues (and their warranties voided) because of a bad installation or miss load of the correct bios. That way Sapphire can keep records on the users who need bios, which bios and offer the appropiated support to avoid the void of your warranty" ...

So, anyone have downloaded the current bios and flasher recommended from their webpage? Their support did not give anything usefull...


PS2. Bios for Sapphire "Grouper" A9RX480 mobo?
Since the absolutely lame Sapphire disable the bios downloads for the A9RX480 there:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presenta...006&lid=1&os=7
...and tech support did give me the very same link I posted above, so I can't get the BIOS, nor the DOS flasher - not to mention some guide that could be handy, because I feel that only by completely erasing the settings the mobo could post... (eg. visibly post, now it posting and seems working as much, as even blind flash is possible, but NOTHING is on the screen!)

So, anyone can provide me with the Sapphire bios:
PI-A9RX480 BIOS(2K060417)
...and the flasher:
Awardflash(8.63a)
...preferably with some readme on how to get the settings completely erased?

Thanks a lot!

[caps_buster]

Tthe Sapphire tech support provided me working link to the latest bios, however no help at all, because this is old bios that I already have:


Hello, tech support!
Thanks for the bios and Awdflash. Unfortunately, this is the bios from 17. 4. 2006, witch can be found even there:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/grouper/
That means I already tried to flash it, yet nothing happend. So, are there any other recommendations how to proceed?

I tried Uniflash v1.40, because it can output log, and it give my this log file:

00:00:51.95: UniFlash v1.40 started: A:\UNIFLASH.EXE -REBOOT -CMOSC -UNLOCK -LOG -E bios.bin
00:00:52.94: Chipset detected: (1002,5950,01) ** (1002,4377,80)
00:00:52.94: Flat Real Mode initialized
00:00:53.99: CMOS size detected: 256b
00:00:53.99: Found DMI 2.3 board info: RX480-SB450
00:00:54.98: System ROM selected
00:00:55.96: Beginning Flash ROM detection...
00:00:55.96: DetectLoop
00:00:56.95: DetectLoop
00:00:57.94: Flash ROM detection complete
00:00:57.94: Allocating memory block 00080000
00:00:58.98: Allocating memory block 00080000
00:00:59.97: Allocating memory block 00001080
00:00:59.97: Flash ROM chip detected: PMC Pm49FL004/3.3V (LPC/FWH)
00:01:00.96: Flash ROM ID: 9D6E,FFFF
00:01:01.95: Exiting UniFlash...
00:01:02.99: Turning off logging, shutting down to real mode
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it is not even clear, if the flash happend or not to me. However still nothing on the display is shown up

Please advise.

Thanks.


PS. Also I must say, that this line in autoexec.bat does NOT work:
awdflash bios.bin /PY /SN /CC /CD /CP /R

...while when I use this line:

awdflash bios.bin /PY /SN /CC /CD /CP /F /Tiny /R

Then in worked and flashed (slowly, as the "Tiny" force the loading during flashing, so, it is slow and /F should snad for: "The key /F enables AwardFlash to reprogram FlashROM with the algorithms of the current BIOS version. If a mainboard peculiarities do not allow applying AwardFlash Writer algorithms, you should use the key /F.") and then rebooted the machine quite well. However, still the display did not kick on. Eg, still nothing on the screen is shown up, witch is the major problem since the beginning.

So I managed the Awdflash to run AND flash the bios into the mobo, however computer, that did not display a thing is simply useless...

Of course, there is a positive way to look at it - one did not need monitor, nor graphic card for this thing



So as you see, still no help. But there is confirmation (the log) that the machine is in good shape - it "just" did not show a thing on the monitor, witch is really, really flustrating...

[caps_buster]

Moderator on the PC perspective forum told me, that he had the best results with the old bios from 26.9.2005, so I tried to flash it using the Awdflash and it really "helped" - the mobo is now not even posting.

After flashing the old bios from 26.9.2005, the machine just flick 7x fast the led near the CMOS battery and that it is. Then it try to post, yet no post, no image on screen, nothing. And then again the led 7x flick and again it try post and again fail... That way it is much worser, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to flash a new bios now...!
Not even blind flash is possible, when the machine refuse to post.

That somewhat confirm that the bios is the root source of problem AND it seems the older bios is better, by judging that the monitor is getting frequently some signal pulses, so it not go to sleep, instead it showing in cycles the error message about videosignal 0 kHz vertical and 0 kHz horizontal... (Eizo F35 Flexscan)

So, more closer to the root of the issue, but yet still far from any solution at all.

Is there are any emergency bios flash (like the Ctrl + Home for Amibios - but this is Awardbios) or what can I do, to get the PC to work again, like it did well for me before? The "amergency" Award bios require the machine to actually boot, witch is not the case there...
http://www.biosman.com/biosrecovery.html

Tech support seems to be "really" helpfull:

Sorry that, we would suggest you to upgrade the MB due to even this MB BIOS still cannot help to boot up the MB.
Thanks.

PS. Hoooray! When exchanged the PCIEx gfx card to a PCI one GF2 suxxka, then the machine post (altrough nothing on the screen is shown up) and flashing nicely again! Now that is a improvement! It just beep as it finished the flash! Cool. At least the machine can post and the problem might be in the GFX card then... maybe only a externally powerd graphic card works? Dunno. I must try the old card in there...

PS2. Almost there! Got the machine to display something - finally! By using the old gfx card (even w/o pluged the external power cord!) it nicely show up the logo, allow me to do bios settings and work as it should! W/O a glitch! Now that means, that the mobo is working. It just did not like the MSI GeForce 210 589/1024MHz 512MB DDR2 card for one reason or another. It is a ver. 1.1, and it was tested in another PC and it worked there. No idea why it fail to work now...
Suggested settings BIOS to make the card work?

This damn card refuse to work: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N210-...=Specification

Meanwhile the board is passing memtest test with no errors twice Seems good!


When way more powerfull and way more PSU demanding 7800 GTX works fine then it make me wonder, why MSI GeForce 210-MD512H did not work at all

Some BIOS settings are really interesting - how about to tweak these?

LTD Configuration - Enabled
Upstream LTD Bus Width - 16bit
Downstream LTD Bus Width - 16bit
LTD Bus Frequency - Auto (1GHz, 800MHz, 600MHz, 400MHz, 200MHz)

(I know, this have more to do with the CPU memory controler that GFX card, but who knows?)

PCIE GFX Core Payload Size - 64Bytes (32Bytes, 16Bytes)
PCIE GPP Core Payload Size - 64Bytes (32Bytes, 16Bytes)
NB-SB Port Configuration - Default (Enhanced)
PCI-E GFX Link Width - x16 (x12, x8, x4, x2, x1)
Assign IRQ For VGA - Enabled (Disabled)

...any suggestions? Tried 32Bytes (for the PCIE GFX Core Payload Size|PCIE GPP Core Payload Size settings), but no change. Eg. NO POST with this MSI card...

[caps_buster]

I realized, where the problem is. Since the mainboard Sapphire A9RX480 PCIE slots are version 1.0a, then any graphic card have to be backwards compatible with PCIE 1.0a in order to work. Since there is, in the MSI GeForce 210-MD512H, mentioned only support for PCIE v2.0, then it probably means that it will never work on PCIE v1.0a and hence I need a gfx card, that is backward compatible with PCIE v1.0a...
And this card is not it.

So, unless there could be done a bios tweak, that allow this backward compatibility, there is no way to make the card work in Sapphire A9RX480. Damn!

[StinkEye]

You said you already tried PCI graphics card, also without positive result, no? Good on you for sticking with it, hope you get it sorted out.

[caps_buster]

It is weird, but the PCI graphic cannot be choosed by "auto" in the crazy Sapphire bios. There is no auto settings! Either to use the internal graphic (witch the mobo did not even have), or PCI or PCIE - NO AUTO.

However I got borrowed today for test a Point of View GeForce 7300GT card and it run in Sapphire A9RX480 w/o a single glitch (I recapped the card with Samxon caps like 4 years ago for friend, because the card died). So I would say that the board run pretty good, unless someone is trying to use in it the PCIE v2.0 card that is _NOT_ backwards compatible with PCIE 1.0a.

Witch is the case of the MSI GeForce 210-MD512H, unfortunately for me.


PS. now it looks like this:


...testing phase...

[caps_buster]

Also Point of View GeForce 8600GT is working just fine:



...so it is a rather isolated case of the MSI GeForce 210 card, seems. I do wonder, if other manufactures GeForce 210 cards will have this problem, tough.

[caps_buster]

So now I using a Point of View 8600GT card:



...it have reasonably quiet fan, but of course far too noisy for my liking. So I looked out for something that will fit well the reasonably small card, preferably overlaping ith 92mm fan over the top, so it cool a bit the NB heatsink after the card...

But much to my surprise, something like Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 are too big. The heatsink is huge, a 188x140mm (or 182x137 if you take their words: http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/di....html#techdata ) monster for a 120mm fan... That is a bit overkill for the small and reasonably not too hot (TDP 40W, or so they say http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/198...e-8600-gt.html ) card.

So, are there something like the Accelero S2, but smaller... for a like 92mm fan out there?

I managed to find a Accelero L2 with reasonable 119x94 size, however the bottom does NOT look like that it can fit on my card AND there did not seems to be any suitable connections awailable, besides the GPU is at anged position on this card...
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/di...ro.html?c=2264

But at least it is smaller, yet it is unclear, if there is enought space for the caps that have to fit bello the heatsink. At least 14mm there must be, preferably 15 as the Accelero L2 have... :|

So I'm a bit stuck. Of course there are alternatives like Zalman VF1000, but this is again overkill AND also the heatsink did not feature big enought fan to cool the chipset too AND I want to be able to use quiet fan (preferably Noctua... or shall I get something even quietier there from the 92mm pool?) of my choice and not their fan...

[caps_buster]

Since moderator uddarts on PC perspective forum have the same Sapphire A9RX480 mainboard and he tried a Galaxy GTX 650 in it. This is a PCIE v3.0 (!) card from 2013.

And quess what! It worked right away w/o troubles! Now that means that the mobo is NOT the problem, but MSI ficked up the backwards compatibility in the card bios and that prevent it being used at all in older mainboards. Terrible...

Maybe a flashing bios from other company GeForce 210 card could help, but that would be a pretty adventurous operation!

It should be mentioned, however, that the Sapphire A9RX480 mobo is working fine with these graphic cards:
PNY 6800 GS
Point of View GeForce 7300GT
Point of View GeForce 8600GT
Galaxy GTX 650 (PCIE v3.0!) ...and probably a with a lot more... it just does NOT work with the MSI GeForce 210-MD512H ...


Also it obviously works with Gigabyte GTX 580:

http://hwbot.org/submission/2321393_...80_44463_marks

...so definitively, that is a MSI GF210 issue.

[caps_buster]

It should be noted, however, that MSI really screw the GeForce 210-MD512H card bad, because it also does not work (not even post) with Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe mainboard (Radeon Xpress 3200 chipset), so definitively the card is up to the blame...