Problems with a 9800GX2

[raptor1]

what happened after that? so you were benching 3d, all was good, and then the card didnt boot anymore?

that is correct it worked fine for 2 days and then it started to misbehave

check the post code guide i wrote here:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=190952

yes i have checked here and no joy

what you are describing sounds like a memory issue.
Sounds like you pushed the memory/fsb too high and its not stable.
whats memory and cpu are you using and what speeds and voltages are you running it all at? the same configuration works with another vga though?
thats quite weird...

the settings that i am using are in my signature - i have a BFG tech 8800gt card and it works with these settings every time

thats normal afaik, you get the red leds on the power plugs and then it doesnt boot right?

it does boot but i cant see any thing on the display - how i know it boots is it goes all the way through the post codes non stop to FF

[BulldogPO]

saaya: have you receiver my e-mails?

[Slovnaft]

ahh saaya, well it started out like any other board, posted and booted fine and dandy everythings working fine at stock speeds etc. Then I go to start overclcoking and, because I'm running Q9450 this means cranking fsb (unlike many who buy this board who run QX's). get from stock 333 to 400 in one step no problem, but anything over 400 won't post and most end up in that annoying 54 post code or something like that sometimes with constant beeping etc. Figured it was probably RAM related (mushkin 2x2 1600 7-7-6-18). Ran every divider available, even tried strapping 1:1. Got timings help from greg, etc. Ends up that the board will only be stable at a higher fsb with an increase in RAM voltage for every 10mhz step or so. Now this seems odd, but i go along with it up to like 430fsb and about 2.05v. Then i get the bright idea to see if my RAM is broken and I reset CMOS, everything at stock, and run memtest. Sure enough memtest fails right away and at every address. Not wanting to believe my $300 ram is really dead, i pop it on my ASUS P5Q3 to memtest again and, guess what, even at stock speeds (which that board is supposed to have issues with) the RAM goes 5 full passes before i get bored and satisfied.
So, OK, for some reason BlackOps doesn't like my RAM. No big deal, I guess i need a 2x1 ddr3 kit anyway for...other stuff...
So I got an OCZ 2x1 1333 6-6-6-20 kit on there and it posts fine, boots fine, passes memtest and everything, but the board is still unstable at any fsb above 410, and won't post higher than 430. Now, given I was able to get my Q9450 to 3.8 on my old gigabyte X48 board, and given the P5Q3 was able to run my chip at 3.9g 1.29v stable 4.0 math benchable, i figured I had a pretty golden proc on my hands and i shouldnt let it sit on a board that couldn't do more than 400fsb stable.
So I unloaded it.

Sorry for the short biography, somewhat of a vent, maybe it's OT, maybe it's not.

[saaya]

that is correct it worked fine for 2 days and then it started to misbehave

and you tried both dvi connectors? and the vga works in another system?

hmmmm are you overclocking the pciE bus? the gx2 cards dont like as high pciE clocks as single cards i think, maybe thats why the 8800gt works and the gx2 doesnt?

and a dual card might put more load on the chipset, which means the same fsb/mem timings arent stable anymore. can you boot fine with the gx2 at stock cpu/fsb speeds?

saaya: have you receiver my e-mails?

probably, but ive got 200 still waiting to be read, and every email i reply to spawns 1 or 2 new emails, so its taking longer to catch up with my emails than i thought

Slovnaft, sorry to hear about those issues
can you make a thread about this with all the settings your using?
and if you remember, also the settings you used on the gigabyte board?
thanks!

[Slovnaft]

Slovnaft, sorry to hear about those issues
can you make a thread about this with all the settings your using?
and if you remember, also the settings you used on the gigabyte board?
thanks!

Sry saaya, blackops shipped out for trade about a week ago and gigabyte is long gone. i should start keeping notes though.
but you might want to check out mushkin compatibility with blackops? there seemed to be a problem with those sitcks in particular.

Sorry for the tangent.

[saaya]

Sry saaya, blackops shipped out for trade about a week ago and gigabyte is long gone. i should start keeping notes though.
but you might want to check out mushkin compatibility with blackops? there seemed to be a problem with those sitcks in particular.

Sorry for the tangent.

hmmm too bad
thanks for the headsup regarding the mushkin problem

[raptor1]

hmmmm are you overclocking the pciE bus? the gx2 cards dont like as high pciE clocks as single cards i think, maybe thats why the 8800gt works and the gx2 doesnt?

when the motherboard is overclocked, does this automatically overclock the pcie bus or is there a seperate setting in the bios for overclocking the pcie bus,
as i would like to check if the pcie bus on my motherboard is overclocked

raptor1

[Slovnaft]

pcie bus frequency is a serpararte setting in BIOS and I don't believe it ever gets changed automaticallly by BIOS.
However, I read a review on 9800gx2 that claimed it's clock was linked to the pcie bus clock in the same way as the 9600 gt. the review linked to this article which explained the interesting phenomenon between the card and the pcie bus http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/N...9600_GT/1.html . I'm not sure this shines any new light on the issue with blackops, but it could answer your pcie bus question.

[saaya]

when the motherboard is overclocked, does this automatically overclock the pcie bus or is there a seperate setting in the bios for overclocking the pcie bus,
as i would like to check if the pcie bus on my motherboard is overclocked

raptor1

it doesnt overclock the pciE bus by itself, and yes, theres a seting in bios to adjust the pciE bus clock.

[raptor1]

finally decided to rma the card

new card has arrived and is working now without any of the previous problems

Raptor1

[gmcg]

It looks like a problem of all Nvidia cards. While you try to overclock the PCI-E bus clock, there is some lock, even clearing of the BIOS doesn't help. Your card doesn't post video at all, the motherboard shows 2d error (video card is not recognized) and then goes to FF. I had that problem with 9800GX2 and then tried 280GTX and 9600GT with the same result - it looks that recognition of the video card is locked somehow, and BIOS reset doesn't help. With ATI cards there is no issue.
Why overclocking of PCI-E in BIOS is not cleared with CMOS reset or even removing the battery for 24 hours - it is another question.
To get rid of situation we need to remove overclocking of the PCI-E bus manually using any ATI card/old Nvidia card or just stop using overclocking of PCI-E at all, IMO.

[Slovnaft]

OCing recent nvidia cards is automatically tied to raising the PCIE bus isn't it? (citing article in my last post)

[gmcg]

OCing recent nvidia cards is automatically tied to raising the PCIE bus isn't it? (citing article in my last post)

I was talking about this setting *PCI Express clock (100MHz value on the picture):
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/5...173copydx2.jpg

[Slovnaft]

yeah that's what i'm talking about too. read the article i posted. it's referenced in an article about the 9800gx2. if what you're saying about the pcie freq. is true then this may be the source of the problem.

[gmcg]

yeah that's what i'm talking about too. read the article i posted. it's referenced in an article about the 9800gx2. if what you're saying about the pcie freq. is true then this may be the source of the problem.

Yes, your article is a key, IMO.
Why would I lie? Anyone can repeat/confirm the situation with his own overclocked motherboard and videocard, though he has to have an old video card or ATI videocard to be able to restore the settings.

[raptor1]

Hi!All

it must be obvious by now from this thread that there is a problem with the 9800 GX2 and the Blackops

being a computer engineer for the last 15 years i generally can sort out most problems my self (except overclocking issues and this current issue) hence i don't post here that often, but when i do, this is the best place i have come accross for sorting out issues

i have posted a solution on a number of threads here and at benchtec that seemed to work in the last week or so, that can be disregarded as it only worked for a day

i think the issue with x48 and 9800 gx2 is not fully fixed yet, i read an article a while back but i can't find it at the moment

i have spent the last 2 weekends trying to get my 2nd 9800 gx2 (had to rma the 1st) to work properly with countless reinstalls of winxp x86, winxp x64, vista x64 and all with the same result crysis just will not play without crashing and it happens on my 8800gt as well

with the 9800 gx2 my mb also gives loads of different post codes, d3, 54, 61, clearing the cmos and removing the battery does not help

also what triggers the code 54 is if i need to reset my cmos for any reason then the code 54 starts, the only way to clear it is to put in an older card, restore my settings from the storage and but back in the 9800 gx2 and it will let my pc post but still not let any games work

it does not matter if the mb is running at stock or overclocked, whether it is raid or non-raid, and also regardless of what graphics driver version

there is a pciE issue with p35/x38/x48 which causes the vga to not initialize properly.
Ive seen this on many boards, especially when i worked at cellshock where i rebooted a dozen systems every couple of minutes each and swapped the memory.
Anyways, moving the vga around from one slot to the other usually solves it after changing it a few times.
sounds like you tried that already tho, so that doesnt seem to be the issue... weird

It looks like a problem of all Nvidia cards. While you try to overclock the PCI-E bus clock, there is some lock, even clearing of the BIOS doesn't help. Your card doesn't post video at all, the motherboard shows 2d error (video card is not recognized) and then goes to FF. I had that problem with 9800GX2 and then tried 280GTX and 9600GT with the same result - it looks that recognition of the video card is locked somehow, and BIOS reset doesn't help. With ATI cards there is no issue.
Why overclocking of PCI-E in BIOS is not cleared with CMOS reset or even removing the battery for 24 hours - it is another question.
To get rid of situation we need to remove overclocking of the PCI-E bus manually using any ATI card/old Nvidia card or just stop using overclocking of PCI-E at all, IMO.

one solution seems to be as suggested above by saaya and gmcg, but this is not an acceptable solution, my board is on the bench at the moment so it is not really a hassle of swapping the board from one slot to another or trying older cards to reset the pcie clock, but once my board goes in to my case, i am not going to go through this hassle

i have tried an old ati x1600 and a nvidia 7950 gt on the blackops and crysis works perfectly in both winxp and vista without crashing

i also put the 9800gx2 in to a hp dx2300 with an intel 946gz chipset and again eveything works fine

i was at i34 and was at the foxconn stand where they were using a 9800 gx2 and they didn't seem to have any problems with it, although they were not playing games but were just benchmarking with 3dmark and wprime

all my current hardware and settings are in my signature

so after all that, i think we need a bios fix for the blackops or a video bios fix for the 9800 gx2

i was ready to ditch the blackops after this weekend, but i don't want to as i love this board and it is by far the best motherboard i ever had, we just need to get these issues sorted ASAP

Best Regards
Raptor1

[Slovnaft]

try popping in the 7950, but set PCI E clock at 101, 105, 110, and 115 sequentially. See if/where it fails along there.

[gmcg]

Hi!All

so after all that, i think we need a bios fix for the blackops or a video bios fix for the 9800 gx2

i was ready to ditch the blackops after this weekend, but i don't want to as i love this board and it is by far the best motherboard i ever had, we just need to get these issues sorted ASAP

Best Regards
Raptor1

Hi Raptor1, thanks for your input. I would not blame BlackOps motherboard so much regarding this issue, such as not only 9800gx2, but also 280GTX and 9600GT (which I have tried) have pretty similar issue with it. Of course proper recognition of newer Nvidia videocards is a task of BlackOps (or more precisely, x48 chipset), but after 790i instability issues in this year we all understand that the PC world is not perfect, at least for now.

I have already lost some money swapping from 790i Ultra to BlackOps, now it looks it is a good time to lose some more money swapping 9800gx2 to 4780x2 ... the 9800gx2 has lost like 50% of value since I bought it during EVGA's 90 days step-up process "updating" my old 8800GTX ... in April.

Even having those issues I also love BlackOps ... it is the best motherboard I ever had as well - except of it's technical support.

[LardArse]

Can't let that happen.... I think the older bioses work better with GX2, my memoryh is getting short, try G28 and backwards

[raptor1]

Can't let that happen.... I think the older bioses work better with GX2, my memoryh is getting short, try G28 and backwards

thanks for that

if the older bioses work better with the GX2 why is it not carried through on all new versions of the bios, instead of us having to flash down to an older bios and maybe loose something else that works in the newer bioses

i have already tried g27, will try g26 as i can't go lower as i well loose full support for E8xxx cpu

what do you mean by "can't let that happen"

Best Regards
Raptor1

[LardArse]

just that they should reciprocate that love you have for the black ops with the bios for you

[gmcg]

just that they should reciprocate that love you have for the black ops with the bios for you

Thanks, LardArse

I have received my board from RMA and now it works (I mean it passes 2d code stop), I can't say that it works fine though (they have flashed P05 BIOS in it).
I am not overclocking it for now. 9800GX2 was replaced with 4780x2 temporarily (or may be forever).

I am getting a strange message during BIOS start-up (it is usually posted twice, like this):
*WARNING: HAVE OPTION ROM CAN NOT BE INVOKE (VENDOR ID:197Bh, DIVCIE ID: 2363h)
*WARNING: HAVE OPTION ROM CAN NOT BE INVOKE (VENDOR ID:197Bh, DIVCIE ID: 2363h)

What does it mean? Why DIVCIE, not DEVICE?

PS. OK, found something while I wait for the answer:
Vendor ID = 197bh, JMicron Technologies, Inc.
Such as I don't use eSATA, I will disable it in BIOS and see what happens with the error message.

[raptor1]

just that they should reciprocate that love you have for the black ops with the bios for you

Thanks as well from me, LARDARSE

bad news i'm afraid, i have tried every bios from G25 TO G30 and i still get that 54 post code even at bios defaults when i put in the gx2

the gx2 works fine in 2 different boards i have here, an asus maximus extreme and a board with an intel 946 chipset

my blackops is now constantly staying at post code 54 and the clear cmos is not working

removed the battery and now i am getting an 0c post code even with an old ati x1600 graphics card

this is getting redicoulus, i am going to rma the blackops and hope i just have a faulty board

best regards
Raptor1

[gmcg]

Thanks as well from me, LARDARSE

bad news i'm afraid, i have tried every bios from G25 TO G30 and i still get that 54 post code even at bios defaults when i put in the gx2

the gx2 works fine in 2 different boards i have here, an asus maximus extreme and a board with an intel 946 chipset

my blackops is now constantly staying at post code 54 and the clear cmos is not working

removed the battery and now i am getting an 0c post code even with an old ati x1600 graphics card

this is getting redicoulus, i am going to rma the blackops and hope i just have a faulty board

best regards
Raptor1

Hmm, 54 looks like a memory controller/memory chips issue, did you try to use just one stick in a memory slot? Did you try to loose settings or to raise voltage on your memory?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/...rse+error+code

54 Intel memory configuration and testing code (54 with beeping, check detailled description on the top)
54 - Memory Sizing Code

54 with beeping
This POST Code is a part of the above initial memory configuration and testing Codes, but If the Debug LEDs display 54 with a lot of beeping, it might be something else. When you apply new settings in BIOS and hit save and exit you might get this error. It doesnt NECESSARILY mean that the settings you tried to apply dont work. Keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut the board down - wait 10 seconds - then power the board on again. OC revocery will kick in, enter BIOS but just hit "save and exit" and see if the settings work now. If you get error 54 with beeps again the settings your trying wont work, most likely cause the memory cant take it. Check if the set of memory has been tested by us or any other user, search for topics/threads in the foxconn section about this set of memory to see how other users are configuring it.

[raptor1]

hi gmcg

yes i have tried with stock settings and bios defaults, have tried the blue and white slots and with only with one stick

i have a pair of ocz 1800( the reason i got the cellshock) and it happens with that memory as well

the cellshock memory is been used at stock values in the asus and is working fine

i wont be overclocking the asus (the blackops replaced this) as i will be only using it until my blackops is replaced, unless someone has another solution i can try

Raptor1