Problems with a 9800GX2

[saaya]

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.

even removing the bios battery doesnt reset the pciE clocks? thats really odd... or maybe the videocards somehow lock their pll to the pciE clocks and this setting is saved on the vga even when you remove it from the system? hmmmm i def need to check this out... weird...

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

its a general pciE issue... ive seen this on intel and amd plattforms on asus gigiabyte and foxconn boards alike when i worked for cellshock... but that issue was a one off only, after maybe 100-500 system reboots the card might not be detected, black screen, and the board boots fine. in that case moving the card around in the pciE slots solved the problem.

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

did you overclock the pciE bus?
did you overclock the videocards?
you tried fresh installs so i guess drivers clutting up is not causing this?
hmmmmm

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

those are all memory errors indicating either your memory is not fully stable or the fsb is not fully stable, which would explain why crysis keeps crashing regardless of what card you use.

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

thats weird... i always just had to shut down the board, wait 5 seconds and then turn it on again.
if i power it on again immediatly or use the reset button then itll beep and give me code 54 again. are you sure you have to put in another card to get the system to boot at all? if yes, did you overclock the pciE bus before or the VGA?

So far i thought the vga takes the pciE clock as reference and multiplies it to get its gpu clocks, but its starting to sound like overclocking the gpu actually overclocks the pciE bus and the multiplyer of the pciE clock to create the gpu clock remains the same? if thats the case then overclocking the gpu will overclock the pciE bus, which would explain those issues...
that would be incredibly stupid and weird from nvidia though... i find it hard to believe that this is whats happeing...

but just to be sure, please let me know if your overclocking the gpu at all or if its running at stock speeds.

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

hmmmm is the system fully stable at stock speeds? is the memory 100% stable?

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

hmmm they put less load on the board/chipset and psu... hmmm the 8800gt and the 9800gx2 both dont work fine? that doesnt make any sense tho, there are loads of people running this combo and nobody had any issues so far... hmmmm
not to mention that shamino was benching 9800gx2 cards for countless hours...

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

well you get the same problems with the 8800gt, right?
the only thing i can think of is the PSu beeing too weak since the other cards you tried that worked fine draw less power hmmm... if thats not it then its either the board or a bios compatibility issue... which doesnt make sense tho cause others run that combo fine. so it sounds like your board somehow got damaged and cant run the 9800gx2 and 8800gt anymore? weird...

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

ill try to reproduce this right away...
BO+gx2+XP+Crysis doesnt work at all for you?
or it crashes after some time?
you said at first it did work, right? for how long?
and what happened that triggered the issues?
how long until you saw issues?