Running Single Graphics Card from Second PCIe

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  1. Posts : 391
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
       #1

    Running Single Graphics Card from Second PCIe


    I asked yesterday about running my graphics card from the second PCIe slot for purely visual reasons after deciding that the speed decrease would be negligible if any. Firstly if you disagree with this, please let me know :P. I tried to start the computer with the video card in the second PCIe slot (PCIe 3.0, 8x), but I got no video signal to my screen with both the motherboard output and the videocard output.

    Is it actually possible to run a single graphics card out of a PCIe slot which isnt the primary one?

    Thanks.
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  2. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #2

    Well it should be possible...

    How do you figure running CrossfireX solutions would be like if one PCI-E slot didn't accept a card in it's slot?

    Have you tried reseating the card properly and also remembered to replug in the dual 6-pin PCI Express power connectors? I know it sounds rather trivial, but loose connections to the slot can cause those issues some times...

    As for your motherboards output, try checking your BIOS whether your integrated card has been enabled or not.. you may have disabled it after installing your dedicated graphics card initially...
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  3. Posts : 391
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    I dont think its a matter of the motherboard not recognizing the card, but rather a matter of the motherboard just natively looking for a graphics card card in the primary slot when booting. I would think though it would be capable of using the cpu dedicated graphics or something...
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  4. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #4

    Good point. Have you got a spare dedicated graphics card to test out this theory?

    Two different cards, one in primary and one in secondary, boot to BIOS and check whether the cards appear in the BIOS.

    Or you can put that card back in the primary slot, check whether the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics are enabled in the BIOS and do some further experimentation.
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  5. Posts : 391
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #5

    Mightnt it be a bad idea to try boot with 2 completely different graphics cards? I do have a second dedicated card I could use, but its a geforce 210, completely different family, league, everything..
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  6. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #6

    It's fine, we're not going to boot into Windows or enable SLI, just into the BIOS to ascertain whether the slots are picking up the cards as the should.

    Have you tried my suggestion on reseating the card and/or placing it back in the slot that worked and enabling your Intel Integrated HD 4000 graphics in the BIOS?

    Your system's PSU is beefy enough to handle those two cards.
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  7. Posts : 1,996
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
       #7

    If you're using the default settings, the card should be recognized from either slot. The Primary Display setting should be Auto.
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  8. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #8

    Yeah, what Sardonicus says, default settings should square it away nicely.

    Thanks for the input mate!
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  9. Posts : 391
    Windows 7 Professional 64bit
    Thread Starter
       #9

    Well I dont know what I did last time but I tried it again and it worked fine . Thanks for the input nonetheless.

    For peace of mind, but more to show my friends when they rage at me about all the performance disadvantages of doing it this way, what is a free but good and trustworthy graphics card benchmark program?

    Thanks.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 2,072
    Windows 7 x64 Professional SP1
       #10

    Tomha said:
    Well I dont know what I did last time but I tried it again and it worked fine . Thanks for the input nonetheless.

    For peace of mind, but more to show my friends when they rage at me about all the performance disadvantages of doing it this way, what is a free but good and trustworthy graphics card benchmark program?

    Thanks.
    Free and good? Thats a bit of a toughie.

    There're 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark11 but the free versions of both only allow you run them once or twice I believe and you can only view the results online on their website, by uploading your results and having them verified.

    http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/download

    http://www.3dmark.com/3dmarkvantage/download/

    There's also Unigine Heaven which is a great benchmark for DX 11 effects like Tesselation and it's free to keep:-

    Heaven DX11 Benchmark | Unigine: real-time 3D engine (game, simulation, visualization and VR)

    Hope that helps!
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