PC will not boot with 2nd pci-e video card installed

[rabeiler]

I have an XFX motherboard (x58i), model # MD-X58I-CH09. It has three PCIe slots. I have an Nvidia GEForce GTX 260 graphics card in one of the PCIe slots (middle of the motherboard). This is running two 22" displays with no issues at all.

I also have a Asus ENGT430 video card with HDMI output that I want to load into one of the other PCIe slots. When I do this, the computer will not boot properly. It starts (displays the splash screen for windows7), but after that it appears as if there is some sort of conflict. Probably a driver conflict but I cannot even see anything or log in to the PC. Will the mother board support two different graphics cards? If so, what do I need to do to get it to work. I have not installed any drivers for the ASUS graphics card because the instructions have you do this after booting. With Windows7 I didn't think I would have to install anything.

 

[Maguscreed]

Unless you have a motherboard with a specific chipset, it's very difficult to two individual cards to run together. Apparently your board, (while a good one for the price bracket) only supports sli for this apparently. So you would need the second card to be a sli compliant card, from what I see on that ENGT430 it's not an SLI capable card (which is really weird for a model that recent)

There may be a trick to get them to work together, but the problem is not a windows problem, it's hardware compatibility.

 

[rabeiler]

That is what I figured. The ENGT430 was a cheap card. I am ordering two new SLI video cards that are identical. This should fix my issue (hopefully) and then I will sell the old ones or use them in something else. Thanks for getting back to me. Much faster that XFX support - still have not heard from them at all.

 

[Maguscreed]

xfx support is slow but they are generally useful. I've had to RMA two XFX cards, and even though it took them several days to process me and make sure I wasn't an idiot that just did something wrong with the card, it went quickly after that though.

Anyhow, yeah a straight forward SLI config should work without problems for you.
You may need to clear you cmos when you install them just for the board to see everything new.
That's easy to do though, and should be covered in the motherboard manual.

 

[Maguscreed]

The ENGT430 does not even have a sli bridge adapter on it guys...

 

[stormy13]

That and SLI isn't required to run two cards for more than 2 monitors, to the point that when Nvidia started SLI with PCI-E cards you had to disable SLI to run a monitor off of the second card.

That 430 is dx11 windows might see it as the main card because it is dx11-

It could be this, but the Nvidia driver should be able to take of that sort of thing. Despite one card being DX10 and one being DX11, they both use the same driver model, WDDM 1.1.

It could also be a defective slot or card as well. If you haven't tested each card (and possibly each of the PCI-E slots) separately, with the 260 in uninstall the driver and shutdown and switch the cards. Then reboot and see if Windows loads, and if it does then install the driver.

Ifthat works leave the 430 in and put the 260 back in in a different slot, boot up and see what happens.

 

[stormy13]

This mobo can not do sli- .

Yes it can,

Motherboard Models

Additionally, the XFX X58i is the first motherboard to support either NVIDIA 3-Way SLI or ATI CrossFireX, which allows two or more discrete graphics cards to work together to improve system performance and creating a substantial visual gaming experience.

which is beside the point as you cannot run SLI with different model cards, and all rabeiler is I assume trying to do is run more than 2 monitors or use the GT 430 as a Physx card.

 

[Zepher]

plug one of your monitors into the ASUS card and see if the login screen switched to that card.

 

[Zepher]

I feel bad, so I deleted this post