Added video card to new system all was fine, then this...

[Red Squirrel]

So I built a new system for Linux so I can stop having to dual boot back and forth when I want to game, but since my ATI card worked in Linux I wnated to use it in this system.

The motherboard is GA-Z97MX-Gaming5 with Core i3 and the video card I tried to add was an ATI Radeon HD 7870. It worked fine for years in the other system, which has a X79-UD3 motherboard and core i7.

It worked fine at first, then I went to reboot, and the system started acting all retarded. The screen would be black and the light was flashing like if the system was off. 5 minutes later it decides to flicker like it's about to come up but nothing happens. Screen just goes back to black.

Tried rebooting, powering off etc, even tried to plug into the onboard video. It kept acting all retarded. At one point I got this text output:



Sorry I missed half of that with the flash... was using my phone so I can upload it and did not notice that. But hopefully it gives an idea.

After screwing around a few more times with more reboots, then it finally started to boot, but VERY VERY VERY slow. Like, I could actually watch the screen get drawn, it would take about 1-2 seconds to draw the whole screen. I took the video card out and running on built on now.

Why the hell did it do this and how do I stop it?


Also, on subject of video card screw ups, in my other system I put a GTX 560TI and the screen is letterboxed. Since both systems are on a KVM on the same monitor, I can't really adjust the monitor for it or it will screw up for the other PC. Why is it doing this, and is there a way to stop it? It's doing it at bios level, not OS.

I have the worse freaking luck with computer issues... I hate computers sometimes.

 

[Elixer]

Does that say: BUG: soft lockup CPU #X for Y secs. ?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah think it was that. I googled that but only found bugzilla reports in super old distros from like 2006 vintage, not much info.

 

[Elixer]

Which distro are you using ?
IIRC, that is a kernel issue, did you recently update ?
I did see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1269404 for Ubuntu...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Linux Mint 17.1 brand new install. I don't think it's Linux, because it's not normal that it took like 5+ minutes just for POST.

Removed the card, running on built on, and now everything is fine.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Since the other system was giving me issues with the other video card, I just put this card back in and called it a day... I have enough troubles if I can avoid more I'll do what it takes.

Just going to run on built on video for this system. It supports triple monitor, I'll conquer that another time. Linux is iffy when it comes to that so I don't think it will work but I'll try it later.

 

[Stuka87]

What power supply are you running?

 

[Red Squirrel]

PSU is a Corsair CX Series CX600M 600W ATX 12V 80 Plus Bronze.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So I tried another video card, it's acting all retarded again. The video card is a Gigabyte GTX750 (this one: http://www.ncix.com/detail/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-750-ti-3b-94301-1281.htm). Why is it giving me so much trouble, is this motherboard not capable of handling an addon card? According to the manual it can do SLI... but THAT I don't know about because only one of the slots is a X16 the other ones are fake. (X16 size but only X8 and X4). I know sometimes they print 1 manual for multple boards so I'm wondering if I got screwed.

Basically this is what happens:

When I turn it on, the output goes to new video card, very slowly, it takes about 5 minutes just to POST. Mostly just black screen and flickers and on/off cycles and finally a bit of text, then shuts off, and then the OS loads but on the built on card.

I managed to get into the BIOS but these stupid graphical BIOSes now are garbage if you have a video related issue. It was too big and I could not see all the options because it goes off screen.

How do I get this to work? I've never seen anything like this, normally it will just pick whatever card has a monitor plugged into it, but now it's trying to use one to POST and use the other in the OS. I just want to get the addon card to work normally (and not take 5 minutes to post) and disable the built on. How do I do that if I can't use the bios?

EDIT: After several reboots and screwing around I managed to get into the bios and it displayed correctly. I had the default card set to the PCI slot but had to disable the Intel graphics as that was another option. That seems to have done it... now to figure out why Linux wont detect the other displays, but I'll google that and see what I find. I probably have to install the Nvidia proprietary drivers but the option is not showing up in the additional drivers list.

 

[zagitta]

I remember having a similar problem with the Intel igpu on my laptop, iirc there's a kernel module parameter that defaults to a value the newer igpus sometimes don't work with. I'll see if I can dig up the solution and come back to you...

Edit: according to this https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics#X_freeze.2Fcrash_with_intel_driver adding adding
adding "i915.semaphores=1" to you boot parameters possibly helps, at least that's what fixed my issue I believe.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics#X_freeze.2Fcrash_with_intel_driver

 

[Red Squirrel]

Thanks for the info, but did end up getting it working. I could not figure out why the nvidia driver was not showing up in the driver manager but I was just trying stuff, did an apt-cache search and found some packages that looked like they might be drivers so I installed and it did indeed work. So I finally have triple monitor working in Linux now. I never thought I'd see the day. I think this video card even supports 4. Kinda tempting TBH.

 

[tweakboy]

Nice 486 DX lol

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok so it seems this original issue is not quite completely gone. It's not as bad as it originally was with this card, but it seems to be very sporadic.

Basically when I boot up my computer, sometimes it goes through no problems. Other times, it just sits at a black screen, screen might flicker on and off (can tell by the LED as it might go into standby then come back etc) and sometimes if I do manage to get in the bios it will be very slow at drawing. Here is a video showing some of what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Zpw5MeeM8

Excuse the bad quality, was just using my phone and no tripod. Trying to get into the bios or boot menu can be a challenge, this was my 3rd try.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well this sucks, it looks like the slow post thing is a known issue with this motherboard. I googled it and found other people having the same issue.

I also noticed I can barely play Minecraft, of all games. It plays ok at first then gets super choppy and unplayable. Not a huge deal as I can always play it on my actual gaming machine, but still a piss off, you'd think that adding a video card would INCREASE video performance not decrease it, but this motherboard is just garbage I guess.