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Having problem with Gigabyte AMD 770 or 790 based motherboard and certain Nvidia Video cards

M

mikepers

Junior Member
I decided it was time to refresh my system so I headed over to Newegg and ordered a Gigabyte MA770-UD3, an AMD Phenom II 720, 4GB DDR2 1066 RAM and an EVGA GTX 260 core 216. In addition I have an 8400GS PCI Nvidia card to drive a third monitor.

I throw it all together and everything powers up and looks good except that the BIOS isn't detecting my SATA hard disk or my SATA DVD drive. I tried a couple of different brand hard disks both SATA I and SATA II with no change. Tried different SATA cables. I tried each of the 6 SATA ports on the MB. I also tried the different BIOS settings, Native IDE, RAID and ICH or whatever that last one is called. Same behavior.

I take out the GTX 260 and leave in just the PCI based Nvidia 8400 card thinking along the lines that the 260 is drawing too much power. Same behavior the BIOS won't detect the hard drive.

I conclude bad motherboard and head back to Newegg. They're out of the same board so I move up a notch to the Gigabyte MA790X-UD4. I receive the board, swap it in and have the exact same problem.

Both boards have the latest BIOS. I decide I will try and flash the 790 back to the original BIOS. The 8400 based cards heat sink is blocking the floppy port so I pop the 8400 out and dig around and find an old passively cooled ATI PCI-E based X300. So I pop that video card in. Wouldn't you know. On the next boot the drives are detected just fine.

So after some quick testing using different video cards on the AMD 790 chipset board here is what I end up with:

PCI Nvidia 5200 works, BIOS detects hard drive.
PCI-E ATI X300 works, BIOS detects hard drive.
PCI-E Nvidia 7950GT works, BIOS detects hard drive.
PCI Nvidia 8400GS does not work, BIOS does not detect hard drive.
PCI-E Nvidia 8800GT works, BIOS detects hard drive.
PCI-E GTX 260 does not work, BIOS does not detect hard drive.

Of course the two cards I want to use in this system, the GTX 260 and the 8400GS, are the two that don't work. The 8400GS card works fine in other systems. The 260 is brand new so hopefully it's ok.

Anyone aware of any known issues using certain Nvidia cards on AMD chipsets? I did a lot of searching but could not find anything indicating there should be a problem.

I'm about ready to send back both motherboards and order something with an Nvidia chipset.

Sorry for the long post. If anyone has any suggestions I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!


 
Pretty bizarre.

I currently have a 770 and 790GX in use (both Biostar) and have used 8800gt and 7900gto OK, but that matches what you've experienced. AFAIK, there are no known issues with AMD chipsets and Nvidia GPU's playing nice. There are plenty of newer AMD rigs using GTX260's. I have a strong dislike for Gigabyte - too many issues over the years, horrible customer service - so I'll posit that your issue is specific to those Gigabyte-branded motherboards.

IMO, the Nvidia-based AMD chipsets are underrated. I've used a few with a combination of X2's and Phenoms with happy results, including good overclocking. USB throughput is noticeable better than AMD.
 
I have the same config (720, GTX260), but haven't decided on a motherboard yet. Anyone have recommendation for sub-100 dollar AM3 ready board? These gigabytes appear to be nightmares.
 
Ok, here's a quick update and some clarifications on this issue.

With regards to the GTX-260, it appears I was incorrect in my previous post as it now works fine when it's installed by itself. I cannot reproduce any problems with the GTX-260 when it's installed by itself so I have to conclude that I made a mistake in my earlier testing.

After additional testing it seems that the problem is specific to the having the 8400GS PCI card installed. When that card's installed, whether alone or with a PCI-E card, the BIOS won't detect the hard disk. The 8400 GS works fine on a few older Nforce-4 based Biostar boards I have but just will not work in either of these Gigabyte boards.

I did try flashing the BIOS to different versions on both boards to see if that made a difference. It didn't. (On a side note, I was able to flash the BIOS on both boards from a USB drive. The BIOS was able to detect the USB drive and read the BIOS file from there.)

So, at this point I just need to figure out the best way to get my third monitor going since the 8400GS won't work in these boards.
 
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