Is the 3870 incompatible?

[dennilfloss]

Now I'm worried that the card may not like my Asus A8N32-SLI-DX mobo. It's PCI Express 1.02 according to Sandra.

 

[sandorski]

Ah, WTF? Never heard of this issue, now my future Upgrades need to be rejigged.

 

[Wheezer]

PCI-e 2.0 is compatible with PCI-e 1.0a...the "a" is important.

goto the manufactures website of your board(s) to check what version you have.

I have an Asrock 939 Dual SATA2 and the PCI-e is 1.0a which is fine.

1.0 boards may require a flashing of the BIOS of the boards and or cards to be compatible with each other.

here is a link that I posted in the ocworkbench forums addressing this same issue.

 

[spittledip]

I feel like I am being a jerk as I have been correcting people on this subject in several threads. There is no PCI-E 1.0. There is only 1.0a, 1.1, and 2.0. the compatibility problem is with SOME of the 1.0a boards. Check the links at my post on this thread for more info regarding boards that are having difficulty. I was facing the same issue, so I researched it pretty well.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2122475&enterthread=y

 

[VChuck]

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: blamb425
Seeing as the 8800GT was PCIE2 and was incompatible without the GEN1 BIOS, does the same hold true for the 3870? I was going to upgrade to an 8800GT256mb for Xmas but don't want to go through the hassle of using a different motherboard to flash the bios

Which Asrock board are you refering to?

I have tested a 3850 with the Asrock 4coredual VSTA and it was a no go on the current bios (2.10), same goes for the 8800GT.

I haven't tested any other but at a guess I would say the the 775Dual VSTA and 4coredual SATA2 would be a no go as well for PCI-E 2.0 video cards.

seeing on how Stumps tested it I guess He would know.But in your case with the bios3.0 775Dual vista it worked.(Sinceccf, your a lucky dude!)
strange as I read that the UVD on the HD3850 and the HD2600XT are essentially the same in the registry.Hmmm.
Thinking about swapping out my 2900 Pro I have in My Abit IP-35 Pro and my E6750 for a Q6600 and a HD 3870.whenever Newegg starts sending me their newsletter again.
(Never mind ,came to my senses gonna sell the 4 coredual vista instead and screw that Newsletter !)

 

[SinceCCF]

Actually I was thinking of putting an asus p5k-e if 775dual-vsta doesn't work with 3870, but my wife will kick my ass for it's another $200 for mobo and memory, I'm so relieved to see it's working perfectly with 775dual-vsta, well, have to wait for next summer to upgrade my rig for Intel Nehalem processors with the new mobo chipset. It's very nice to see 880pro, which is already quite old 880pro still kicking, I just put my 7 year old radeon 7500 to use three monitors on my desk, but ati driver was driving me crazy, for it's not compatible for 3870 and 7500. I'm using catalyst 7.11 for 3870, and tried 6.11 for 7500, I always get BSOD when I tried to boot into windows, finally I downgraded the catalyst to 6.3 for 7500, it's so amazin to use three screens at the same time, westy L2410NM for HDTV, philips 202p4 for internet/gaming, the last one Dell 1707fp for other stuff like messenger or internet. Only thing I found anonying is the 7500 is not compatible with media player classic so I can't play any movies on it.

Originally posted by: VChuck

Originally posted by: Stumps

Originally posted by: blamb425
Seeing as the 8800GT was PCIE2 and was incompatible without the GEN1 BIOS, does the same hold true for the 3870? I was going to upgrade to an 8800GT256mb for Xmas but don't want to go through the hassle of using a different motherboard to flash the bios

Which Asrock board are you refering to?

I have tested a 3850 with the Asrock 4coredual VSTA and it was a no go on the current bios (2.10), same goes for the 8800GT.

I haven't tested any other but at a guess I would say the the 775Dual VSTA and 4coredual SATA2 would be a no go as well for PCI-E 2.0 video cards.

seeing on how Stumps tested it I guess He would know.But in your case with the bios3.0 775Dual vista it worked.(Sinceccf, your a lucky dude!)
strange as I read that the UVD on the HD3850 and the HD2600XT are essentially the same in the registry.Hmmm.
Thinking about swapping out my 2900 Pro I have in My Abit IP-35 Pro and my E6750 for a Q6600 and a HD 3870.whenever Newegg starts sending me their newsletter again.
(Never mind ,came to my senses gonna sell the 4 coredual vista instead and screw that Newsletter !)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: SinceCCF
Actually I was thinking of putting an asus p5k-e if 775dual-vsta doesn't work with 3870, but my wife will kick my ass for it's another $200 for mobo and memory, I'm so relieved to see it's working perfectly with 775dual-vsta, well, have to wait for next summer to upgrade my rig for Intel Nehalem processors with the new mobo chipset. It's very nice to see 880pro, which is already quite old 880pro still kicking, I just put my 7 year old radeon 7500 to use three monitors on my desk, but ati driver was driving me crazy, for it's not compatible for 3870 and 7500. I'm using catalyst 7.11 for 3870, and tried 6.11 for 7500, I always get BSOD when I tried to boot into windows, finally I downgraded the catalyst to 6.3 for 7500, it's so amazin to use three screens at the same time, westy L2410NM for HDTV, philips 202p4 for internet/gaming, the last one Dell 1707fp for other stuff like messenger or internet. Only thing I found anonying is the 7500 is not compatible with media player classic so I can't play any movies on it.

Are you running two seperate Cat versions at the same time? How do you do that?

 

[SinceCCF]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: SinceCCF
Actually I was thinking of putting an asus p5k-e if 775dual-vsta doesn't work with 3870, but my wife will kick my ass for it's another $200 for mobo and memory, I'm so relieved to see it's working perfectly with 775dual-vsta, well, have to wait for next summer to upgrade my rig for Intel Nehalem processors with the new mobo chipset. It's very nice to see 880pro, which is already quite old 880pro still kicking, I just put my 7 year old radeon 7500 to use three monitors on my desk, but ati driver was driving me crazy, for it's not compatible for 3870 and 7500. I'm using catalyst 7.11 for 3870, and tried 6.11 for 7500, I always get BSOD when I tried to boot into windows, finally I downgraded the catalyst to 6.3 for 7500, it's so amazin to use three screens at the same time, westy L2410NM for HDTV, philips 202p4 for internet/gaming, the last one Dell 1707fp for other stuff like messenger or internet. Only thing I found anonying is the 7500 is not compatible with media player classic so I can't play any movies on it.

Are you running two seperate Cat versions at the same time? How do you do that?

So new catalyst drivers are not supporting old cards anymore, that means the catalyst 7.11 doesn't support 7500, I installed 3870 first, then after driver installation, I let windows to search for inf from the directory of 6.3, just run installer but cancel after you see the first screen of ati installation, those drivers should be found somewhere already extracted, you can manually direct your driver installation to it to manual install the driver rather than use installatin program to avoid conflict of different driver version.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But the drivers themselves have the same filename, and once you install the drivers, those files get copied into the \windows\system32 directory. So the last version of teh driver binary files that you install, is the one that gets copied into that directory.

 

[SinceCCF]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
But the drivers themselves have the same filename, and once you install the drivers, those files get copied into the \windows\system32 directory. So the last version of teh driver binary files that you install, is the one that gets copied into that directory.

I justed checked, 7500 is using 6.3 and 3870 is using 7.11. Windows probably put these different versions of drivers into different folders so they can be used at the same time.

 

[VChuck]

Got a reply from Asrock

Dear ASRock America Customer,

Sorry, 4CoreDual-VSTA does not support PCIE GEN2 mode VGA card.

The only solution is to set HD 3870/3850 GEN2 mode PCIE VGA card to GEN1 mode. Please refer to the video card manufacture to have further information on how to flash the firmware of the VGA card to GEN1 mode.

Hmmm,at least Asrock responded within a day
Well,I guess either ATI,Sapphire needs to step up (or who ever your cards manufacturer)
to get this to run on your Dual 775/Asrock 4core dual vista/sata2.
I will submit a ticket with Sapphire.hopefully they will respond with a firmware update.If enough people submit the same complaint.