Not sure if a CPU, Vid card, or mem problem, but . . .

[DrMrLordX]

I just replaced an A10-7700k with an A10-7870k. Before I took out the old CPU, I flashed to a new UEFI, made sure it worked before doing anything else (it did), and then removed the old CPU/installed the new CPU. I plugged in all the vid cards (2x R9 290, 1x R9 390) after getting everything set up and booted, only to get no signal to the monitor and no obvious clue of what was wrong.

I took out all the vid cards and tried booting that way, and got an error LED code of 91 on my A88x-Pro. Poking around on the 'net indicated that the error might be some kind of initialization error, and that the RAM might need to be reseated (?!?). I did that to no avail. So I pulled the CPU, reseated it and the RAM, and finally booted up okay without the video cards.

After doing a lot of test n' tune on the new CPU, I finally plugged back in the cards and . . . no boot! Urgh. I removed the one card on the bottom (the one in the last full PCI-e slot) so I could see the error LED that is otherwise blocked by the double-slot cooler of the r9 290 that was in that slot, and this time the boot process was getting stuck on either 32 or 36. Those are "CPU post-memory initialization" codes. Hmmm. I used the DirectKey to boot straight to the UEFI, made sure all my settings were the same as before my re-installation of cards, and booted with two cards (r9 390, r9 290). Success! Then I installed the third card and . . . no boot. Same problem.

I was running just fine with three cards before, but now I'm getting memory initialization errors when attempting to run three cards. Which is annoying. The CPU *is* overclocked, and the last thing I haven't tried is setting everything back to default before installing the third card . . . but the 7700k was OCed with three cards in as well, so I'm not sure what's up. The whole thing is a bit annoying.

Anyway I'm posting it here since it's a memory initialization error, and it seems somehow linked to memory but I can't quite put my finger on how. Any thoughts/suggestions?

If this thread belongs in CPU or vid card forums, mods, please move at your discretion. Or anywhere else you think it belongs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would think that the prudent thing to do would be to remove the CPU/APU overclock, before trying anything else. Those CPUs have PCI-E integrated, and overclocking the core, may be drawing power that should be used by the PCI-E lanes.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah that's next on my to-do list. Actually it's already downclocked for other reasons . . . I'm just happy to have it stable with 2 cards at the moment.

I also need to test the third PCI-e slot alone to see if that's causing me problems.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Update: I did some testing and it's leaving me stumped.

I had a 2-card config running just fine, so I finally got around to testing the 3rd PCI-e slot to see what's up. I moved card #2 from full PCIe slot #2 to slot #3, booted it up, and . . . it worked. So it wasn't the slot.

So I downclocked the CPU to defaults, plugged card #2 back into slot #2, plugged card #3 into slot #3, booted and got the same memory errors as before.

Increasing SB/VSB voltage made no difference, nor did VDDA or APU voltage. I even tried forcing 8x mode on full PCIe slot #1 and that didn't help either.

For whatever reason, this 7870k will not drive 3 video cards. My old funky 7700k would. At this point I have no idea what is the problem.

 

[Elixer]

Hmm, almost seems like a BIOS issue, have you contacted Asus?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not yet. It might be a UEFI/BIOS-related issue, but I am not using a standard UEFI so they aren't responsible for it. I'm using one of The Stilt's GeAPM-disabled UEFIs. That being said, when I briefly ran the 7700k under the modded UEFI, it still booted with 3 cards and ran them just fine so . . . I don't think that's the culprit.