[Update from Asus & Intel] Asus P9X79 PRO + XFX 7970 xfire

[nanaki333]

to be clear, you did not read the original post or any of the replies. if you did, you would have read that both cards work by themselves on the same board (as well as the other's that responded with information). both cards work in xfire on my wife's pc with another pc. i have tried other PSUs and a whole bunch of different ram combinations and configurations. again... all information already here if you scroll up.

i also had my radeon 6970 xfire in this same board prior to this with no problems (got my 3930k the moment it came out). i got 7970s when they came out and they have never reliably worked in xfire on THIS board.

i have a second similar board sitting behind me, which i left out of my OP because i just got it yesterday evening from microcenter. i was going to make an update dedicated to JUST this board, but due to your post, i'll put it here. i still have the same problems, even after a reinstall. i'm going to return it this evening or tomorrow and try my luck with Gigabyte. they have those in stock. if i experience the same issue on that board, then either AMD has a compatibility problem with x79, or intel has an issue with their x79 chipset. i'm going with the latter since some people experiencing problems have single cards.

also said previously, if you break down the results by boards with 8 DIMMS, the average reviews are NOT favorable. boards with few reviews are OK, but that's not a very good average on them thus far. please sort it out and have a look. if you go through all the variations of the asus p9x79 you will see quite a number of people with the same problem. so it is not just myself and a couple people here. not everybody who gets this problem posts a review either. i know i haven't.... yet. i think i will because it seems like that's the only way you get a response from Asus.

 

[nanaki333]

after going back and reading some of the reviews for other boards (i found a few crashing graphics drivers, which is how mine started but i stuck it out and now get hard locks). all of the cons seem to have a pretty common theme of DOA (which could mean it worked but randomly LOCKS UP, or it could not POST at all. don't know what to say about them, but a lot of the x79 boards on newegg that have more than like 12 reviews all pretty much share the same reviews. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=1&srchInDesc=

 

[DigitalWolf]

to be clear, you did not read the original post or any of the replies. if you did, you would have read that both cards work by themselves on the same board (as well as the other's that responded with information). both cards work in xfire on my wife's pc with another pc. i have tried other PSUs and a whole bunch of different ram combinations and configurations. again... all information already here if you scroll up.

I read the entire thread.


I was actually talking about having a known "working" system with the same chipset and even the same motherboard model. Without a working base on the relevant chipset its hard to be definitive in troubleshooting.


Anyway I wasn't trying to irritate you so I wish you luck on getting things working.

 

[nanaki333]

I read the entire thread.


I was actually talking about having a known "working" system with the same chipset and even the same motherboard model. Without a working base on the relevant chipset its hard to be definitive in troubleshooting.


Anyway I wasn't trying to irritate you so I wish you luck on getting things working.

thanks. it's a sensitive subject as i've been trying to get some sign of life from Asus for over a month. so, i posted here to see if there's something i'm doing or not doing. as i was looking at those reviews, i copied the email address provided by Asus support and emailed them directly. if i still get no response, i'll just submit a bad review and maybe they'll work with me then.

 

[nanaki333]

got a response from asus! looks like intel's little bug in their c1 stepping was a lot worse than they claimed it was...

Just asked HQ, they told me some CPUs can't handle two cards in Gen 3 mode. Intel know about this and won't chage out the CPUs. Apparently the C2s are better than the C1 steppings but Intel have now removed official Gen 3 support from their product pages. If that is the issue, what you can do is set PCIe to Gen 2 mode in UEFI just to debug and see if the lock ups persist. If they do then the issue lies elsewhere, if they do, then the CPU is not capable of Gen 3 on two slots at the same time. Some CPUs are better than others in this regard and it is luck of the draw.

 

[bankster55]

Wow, Intel again
Sheesh

Am I missing something? Where in the bios do you downgrade the PCIe 3.0 to 2.0?

 

[nanaki333]

Wow, Intel again
Sheesh

Am I missing something? Where in the bios do you downgrade the PCIe 3.0 to 2.0?

i found it but can't remember at the moment where it was (i switch to advanced mode). it has 3 places to change from 3.0 to 2.0. so far so good, but i've only had it up for about 4 hours. even without gaming it would easily happen within the first 12 hours, so i'll just leave it up all day.

 

[AdamK47]

Just asked HQ, they told me some CPUs can't handle two cards in Gen 3 mode. Intel know about this and won't chage out the CPUs. Apparently the C2s are better than the C1 steppings but Intel have now removed official Gen 3 support from their product pages. If that is the issue, what you can do is set PCIe to Gen 2 mode in UEFI just to debug and see if the lock ups persist. If they do then the issue lies elsewhere, if they do, then the CPU is not capable of Gen 3 on two slots at the same time. Some CPUs are better than others in this regard and it is luck of the draw.

Sheesh! I guess I did get lucky with my 3960X as I haven't seen any lockups in regards to using PCI-E 3.0 with my three 7970s. Stress testing by looping 3DMark11 and the Unigine demos have run for hours without problems. I've even played Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution for hours without lockups. These are DX11 games. Recently I've been playing through Mass Effect 2 before moving on to Mass Effect 3. It shows 20 hours of play time so far and I haven't seen a single lockup. Rage is another game I'm playing through (OpenGL). Have roughly the same amount of time in the game and it's been stable.

 

[nanaki333]

another update. i spoke with intel and they will not honor the warranty to send me a C2 stepping. they claim because there is no official support for PCIe3.0 with this processor, then it is a problem with the motherboard manufacturer, and i should ask them for a replacement (even though i said i tried 2). i then asked if i could get a C2 because of the Vt-d problem in the C1 stepping. they said unless i have a specific issue with proof, they will not.

maybe i should just burn out my damn chip to get a new one from them?

 

[AdamK47]

If it's a problem with some CPUs, then why haven't we heard of it earlier? The new Radeon cards have been available since early January. I've had mine since January 10th.

 

[bankster55]

Actually it makes sense. Some peeps run 2 or 3 7970's without a hiccup, while others cant even run one. Thers a guy over on VIP forum who could run one ASUS 7970 but not one ASUS and one XFX or not two XFX, and only one of the XFX ran by itself. He even went to the trouble to RMA a bunch of stuff.

This grief is all over the net, Its not just 2 or 3 guys who dont know what they are doing

Remember Intel couldnt make the 14 or 11 port SATA boards, just beacuse the PCIe bus wouldnt handle it. And thats why till even today there are only 6 Intel ports and 4 of them are only #3G at that. Then there was the 3G defective ports and the recall.

I hate not knowing, so at least this brings some sunlight into the room

 

[nanaki333]

If it's a problem with some CPUs, then why haven't we heard of it earlier? The new Radeon cards have been available since early January. I've had mine since January 10th.

the radeon 7970 was the first available PCIe 3.0 card. i've had problems since day one. i got both cards the week they came out. i used to only be met with display driver crashing, then it would hard lock randomly. i've had my PC on since about 5am this morning with both cards in and the mobo set to PCIe 2. haven't had a single lock up.

 

[dajeepster]

wow... and this is the first time i ever got a replacement plan at microcenter... what luck on my part... well.. i'll be back in about twenty minutes... heading up to the liquor store to get some lottery tickets.

 

[DigitalWolf]

Wow, Intel again
Sheesh

Am I missing something? Where in the bios do you downgrade the PCIe 3.0 to 2.0?

If you use advanced mode on the P9X79.. in the "advanced menu" its like the second option down. System Agent Configuration or close to that is the name (at least in the December 0906 bios).


I don't believe its mentioned in the manual... and in fact the only picture of that menu shows an entirely different name there.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, this is bad. Can anyone confirm that swapping a C1-step CPU for a C2-step CPU fixes the problem? Or are the C2-step CPUs also not officially supporting PCI-E 3.0?

 

[dajeepster]

i just finished reinstalling everything on a 256 GB Crucial M4 SSD on the intel chipset sata III port. i was having problems once i went to the marvell chipset and did SSD caching. but i only had two 7970 before i went to the marvell controller, but once i switched to the marvel controller, i had put a third 7970 in my system, at this point is when my problems started to occur. such as random reboots just about once a day, regardless of whether i had a load on the gpus or not.

as i said, i just switched to an M4 on the intel controller. I've reinstalled win7-x64, office 2010 pro x64, and have all the updates..

hopefully it does better now.

 

[BrightCandle]

Jeez that is a mess.

Well for me at least the lockups have gone away with the latest AMD driver for the 7970 (the 7800 beta driver). Whether they have done something to reduce the traffic or something else it might be driver related for the particular game where I was having problems.

So it looks like I got lucky and have a chip that can do PCI-E 3.0. But this is shocking, worse still is Intel covering up the PCI-E 3.0 sticker on their CPU packaging and crying foul at everyone else. Despicable.

 

[nanaki333]

well color me surprised! my STILL hardlocks when set to pcie2.0. so don't even bother doing that everybody. i think asus was just bs'ing and tip toeing around the problem being with their boards.


i think i may use my disc drive on my marvel port.

 

[dajeepster]

Mine just rebooted at 1pm... so.. mine isn't the hybrid drive cache with the ssd... hopefully asus comes out with a bios that can software fix this. at least i can take mine back to microcenter for a replacement. I got the two year plan.. something i never do.. i still need to check those lottery tickets i bought.

i'll probably wait another month or two incase there's another fix... this mation will just have to remain my secondary system until this a solid hardware fix out there.... that actually works. My systems watercooled... taking it apart will be a bitch

i'll probably try the pcie2.0 fix even though nanaki333 didn't have any luck... i'll do it on the next reboot.

i remember when i first got my two GTX 480... it was several months before there were solid drivers before that was rock stable... but that was just drivers... this intel bug is fvcked up. -_-

 

[AdamK47]

well color me surprised! my STILL hardlocks when set to pcie2.0. so don't even bother doing that everybody. i think asus was just bs'ing and tip toeing around the problem being with their boards.


i think i may use my disc drive on my marvel port.

Yeah, I think we would have heard more about this PCI-E 3.0 problem if it was the the cause.

 

[silvrhand]

Having the same problem:

sapphire 7970 Crossfire
Asus ROG Extreme X79

Funny thing it NEVER locks up in BF3.

Mass Effect 3 - Yep
Alan Wake - Yep
Batman - Yep

 

[nanaki333]

apparently asus is playing the finger pointing game until they can get a BIOS fix for it. at least that's what i'm hoping. alls i want from them is for them to say "we're working on a fix". clearly there's an issue.

 

[silvrhand]

apparently asus is playing the finger pointing game until they can get a BIOS fix for it. at least that's what i'm hoping. alls i want from them is for them to say "we're working on a fix". clearly there's an issue.

Things I've tried:
- setting default clocks for everything
- setting PCI-E slots to gen2
- different slots
- different voltages..

All the same results with every game but BF3.

 

[nanaki333]

Things I've tried:
- setting default clocks for everything
- setting PCI-E slots to gen2
- different slots
- different voltages..

All the same results with every game but BF3.

i haven't had any OC on anything in my PC since december. well before i got the 7970s.

you have tried using the memory compatibility button?

 

[silvrhand]

i haven't had any OC on anything in my PC since december. well before i got the 7970s.

you have tried using the memory compatibility button?

Memory is listed on compatibility list for 2133mhz, it's not even stable at @1600mhz.