Gigabyte Z77x-d3h not booting with pcie in place

Hi all,

I just got this board through today, along with a 3570k, 16gb black dragon ram and an 840pro ssd.

I am still wanting to use my HD6950. However I can't get a picture on screen at all when I put my fully working card in either pcie slot. I'm using an antec truepower 650w psu that is also not new and works fine.

I'm using a hdmi cable, if I take this out and put it in the motherboard hdmi and take the gfx card out completely I get to the bios every time, card goes back in and i can't get a picture from either output?

Bad board?

tried manually setting first initial display as peg or pcie in the bios,save/exit install graphic card and see if you get a display

could also try latest beta bios here

http://www.mediafire.com/?64t68zrgpt5d4ek f17i

or latest final bios from gigabyte website

Another D3H GPU problem, second one tonight...

randal said:

Another D3H GPU problem, second one tonight...

Click to expand...

Link? Was it resolved?

wazza300 said:

tried manually setting first initial display as peg or pcie in the bios,save/exit install graphic card and see if you get a display

could also try latest beta bios here

http://www.mediafire.com/?64t68zrgpt5d4ek f17i

or latest final bios from gigabyte website

Click to expand...

I've tried forcing it to pick up the pcie lane first in the bios but it doesn't seem to work- not sure whether its actually saving my preference come to think of it.

I'm using the version 16 bios which I think is the latest stable one.

Very basic suggestion but worked for me, have you tried plugging it in via vga/ dvi? Worked for me, it was a driver issue, loaded up with vga changed settings in driver for HDMI then re-plugged with HDMI. Solved.

Worth a shot if you're really having difficulties.

mattStoor said:

Very basic suggestion but worked for me, have you tried plugging it in via vga/ dvi? Worked for me, it was a driver issue, loaded up with vga changed settings in driver for HDMI then re-plugged with HDMI. Solved.

Worth a shot if you're really having difficulties.

Click to expand...

I will try but I doubt it's that. Was it a driver issue with the card (same card as me?) or the board?

I don't see why either would stop the onboard gfx from outputting with the pcie card in place in either slot. Reading around on other forums it seems this might be quite a common problem with z77's from Gigabyte.

Can you get into the BIOS using the onboard graphics, and have you tried plugging in to each possible output on the card? My card would only show the BIOS/splash screen from one of its 4 display outputs. A BIOS update worked for me (you've seen my thread though I know).

In my case it was simply that the image wasn't being output to the screen, rather than an issue between Mobo and GPU. Mine was a HD 6870.

Just wanted to share my experience on the off chance it would save you time and effort

uncle_rufus said:

Can you get into the BIOS using the onboard graphics, and have you tried plugging in to each possible output on the card? My card would only show the BIOS/splash screen from one of its 4 display outputs. A BIOS update worked for me (you've seen my thread though I know).

Click to expand...

Yes, I can get to the bios using the onboard graphics, but only when the graphics card is NOT in either PCIE slot, indicating that the graphic card being in place is stopping the onboard graphics from working.

uncle_rufus said:

My card would only show the BIOS/splash screen from one of its 4 display outputs. A BIOS update worked for me (you've seen my thread though I know).

Click to expand...

I will try as many display options as I have cables for tonight!

I'm using the HDMI by default which was working on my now old signature rig. Which display output ended up working for you and which BIOS version are you running now? Sorry - having trouble keeping up with all the threads!

Cheers!

That's okay...

It sounds very similar to my problem, the BIOS version just didn't "like" my new graphics card so everything worked absolutely fine through the onboard graphics as long as I didn't have the card plugged in... As soon as I plugged it in - nothing...

Note that my motherboard was the Z77-D3H not the Z77X-D3H, but I found that booting from the on-board graphics (without the card in) and running Gigabyte's Q-flash with a USB-drive to update the BIOS allowed the card to work. I was on F16 (for the Z77-D3H before updating, and I updated to F18, which was the latest non-beta bios available on Gigabyte's site)

That's what makes me worry it's not an issue that can be rectified by a new bios. I'm on F16 and there is only one bios version up from that which is the F17 BETA bios.

The description of the F17bios is 'Support Secure boot option' so I doubt it would have much of an effect.

There seems to be many, many instances of the PCIE X16 being a pain in the nuts to get working on these boards Z77 and Z77X on the forums.

Still - I will try all the display ports before I RMA or whatever.

I wonder if for some strange reason simply the process of flashing a new BIOS resets something that isn't properly cleared by CMOS or taking the battery out...

Does anyone know if it works to flash the BIOS with the same version you already have? (Seems a bit pointless but if the above is true...)

Worth a try I guess!

Small question:

The bios I've now DL'd is F17 and is a 7ZSFX file. I understand I need to put this on a FAT32 formatted USB stick... how do I unpack the Z7SFX onto the stick?

Cheers!

EDIT - worked it out no worries!!

Actually - perhaps I haven't.

I've extracted the bios download to my USB stick.

I now see three items on the stick:

Efiflash - application
mb_bios_ga-z77x-d3h_f17f -application
Z77XD3H.17f -17F File

Does that look right?!

It's been YEARS since I flashed a bios.

Yep that's what it did for me, so long as the USB stick is formatted FAT32, I just pressed Q-flash at the BIOS screen and something like "Update BIOS from USB" then it had an entry which I selected. Seemed to work.

Be aware though that it will reset your BIOS settings to default - in my case this changed AHCI back to IDE which made my SSD fail to boot windows - so it's worth checking/remembering any settings you've made in the BIOS so you can re-apply them after

Good luck!

Thanks Rufus.

I've got my new as yet completely unused SSD hooked up along with my old boot HDD (which I'll be formatting once all my issues are rectified).

I'll nip into the bios as soon as it's done and make sure it's still on AHCI and change the boot priority again. (it's currently set to DVDRW>SSD>etc)

Cheers!

Update:

OK, so I tried all the display options I had cables for - DVI, HDMI & VGA (onboard only).

Same deal - nothing from onboard or the card whilst the card was in place. Zip.

In desperation I even flipped the dual bios switch on my flashed HD6950 - still nothing.

So I took the card out and nipped into the bios and flashed it to the latest f17 beta bios. Reset boot priority, removed usb stick and (as before) disabled onboard graphics and set display priority to PEG.

Initially, nothing. Same deal. No dice from anything with the card in place.

BUT then, I flipped the dual bios switch on my card once more and BOOM! Into the bios I go?!

Really don't know what to make of it. Can it be that this chipset/board is so sensitive to GFX card bios? What would happen if I put a regular HD6970 in I wonder?

Also, how much of a hit am I going to take in games for this? I know the answer to that, so I'd really like to try and get it working unlocked again. Otherwise it will render my actual CPU upgrade etc, much less of a good thing in games as I'll take the corresponding gfx card hit!

Any suggestions to this odd problem?

pretty sure i read about the same thing happening on the z68 boards? ill try and dig it out,there was a fix for it but cant remember off hand

Thanks Wazza that'd be awesome!