No signal from GPU- Motherboard at fault?

[almoststew1990]

My PC has a Nvidia 450 in it, which works fine. But when I put my 7970 in, it doesn't reach the post screen, I just a blank screen (Monitor doesn't detect any input) and no beep from the motherboard. The GPU fans spin up.

The Motherboard is a Foxconn H61MXV (it was free!) running the latest bios. Power supply is an OCZ 500Watt (not great, but the recommended Wattage PSU for a 7970) which has the required 8 + 6 pin connectors.

The only problem seems to be that the PCIE slot is 2nd Gen, when the GPU is 3rd Gen, but they should still be compatible...

It does the same thing with a 390x, which i know for sure works.
An 8800GT works fine in the PC
A 4850 works fine in the PC.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/ProductDetail.aspx?T=motherboard&U=en-us0000522

 

[ahar]

I have an older motherboard with a gen 2 slot and had exactly the same issue using a new gen 3 graphics card. I had to update the BIOS and it worked fine - I suspect that if you are using the latest BIOS then you could be out of luck as the manufacturer hasn't released a BIOS capable of supporting Gen 3

 

[davida76]

The motherboard above has a gen3 slot (IVB, i'm assuming this means only with an ivybridge cpu). What cpu are you using? It may be an issue with uefi bios on the newer cards, I can find no mention of the motherboard having a uefi bios itself. Especially since as you say the older cards boot fine. Does your 7970 have a dual bios?

 

[almoststew1990]

I am using a Sandybridge CPU i5 2400. The motherboard uses the old style bios (blue-y screen, arrow keys only).

On the list of bios versions, I was on AC3F1P03 (Dec 2011), but a botched competitor shop branded version. I tried to upgrade to C12F1P05 (Aug 2014, the latest on the FC website) but it said the bios sizes don't match. I then tried the latest 'AC3' version, AC3F1P04 (March 2012), which worked fine and got rid of the shop branding.

The H61MXV and H67MXV share the same page on the FC website (and the motherboard even has "H61MXV / H67MXV" written on the board itself) so I'm thinking the "C12" bios versions are the for H67 chipset (even though it says its for the H61..). Which would mean I am on the most up-to-date version of the bios?

How would I check if my 7970 had dual bios? I can't see any little swirches anywhere and it wasn't known for it like the 6950 was.

Edit- I just tried C12F1P01 (March 2012) which adds support for ivy bridge CPUS but it came up with the same error:

edit edit- it does have a bios switch actually.. hmm...... nope, still not working!

 

[davida76]

The latest bios is C12F1P05 (2014) and there is mention of uefi support in the pdf document it comes with. Hopefully you won't run into the same mis-match issue.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/drive.../Socket 1155/H61M02(H61MXV)/Bios/C12F1P05.zip

Which 7970 is it? If you look on techpowerup you can see the bios specifics etc and find out if it is a uefi problem. Not all 7970's have a uefi bios.

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...HD+7970&interface=PCI-E&memType=&memSize=3072

I'm only suggesting it could be a uefi problem because you say you have the same problem with the 390x, both cards should run on a pci-e gen2 socket, the only difference between gen2 and 3 is the bus speed, electrically it's the same.

 

[almoststew1990]

My 7970 does have a UEFI BIOS. Is this why it isn't compatible with my motherboards older BIOS?

I tried the bios version you linked but it didn't boot to DOS from a USB stick- it just said "remove media and devices... press any button to restart" or something.

 

[akarypid]

You may want to order a "POST diagnostic card". It's a small PCI card that you can insert into an expansion slot an displays the POST code on screen. They only cost five to ten pounds but can save you a lot of time in debugging this kind of thing...

 

[davida76]

My 7970 does have a UEFI BIOS. Is this why it isn't compatible with my motherboards older BIOS?

I tried the bios version you linked but it didn't boot to DOS from a USB stick- it just said "remove media and devices... press any button to restart" or something.

So your boot disk wasn't done correctly. Use rufus and make a free-dos usb boot disk. After that copy the files from the within the folder called "SYSBIOS" to your usb drive you just created, then boot from the usb drive and try flashing again. Though from your screenshot above you already had a working dos disk, you could have just copied the new bios file to it mate.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

http://www.howtogeek.com/136987/how-to-create-a-bootable-dos-usb-drive/


But yes, it looks like a uefi issue, as you say older cards work, the two uefi cards don't.

Edit:
In fact now I'm looking again you already tried C12F1P05.rom in your screenshot above. Ok, so it doesn't like the bios using dos flash, have you tried giving their live update a go and seeing what bios it comes up with?

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/drive...5/H61M02(H61MXV)/utilities/FOX LiveUpdate.zip

 

[almoststew1990]

In the screenshot above, it says C12F1P05, but I was actually trying to flash C12F1P01 (I triple checked when I saw the screenshot!). But yes I've also tried C12F1P05 (the latest version) a couple of times before I started the thread back when I thought it was going to be straight forward!

To be honest I've given up for now and cobbled together an older AM3 Phenom II x3 build, which worked fine with the 7970 and 390x. Thanks for the help guys!