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Can I just out any video card in my computer?

Can't get ATI/AMD 7970 to work with a 2nd video card in the computer.

  • I am trying to upgrade my computer (Intel DP55WG motherboard, Windows 7 64 bit) from two ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6950 video cards to two Radeon HD 7970 cards. When I install either of the 7970 cards along with any other card (the other 7970 or either of my 6950s), only one card is able to start in Windows. The other card does not provide video output, and it has an exclamation icon in the device manager with the text "This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use. If you want to use this device, you will need to disable one of the other devices on this system. (Code 12)" Do you have any idea why this is happening or how I might be able to fix it? More details and a list of things I have already tried inside. The computer is an Intel DP55WG motherboard with an Intel i5-750 CPU and 8 GB RAM. I am running Windows 7 64-bit, and AMD Catalyst Software (driver) Suite version 13.1. I also tried the Catalyst 13.3 beta which did not fix the problem. The motherboard is running BIOS version 5936 [KGIBX10J.86A], which appears to be the latest release. I tried removing the InfiniBand card that usually sits in the motherboard's 3rd PCI-e slot, disconnecting all USB peripherals except for the mouse and keyboard, and disabling the onboard audio, as suggested on some web forum, but that did not seem to have any effect. With both 7970 cards in the computer, one of them runs fine and the other gives the "code 12" error in the Windows device manager. With one 7970 and one 6950 installed, one of the cards always starts fine, and the other gives code 12. I have tried all combinations of 7970s and 6950s and it always works the same. (I forget whether the 7970 always starts, or whether the card in the first PCI-e slot always starts, but it was one of those two.) When the computer is in the pre-Windows boot sequence or the BIOS configuration utility, the same image is displayed on all the monitors connected to both cards. It is only once Windows starts that the second card no longer operates. One final note: One of the 6950s has 2 GB of RAM onboard and the other has 1 GB. Each of the 7970s has 3 GB RAM. I'm not sure how memory mapping works on the PCI-e bus; could there be some problem with having 4+ GB of RAM on the PCI-e bus in the P55 express chipset? I don't see any reason why there would be but then again, I don't really know how it works. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

  • Answer:

    Update: Someone suggested out of band that I try putting one of the video cards in the PCI-e x4 slot on the motherboard, so I did. The same thing happened as before; the card in the x4 slot doesn't work, and the other card does.

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I'm confused. Are you going for a Crossfire setup? Are you using a Crossfire bridge? Usually in Crossfire only one card outputs video, AFAIK.

Monday, stony Monday

No, I am not trying to do crossfire and am not using the crossfire bridge. The real purpose of the second card is to run GPGPU applications, but it needs to start up before that can happen.

Juffo-Wup

Maybe your power supply isn't up to snuff. The quick search I did shows that the 7970 uses more power then the 6950. So having two 7970's together might be too much for your power supply

majortom1981

I'm running an 850W fairly high quality power supply and doing no overclocking of any components. Others on the web have reported running this configuration with no trouble.

Juffo-Wup

No idea really, my first guess would have been that your mobo's PCIe x16 bifurcation is messed up, but trying it in the x4 removes that possibility. Otherwise, it sounds like an IRQ issue, but I haven't actually seen one of those for a number of windows versions now, so this is all totally spitballing. Have you tried playing with your IRQ priorities in the bios and checking whats on your physical IRQs in windows? Also, might be worth checking if all traces of the 6950's have been removes in the device manager when the 7970's are in on the off chance windows still has I/O allocated too them.

McSwaggers

Also, might be worth checking if all traces of the 6950's have been removes in the device manager when the 7970's are in on the off chance windows still has I/O allocated too them. This seems like a promising line of inquiry... How do I do that? When the 6950s are not physically installed in the computer, I don't see them in Device Manager. Is there a menu option or registry setting I need to change which would make it show me hardware which is 'configured' but not currently present?

Juffo-Wup

Oh, and to answer your other questions, this BIOS doesn't seem to have any options about IRQ priorities or assignments in its setup/config menus. And in Windows, on all video cards, the "Use automatic settings" checkbox is checked and greyed out in the Resources tab for each video card, so it will not let me change IRQ assignments, I/O ranges, memory ranges, or anything else. Right now, with one 7970 installed, the device manager reports that the card is using IRQ 0xFFFFFFFA (-6)... -6, that's a new one to me.

Juffo-Wup

Didn't read every word, but have you uninstalled the AMD drivers completely, and then reinstalled them? Could be that the 6950s have some leftover driver cruft that taking up an IRQ.

cnc

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