ASUS A8N wont recognize my 6800:

[in3rt!a]

My computer wont recognize my e-GeForce 6800GT.

i just finished building my first computer, and ive been troubleshooting some problems, but gotten past them. most were just me being absent minded. but theres one problem that persists, and i thought it was a faulty motherboard.

Its a weird problem, and i havent seen anyone else with it (this is like the 5th forum im posting in). The one PCI-E slot that youre supposed to use when youre not doing SLi doesnt seem to work (the blue one). however, taking my 6800 to the other slot works. in the blue slot, there is no card recognized by the computer; in windows it says there adapter tab or any indication of an installed graphics card (right click desktop>properties>settings>advanced). when its in the black slot though, its all fine and came up and i was able to install drivers. it was listed with its own tab and all seemed well. and i would be happy, except that the black slot functoins as a PCI-E 1x when its not being used for SLi, as opposed the PCI-E 16x slot the card should be in. the fact that the card works in one slot and not the other had me convinced that the graphics card is not at fault (as i once believed)... im still getting video out from it and the fan spins and all that good stuff. so i RMA'd the board. Well it got tested and everything and they said it works fine. they showed me screen shots and everything (they even used a 6800 and an amd 64 3200+, like i have), and sent it back. well at least it works...

I talked to the guy that worked on it, and i asked him some questions like what i might have been missing or doing wrong... even he was stumped.

I could really use some help...anyone got any ideas?
while the board was out, i was thinkin of things to try. one was to update windows, and i did. no fix.
thats why i want to update the BIOS. other than that, i dont know what to try. ive been through the bios and looked at all the options with the A8N manual in my hand.

Things ive tried/checked:

* Checked the EZ Selector to be sure its set to Single Graphics
* Supplied power to the EZ Plug for extra juice
* checked and double checked connections
* seated the card in and out of the slot carefully like 3 times
* tweaked settings in BIOS accordingly for non-SLi
* tried multiple BIOS configs/settings, including the default

maybe more, i dunno. thats all i can think of.

let me know.

*I plan on updating the BIOS tonight... so far thats the only suggestion ive had that i havent tried. i tried doing it last night and only ran into problems. long story, but for some reason, the system wouldnt boot off the floppy. anyway, i got one more thing to try tonight, then i dunno.

well...If anyone has any other ideas, lay'em on me, and ill tell ya if ive been there, done that. Also, if you need more info,

thanks in advance.

 

[Sport1031]

Whyh dont you just leave it in the other slot?

 

[SHAWN]

buy a better mobo. im no fan of asus products.

 

[in3rt!a]

Whyh dont you just leave it in the other slot?

when not using 2 cards for SLi, the other slot functions as a PCI 1x slot, as opposed to the other slot which is PCI 16x. leaving it in the 1x slot would pretty much bottleneck the card.

 

[in3rt!a]

ok well i updated the BIOS to the latest version 1006.

much to my disappointment, it didnt solve my problem.

why the hell is it not recognizing the fact that theres a beautiful 6800GT sitting in that slot?

 

[Sport1031]

get an RMA

 

[in3rt!a]

done that already. the board was found to be in fine working condition.

i guess i could do it again and get a brand spankin new one, but thats as a last resort. any other ideas?

 

[alienware_sucks]

I have the same problem

I know this thread hasn't been posted to in a long time but I need to say that I have the same problem with the ASUS ASN motherboard. I have a Geforce 6600LE that worked initially in my Alienware DHS computer (stock setup) until I decided that I wanted to add a second hard drive to the system. After the modification, the video card worked intermittently (sometimes the display would accept the video card during boot, othertimes not) so I had Alienware send me a replacement. I got the new card, installed it in the same blue slot, and the thing still didn't work. After a few frustrated days of playing around with motherboard connections, unplugging certain components to troubleshoot the power supply, the thing magically worked at one point. In fact, it would probably still be working fine if I didn't decide to try swapping in the original card to troubleshoot the real problem. Now that I did that, neither card will work in the blue slot! So, on a hunch, I decided to install the new card in the black slot, and it worked without a problem! And I found that the old card works in the black slot as well. So now I know that the problem isn't in the video cards but rather in the motherboard bus.
I would like to point out that the motherboard manual indicates in section 1.5.4 that single card mode supports
"1 x PCI Express x16 graphics card on either blue or black slot" so it seems that the card must be running at 16x even when it is on the black slot in the default mode. But I'm confused because the NVIDIA display software info states that the card is running on the 1x bus. Is this simply incorrect information on the part of the NVIDIA info or is the motherboard manual wrong and the card is truly running at 1x?

 

[in3rt!a]

i'm pretty sure the card does not run at 1x as it says it does (in my case). While i had my card in the black slot (when it said it was 1x), i got flawless performance in games and everything i did. Now, my problem has since been solved and the card resides in the blue slot with the same performance.

The way i solved the problem? well... pretty much luck.

as far as i can tell, the only real thing i did that may have solved it was a reformat of windows xp. thats it. after i reformatted and reinstalled, all worked fine, and is still working perfect after almost a year

 

[alienware_sucks]

Thanks for replying in3rt!a. When I run high resolution visualizations in Winamp they seem to run very well so I'm not sure that the card is running at 1x either. Even so, my board should not have this problem with the blus slot and that is my main concern. I've reinstalled Windows XP at least half-a-dozen times and that didn't help. In fact, the card isn't even recognized during post so I honestly don't believe the OS can have an impact on whether or not the card is recognized by the system.

One thing I'd like to do is benchmark my system using 3DMark or some other comparable program and compare my results against those of someone with a comparable setup. in3rt!a, have you benchmarked your graphics performance and if so, can you post the name of the program you used as well as the performance rating? Thanks.