Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H & XFX HD6850

[M21A]

Hello,
 
After some advice and any info off others who may have had a similar problem.
 
Have just put together a budget gaming machine from the following:
 
AMD Phenom II X6 3.4GHZ
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H mobo version 1.4 BIOS F8
XFX Radeon HD6850
1TB Samsung drive
Xenta 900W PSU
8GB Gskill Ripjaws memory
 
After putting together the machine and on first post the machine lit up and fans operated however no display. I checked the graphics card was seated properly and tried again, no joy, also no warining beeps at all.
 
Removed graphics card and tried (Mobo has onboard graphics) and machine booted fine. I then went into BIOS and disabled the onboard graphics and set the display device priority to PEG. Refitted the graphics card and same result nothing! Also tried all of the other options with no joy and in the end had to reset cmos jumper to get onboard VGA running again.
 
I then removed an HIS Radeon 5770 card from another machine, fitted it and it works fine no problem. Thinking at this stage the the XFX Radeon HD6850 was DOA I then tried it in the donor machine and it works fine!
 
From the trawling of the net I have done and reading into the specifications fully this card should work with this setup. The board has a PCIe X16 revision 2 slot and the card is revision 2.1 but from my research this shouldnt be a problem and it wasn't for the 5770 I tested it with? Also looking at the BIOS there has only been one release for this board F8 which its currently at so no possibility of an update there.
 
Is this a lost cause and do I need to look at an alternative card (any suggestions would be good as can't find any compatability lists) or have I missed something?

Thank you in adance

[autotech]

Depends on when the last bios was published go look at the date on it, then find the date ur video card was made make sure if you dont have the first build then by now im sure you have at least revison 2..   If the video card date is after bios then you need a new bios for card and the best thing to do there is open a support tickett with gigabyte and explain it like you did here they might have a bios that will allow you to play it no way without trying.

Good luck to you hope this helps a little till someone else adds to it that is.

[M21A]

Thanks for the reply and ideas.

I opened a ticket with Ggiabyte on 29/11/05 and to date it still shows as unproccesed! Good customer support there I think I might be steering clear of Gigabyte products in the future!

They only have one BIOS available for download for this board on the site and it is the same date and version as I have, from what it looks like it is the initial release and nothing has been released subsequently to date.

Can you update the firmware on a VGA card? Also how do you find out what its currently running?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Yes you can update the firmware on a GPU. You can use a utility like GPU-z to give you the information regarding what it is at present and it will even back it up for you.

@BIOS is probably your best bet for actually running the update.

[M21A]

Thanks again for the reply its appreciated.

I have now opened a ticket with XFX after registering the card on their UK site and see what they have to say.

Just downloaded and used GPU-z. what a handy neat utility thanks for that nugget of information.

When you say running @BIOS for the update are you saying you actual carry the update on the GPU BIOS from the system BIOS? Or is their a utility to do this from within the operating system?

Thanks

[autotech]

ati_winflash is what i use on my amd based video card to flash it with.  Version 2 something and it works just fine. Flashing of the card is done from windows yes.

[Dark Mantis]

Just downloaded and used GPU-z. what a handy neat utility thanks for that nugget of information.

When you say running @BIOS for the update are you saying you actual carry the update on the GPU BIOS from the system BIOS? Or is their a utility to do this from within the operating system?

As autotech has just said you use @BIOS from within Windows but it is not recommended to use this on your system BIOS for updates for obvious reasons.

If you liked GPU-Z check out the similar utility for the processor and memory CPU-Z.

[M21A]

Thanks again for the replies and advice. Got a response from XFX after opening a ticket and they have informed me that there is no update available for this graphics card BIOS and suggested I contact Gigabyte lol!

Think the lesser pain will be to send back the motherboard and look for alternative and steer clear of Gigabyte in future purely due to  the lack of support Gigabyte gives its UK customers!

Thanks again for the help and advice and I may not of got my problem sorted but I have learnt a lot in regards to GPU BIOS.

[TheBigYin]

I just bought a barebones kit with the same gigabyte mobo and had the same response, no signal to the working monitor. Previously to this I had bought another barebones kit with an Asus mobo and had the same problem but sent it back before going to Gigabyte. Anyway...

I had bought an AMD Phenom 11 chip with a clock speed of 3.7mhz along with two 4 gig sticks of memory. I phoned up the seller and was told to try only puting one stick of memory in at a time. The upshot was that one of the sticks was duff and was stopping any connection from mobo to monitor. Everything is working properly now. I never new that duff memory could cause so much angst.