Question GTX 1000, RTX 2000 cards don't work past BIOS on X58 Sabertooth

[ahalibut]

Almost threw this in the motherboard thread (possible BIOS issue), or the Win10 thread (possible driver issue), but here we are.

I am upgrading my X58 based battleship for the last time with some on-hand parts. It had been running 2 GTX 980s in SLI for almost 3 years and I wanted one last GPU upgrade before putting the components in a shadowbox on the wall for all time. My wife still games on this rig though (mostly WoW, Overwatch, , Dragon Age Inquisition, Vermintide 2, Warhammer DoW 3, etc.). The SLI setup is fine and I could return to it, but now I'm on a journey.

Behavior: Video in BIOS is good, once it boots to Windows the screen goes blank/black. I suspect it's waiting at the Win10 login screen.

Used DDU uninstaller between GPU swaps.

Win10 safe mode isn't visible: I suspect it's working, I just can't see it (same black/blank behavior as not safe mode).

Here is the attempted upgrade path:

1. MSI GTX 1080 ti Duke - failed
2. MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X - failed
3. Gigabyte RTX 2080 ti X - failed (just for troubleshooting and a laugh)
4. reference Radeon Vega 56 - SUCCESS (currently in the rig).

I'd leave the Vega in there and call it good, but the monitor has G-sync, so it'd be cool to get either of the GTX 1080 cards to work.

Not an emergency, just an interesting puzzler. Any ideas?

Specs: 720w PSU, ASUS X58 Sabertooth mainboard, i7-950 processor, 24GB DDR3 at 1600 in triple channel, Win10 Pro 64-bit

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16784449
Seems that it should work:

 

[ahalibut]

Agreed; I even saw a vid from Timmy Joe PC Tech who built a similar rig for laughs. And come to find out there is an active X58 community 10 years after the fact (I could upgrade to the Xeon 6-core but don't see the point with my wife's game selection).