MSI Rd480 Neo2 Board Troubles?

[danielfoley]

Hi

Im having continuous problems with my homebuilt PC, which is now going in the BIN where it belongs. I have wasted more then 100 hours unplugging things, moving things, rewiring and so forth, my conclusion is that the MSI RD480 Neo2 crossfire board is one of the worst motherboards on the planet!

The issue I am having to begin with is graphics cards. The MSI RD480 Mobo supports ATI Crossfire with 2 PCI IE slots and also supports legacy PCI Graphics providing you put a graphics card in the PCI slot.
The issue is that no matter what card, arrangement or setting I use, I get constant problems, I have 4 graphics cards, yep thats right 4 of them that I have brought at different dates, the following are what I have

1 x PNY Verto Geforce FX5200 (128mb PCI graphics card with 2x VGA out)
1 x ATI Radeon X600 Hypermemory (256mb PCI IE graphics card with 1x VGA out & 1x DVI)
1 x ATI Radeon X1300 (512mb PCI IE graphics card with 1x VGA out & 1x DVI)
1 x PNY Geforce 9400GT (GDDR2 512mb PCI IE graphics card with 2x DVI out)

Not one of them works properly on my machine, in any arrangement, I placed the older ATI Radeon X600 in the Slave PCI-IE slot and the newer ATI Radeon X1300 in the master slot, both work through the XP installation up until completion. When windows finally boots both screens loose signal, the XP logo shows then good night!
This happens even if I just use 1 PCI IE slot without the slave card.

I tried the brand new PNY Gefore on its own, that also just looses its signal after the XP logo on a clean installation.

I tried the PCI PNY Verto Geforce FX5200 graphics card, and Violla! it worked, both screens worked, and it ran ok, for about 3 days. After 3 days I kept getting 0x00000050 errors, I also got Page fault errors, I also got Spooling errors and FASTFAT errors? bare in mind this is on a CLEAN windows installation, I tried multiple discs with the same problem.

Now windows will only boot from PCI in VGA Mode, the graphics card is shown, but the minute I try and change the resolution the screens both go to sleep, or the left hand screen shows the desktop, but a messed up picture with about 5 screenshots of the desktop in 4cm sized squares?

So we have ALL PCI IE graphics cards that dont work?
PCI did work but now doesnt work?

I have put 3 new sticks of DDR in the machine, a NEW sata hard drive, I have checked all power cables, and rail voltages, all are fine!

It has to be the motherboard?

Any ideas anyone or shall I take a hammer to this thing

 

[evongugg]

Reinstall Windows with one graphics card in the PCI Express slot.

 

[danielfoley]

what about the pci graphics card, or should i remove all but one?

Also, what PCI IE cards can I run in Dual Crossfire>?

I would of thought itd be the 2x ATI Radeon graphics card, one is an X600 and one is an X1300?

Or am I better of with the Geforce 9400gt?

 

[jitpublisher]

The x600 is not Crossfire compatible.
If you are only using using 2 monitors, you are making this too hard.
Both the X1300 and the 9400gt each support multiple monitors.
Your cards do have more than 1 output on them, right?
You simply plug both monitors into 1 card, go into the nVidia or Catalyst control center and enable multiple monitor display. You may need to get a VGA adapter for your monitor cord if both of your monitors only has a VGA plugin. Quick and clean, no fuss, no muss!
You also may have to go into your BIOS and set the "Initial display" to whatever graphic slot you have the primary GPU in. Some BIOS's will not detect automatically what slot the card is in.

 

[danielfoley]

I understand but i wanted the crossfire to enhance my gaming through 2 monitors, apparently the crossfire will use 2 cards and output it through the master PCI IE Card.

i have 2 dvi to vga adapters, but even with just one card installed i get no signal after the xp logo?

Im sure my mobo is knackered because im having faults with everything, i got the pci card to work but now the E: hard drive is giving me issues, it loads in the bios but in windows its not accessebile it says the file format is raw and it cant be formatted,

I get BSOD on loads of things
I get driver irq not less then equal or something, i get BSOD on fastfat.sys, I get BSOD on spooling and loads more, yet my memory is brand new and inserted properly, the dimms are clean also.

I have so many problems its unreal, I have changed everything but the MOBO, the PSU, the hard drives, the ram, the graphics cards etc.

I think im going to chuck the lot of it since its outdated, im running DDR 3200, SATA1 and Single mode graphics now, time to upgrade to a new board!

 

[Proximon]

Yep.

 

[jitpublisher]

I have had some MSI boards, gotta say they are not high on my list if I was looking to buy a new board.
I rank them slightly above Biostar, and believe me that is no consolation.