Strange Bios problem on Foxconn motherboard

MagR

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Aug 31, 2009
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Hi everyone

I wonder if anyone could help me with a strange problem I’m having with my motherboard, a Foxconn Bloodrage Gti. I’ve been running two Radeon 5870’s for a while in crossfire with excellent performance. I selected this motherboard as it is both Crossfire and SLI certified and leaves a wide gap between the bottom of the top card and the top of the second to aid cooling.

I decided to upgrade my graphics cards and tried a pair of AND Radeon 6970’s. Whilst performance was great they were a bit hot and in particular noisy for my liking so I returned them. Instead I ordered a pair of Nvidia GeForce GTX 570’s whose performance was supposed to be on a par with the 6970’s. However when I installed them my computer would not boot – it froze part way through posting. The strange thing was when I tested each card individually everything booted fine so there was nothing wrong with the cards. I experimented and found that I could even boot with both cards installed as long as I did not connect the power leads of the second card.

I decided to set the bios back to default – there is a handy switch on the motherboard’s rear I/O panel for this – and see if that helped. Success - the system booted fine. I installed the drivers, enabled Sli in the forceware control panel and ran a few games to test performance. If anything this set up was slightly faster than the pair of 6970’s and more importantly for me is nice and quiet.

However I still have a problem as I cannot change any of the bios settings from their default values or the system refuses to post again. I personally do not overclock my cpu so the default settings are fine for me. However I would like to disable the floppy A drive and the Foxconn splash screen that appears while posting. Even such minor cosmetic changes to the bios stops the system posting. If I disconnect the power to one of the cards I can change the bios at will and it will post until I try to reconnect the power leads. I’ve tried googling the problem to no avail and checked I have the latest bios from the Foxconn website (P07).

Has anyone got any idea how I can overcome this problem. It is not stopping me running my sli system but is annoying as I cannot see any logical reason for it. Why should changing a bios setting stop a system booting with two Nvidia cards when a single card from either manufacturer or two AMD cards post without bother? As sli works fine at default bios settings the board is definitely sli certified.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

My full specs are:

Motherboard – Foxconn Bloodrage Gti
Cpu – Intel Core i7 920 DO stepping
Cooler – Akasa Nero
RAM – 6GB Ocz Gold (3 x 2GB)
SSD – Crucial C300 256GB
HDD – WD Velociraptor 300GB
Graphics cards – 2 x Palit GeForce GTX 570 Sonic (1 x 8 pin, 1 x 6 pin)
Sound card – Asus Xonar DX
Case – Antec Twelve Hundred (7 x 120mm, 1 x 200mm fans)
Power supply – Enermax Revolution 85+ 1.25kw
Monitor – Hewlett Packard LP2475w (1920 x 1200 native resolution ips)
Operating system – Windows 7 Service Pack 1
 
I would use foxconn's tech support form. I requested a new bios file due to too much voltage for the ram on a different am3 board. The first bios was the wrong format, but the second one fixed the problem. I assume you know how to flash the bios. If not, continue with updates on this post.
 

MagR

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Aug 31, 2009
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Thanks for your reply - I've posted a query on Foxconn's technical support forum and see if they can help - I agree with you - it looks as if the bios is set up incorrectly for sli.

Regards

Mag