Attempting to lower the PCI lanes to x4 (if this is my problem)

[Nosnibor]

13 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Slots 1 and 2 connect directly to the CPU.

 

Slots 4 and 5 connect to the chipset.

 

You want to use the CPU connections first for GPUs, and the first slot in this layout is generally the direct to CPU PCIe lanes.  If you use 1 and 2 it gets split to x8/x8.  Likewise, the x16 from the chipset is slot 4 and it gets split to x8/x8 when 4 and 5 are in use.

 

Slot 1 is where the manual says to put the GPU, so that is absolutely where the direct CPU connection is.

 

I kind of get it but for reference, yesterday I had the GPU in slot 1 and 3 of the other cards in slots 3, 4, and 5. I'd assume that should be ok? So maybe here's to hoping to disabling that VT thing.

[Nosnibor]

27 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The board has a PLX 8747 chip that's like a network switch for pci-e lanes... it takes the 16 pci-e lanes from cpu and makes a bunch more lanes.

 

 

So you have :

1PCIE 3.0 x16_1 slot

2PCIE 3.0 x16_2 slot (max. at x8 mode)

3PCIE 3.0 x4_1 slot (max. at x4 mode)

4PCIE 3.0 x16_3 slot

5PCIE 3.0 x16_4 slot (max. at x8 mode)

I'm not sure which slots are all merging into the x16 lanes from cpu, so I wouldn't know what to tell you, but anyway.... no matter where you plug cards you have at least 4 pci-e lanes and your cards don't use more than 4 lanes.

In addition to that, there are adapter cards you can buy which can convert an M.2 connector into a pci-e x4 slot... if you need an extra pci-e x4 slot

 

I appreciate that m.2 idea. If I indeed have enough lanes and I can get things working I may take advantage of that...I thought I knew enough about building but this is all new to me!

[Windows7ge]

3 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

I guess I was asking about how it works. I was assuming it was like "the board is capable of X lanes but the X is determined by the CPU" but you're saying the lanes from CPU and MOBO are separate and add to the total amount of lanes available?

The way I understand it with most of these CPU's is they tell you how many lanes are available for your devices not how many the chip actually has. Basing what I've been told about older Gen chips the CPU may actually have 24 lanes for example but 8 of those are dedicated to the chipset. The chipset then breaks those out into 24 lanes for your other PCI_e devices & shares those 8 lanes with SATA devices, and other board components leaving 16 available for your PCI_e devices off the CPU.

 

This is why they advise connecting your GPU in the top-most slot as it will have a direct connection to the CPU.

[KarathKasun]

32 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

I guess I was asking about how it works. I was assuming it was like "the board is capable of X lanes but the X is determined by the CPU" but you're saying the lanes from CPU and MOBO are separate and add to the total amount of lanes available?

The CPU has 20 lanes total.  16 for expansion slots and 4 to connect to the chipset on the motherboard.  The motherboard acts kinda like a network switch and can take those 4 and create 24 from them.  Because of this, any connection through the chipset to the CPU will be limited to PCIe x4.  However, devices connected to the chipset can communicate with each other at full speed.

 

From the DMI wiki...

Quote

DMI 3.0, released in August 2015, allows the 8 GT/s transfer rate per lane, for a total of four lanes and 3.93 GB/s for the CPU–PCH link.

 

[Nosnibor]

Well, I will try a few of the things y'all suggested and hopefully something works.

I will attempt to plug in that 6 pin (if not already, can't remember) and I also found the something from the mobo manual about VT I think but it calls it "SR-IOV (single root IO Virtualization support)".

 

Other than that it seems like everything should be working fine...maybe I need to work this from another angle but I'm not really sure what.

[Nosnibor]

On 9/17/2019 at 5:33 PM, Windows7ge said:

 

 

On 9/17/2019 at 5:51 PM, KarathKasun said:

 

Hello, so I have tried most of what y'all said. I added the 6 pin on the mobo just in case, VT was disabled by default. I have the gpu in slot 1. I found this function "pcie clock gating" in the bios, I disabled it...seemed like it could have been limiting power to my PCI? PCI gen was on auto, I set to 3...not sure if that matters?

 

So far I can only get one of the additional cards to work at a time. If I add a second I get no display. Any further ideas?

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Nosnibor said:

So far I can only get one of the additional cards to work at a time. If I add a second I get no display. Any further ideas?

Do you have the NV-Link Bridge? Are you trying to use the card for compute/gaming/more monitors?

[Nosnibor]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Do you have the NV-Link Bridge? Are you trying to use the card for compute/gaming/more monitors?

Using the blackmagic cards for video capture IE: cameras for livestream. They are not gpu's just capture cards.

 

Currently I had the PC running in Windows with the GPU removed but 3 of the blackmagic cards installed however they were not being recognized by their software.

[Windows7ge]

39 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

Using the blackmagic cards for video capture IE: cameras for livestream. They are not gpu's just capture cards.

 

Currently I had the PC running in Windows with the GPU removed but 3 of the blackmagic cards installed however they were not being recognized by their software.

I thought we were talking about GPU's this entire time. Do you know if the software is designed to handle 3 of these capture cards at once? It's possible it's not.

[Nosnibor]

6 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I thought we were talking about GPU's this entire time. Do you know if the software is designed to handle 3 of these capture cards at once? It's possible it's not.

I am not certain about this particular model but I have used upwards of 5 in a PC before. However what is still odd to me is when I have the GPU installed and at least 2 of these cards I get no post or at least any display.

[Windows7ge]

24 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

I am not certain about this particular model but I have used upwards of 5 in a PC before. However what is still odd to me is when I have the GPU installed and at least 2 of these cards I get no post or at least any display.

Does your motherboard give POST codes? If it's stuck on Initialization of PCI_e devices that could be a hardware failure/issue or simply the board doesn't like running this many of these types of devices.

[Nosnibor]

5 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Does your motherboard give POST codes? If it's stuck on Initialization of PCI_e devices that could be a hardware failure/issue or simply the board doesn't like running this many of these types of devices.

It does it's normal run through and sits on A0 which means "IDE initialization is started". It stays on that no matter what. I'm in Windows right now with that on A0. Should that be normal?

[KarathKasun]

What slots are you putting the Black Magic cards into?  They may need to be on the same PCIe branch to operate properly, so slots 4 & 5.

[Windows7ge]

17 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

It does it's normal run through and sits on A0 which means "IDE initialization is started". It stays on that no matter what. I'm in Windows right now with that on A0. Should that be normal?

When I'm in the OS my motherboard sits on AA (different motherboard) so that's probably normal.

[Nosnibor]

26 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

What slots are you putting the Black Magic cards into?  They may need to be on the same PCIe branch to operate properly, so slots 4 & 5.

So right now with no GPU installed and 2 of the cards on 4&5 they are not detected. A single card will be detected.

 

A GPU and single card work. A GPU and multiple cards and I lose display.

 

I am starting to lose hope here. Any chance that the mobo has a problem? Should this even work? I'm starting to second guess myself.

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, Nosnibor said:

So right now with no GPU installed and 2 of the cards on 4&5 they are not detected. A single card will be detected.

 

A GPU and single card work. A GPU and multiple cards and I lose display.

 

I am starting to lose hope here. Any chance that the mobo has a problem? Should this even work? I'm starting to second guess myself.

Try them on different PCIe branches then.  Slot 2 and 4 for example.

 

3, 4, 5 are all through the PCH.

[Nosnibor]

2 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Try them on different PCIe branches then.  Slot 2 and 4 for example.

 

3, 4, 5 are all through the PCH.

I had on 2 and 4 before this.

 

Is there possible any other Bios settings blocking multiple such as PCH stuff? Could there be hardware id conflicts (is that even a thing?)?

[KarathKasun]

Just now, Nosnibor said:

I had on 2 and 4 before this.

 

Is there possible any other Bios settings blocking multiple such as PCH stuff? Could there be hardware id conflicts (is that even a thing?)?

At this point I would get in contact with Asus and Black Magic.  Its possible its a BIOS/Firmware bug.

 

I assume you have tried the BM cards in 1/2 as well?

[Nosnibor]

2 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

At this point I would get in contact with Asus and Black Magic.  Its possible its a BIOS/Firmware bug.

 

I assume you have tried the BM cards in 1/2 as well?

Yes, I just spoke with ASUS. They sent me a form to fill out and when I sent it back it stated their inbox was full, lmao.

 

I will attempt BM again but they didn't seem to have much for me the first time.