Legacy BIOS GPU support

[roundturtle]

Hi,

so i have this "old" motherboard that i have been trying to revive. It is a MS 7543 ver 1.0, some old dell motherboard as far as I can tell. It has an i7-980x in it and some RAM. 

The motherboard has no video outputs so i have been using my RX480 in it. When booting fans speed up and lights go on but I never get an output. After a bit of research my best guess is that I need a GPU that supprts Legacy BIOS, but im not sure.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or ideas as to which GPU's I could try to get my hands on?

What else could it be?

And how could I use this CPU, would it be good to use as a little home server? I have been wanting to try and build a home server for a while now.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

[roundturtle]

Hi,

so i have this "old" motherboard that i have been trying to revive. It is a MS 7543 ver 1.0, some old dell motherboard as far as I can tell. It has an i7-980x in it and some RAM. 

The motherboard has no video outputs so i have been using my RX480 in it. When booting fans speed up and lights go on but I never get an output. After a bit of research my best guess is that I need a GPU that supprts Legacy BIOS, but im not sure.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or ideas as to which GPU's I could try to get my hands on?

What else could it be?

And how could I use this CPU, would it be good to use as a little home server? I have been wanting to try and build a home server for a while now.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

[Windows7ge]

Based on what I've heard in the past you may experience issues trying to get GPU's based on UEFI to work on Legacy BIOS. Your one possible chance to make it work if this is the case is to update the BIOS to the latest but given it's era that may still not suffice.

 

IIRC at least on the AMD side of the fence the last GPU's they made before stepping up to UEFI was the Radeon HD series like the HD6870, HD7770, HD7970, etc.

[Slayer3032]

Compatibility can be all over the place for X58, most stuff works though but AMD seems to be the most hit or miss with some cards working fine and some refusing to boot. If it's like an OEM RX 480 or something a little less off the shelf it's very possible that non-UEFI support was never even considered for the card. There's a good amount of people with RTX cards, even RTX 2080Ti's on these old boards.

 

I run a X5675@4.5ghz with a GTX 1080 and bottleneck hard on the GPU in 1440p in most games, I'm really tempted by Ampere/RDNA2 personally. The lack of AVX though is just beginning to become an issue but as long as EAC or something silly doesn't come along and decide AVX is required, it shouldn't be an issue until the performance of the cpus is no longer worthwhile.

 

There's a ton of options for LGA1366, most of them are dirt cheap. If you're just looking for a cheap home server, a E5649's, X5660 or X5670/X5675 are all great choices with the later generally being really solid silicon. I'd avoid the 45nm parts for power consumption, although most are made more valuable on ebay by drilling a hole in them and adding a keychain.

 

DDR3 Unbuffered ECC is also supported on X58, in the past you could find 4GB dimms for under $10 all day, 8GB dimms are also an option and generally work fine although again memory compatibility can wildly vary from board to board. It's pretty solid as far as mixing memory from what I've found, my X58 based home server has 3 or 4 different models of memory in it running in triple channel perfectly fine.

 

GTX 970's, 1070's or anything that isn't really poor value for the performance you get will work fine.

 

I'd start with reseating the CPU and memory though, I've had my board refuse to post if I stick memory in certain dimm slots until I reseated the CPU and reinstalled the cooler. I'm sure it could use some fresh thermal paste if it's been sitting for a long time.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

24 minutes ago, roundturtle said:

Hi,

so i have this "old" motherboard that i have been trying to revive. It is a MS 7543 ver 1.0, some old dell motherboard as far as I can tell. It has an i7-980x in it and some RAM. 

The motherboard has no video outputs so i have been using my RX480 in it. When booting fans speed up and lights go on but I never get an output. After a bit of research my best guess is that I need a GPU that supprts Legacy BIOS, but im not sure.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or ideas as to which GPU's I could try to get my hands on?

What else could it be?

And how could I use this CPU, would it be good to use as a little home server? I have been wanting to try and build a home server for a while now.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

For a little home server, that thing would probably be alright. Are the fans kept at full speed? I feel that it's more like the motherboard is falling to POST at all. I've heard of old GPUs requiring CSM to be enabled but not the other way around. 

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic s Merged =-

Please do not multipost your topic.

[Action_Johnson]

Put a new battery in it? the button cell might be dead. 

[roundturtle]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

Based on what I've heard in the past you may experience issues trying to get GPU's based on UEFI to work on Legacy BIOS. Your one possible chance to make it work if this is the case is to update the BIOS to the latest but given it's era that may still not suffice.

 

IIRC at least on the AMD side of the fence the last GPU's they made before stepping up to UEFI was the Radeon HD series like the HD6870, HD7770, HD7970, etc.

Yeah so I have to get a compatible card first and then I can worry about updating the BIOS, or maybe i can update the BIOS without one. All I can do is try.

Ill check if I can find any of the cards you mentioned, but the used market is kinda dead here.

Any idea what GPU generation I could look for on the Nvidia side?

[roundturtle]

8 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

Put a new battery in it? the button cell might be dead. 

Yep thought of that and tried it. No luck.

[roundturtle]

40 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

Compatibility can be all over the place for X58, most stuff works though but AMD seems to be the most hit or miss with some cards working fine and some refusing to boot. If it's like an OEM RX 480 or something a little less off the shelf it's very possible that non-UEFI support was never even considered for the card. There's a good amount of people with RTX cards, even RTX 2080Ti's on these old boards.

 

I run a X5675@4.5ghz with a GTX 1080 and bottleneck hard on the GPU in 1440p in most games, I'm really tempted by Ampere/RDNA2 personally. The lack of AVX though is just beginning to become an issue but as long as EAC or something silly doesn't come along and decide AVX is required, it shouldn't be an issue until the performance of the cpus is no longer worthwhile.

 

There's a ton of options for LGA1366, most of them are dirt cheap. If you're just looking for a cheap home server, a E5649's, X5660 or X5670/X5675 are all great choices with the later generally being really solid silicon. I'd avoid the 45nm parts for power consumption, although most are made more valuable on ebay by drilling a hole in them and adding a keychain.

 

DDR3 Unbuffered ECC is also supported on X58, in the past you could find 4GB dimms for under $10 all day, 8GB dimms are also an option and generally work fine although again memory compatibility can wildly vary from board to board. It's pretty solid as far as mixing memory from what I've found, my X58 based home server has 3 or 4 different models of memory in it running in triple channel perfectly fine.

 

GTX 970's, 1070's or anything that isn't really poor value for the performance you get will work fine.

 

I'd start with reseating the CPU and memory though, I've had my board refuse to post if I stick memory in certain dimm slots until I reseated the CPU and reinstalled the cooler. I'm sure it could use some fresh thermal paste if it's been sitting for a long time.

Thanks for the suggestions, although finding parts around here is a challenge.

Wouldnt the 970 and 1070 have the same problem as my rx480 though?

What would be the difference an X5675 and the 980x already on there?

I already reseated CPU and RAM a few times and redid the thermal paste, but hey you never know Ill try again.

I tried booting once without RAM sticks and a troubleshoot speaker went off, with ram in there in doesnt go off. Does this mean the RAM sticks i have in there should be compatible?

[roundturtle]

15 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

For a little home server, that thing would probably be alright. Are the fans kept at full speed? I feel that it's more like the motherboard is falling to POST at all. I've heard of old GPUs requiring CSM to be enabled but not the other way around. 

The fans are running, cant say if fully or not. But there is air moving.

[Slayer3032]

8 hours ago, roundturtle said:

Thanks for the suggestions, although finding parts around here is a challenge.

Wouldnt the 970 and 1070 have the same problem as my rx480 though?

What would be the difference an X5675 and the 980x already on there?

I already reseated CPU and RAM a few times and redid the thermal paste, but hey you never know Ill try again.

I tried booting once without RAM sticks and a troubleshoot speaker went off, with ram in there in doesnt go off. Does this mean the RAM sticks i have in there should be compatible?

Yeah finding anything anywhere is difficult right now.

 

It shouldn't, I suppose it's possible if the board is really not great. It's really more common with the AMD stuff, there's a bunch of people who have RX480's and RX580's on X58. Does your card have a bios switch? Try switching to the other vbios.

 

Nothing, the X5675 is a multiplier locked 32nm Westmere/Gulftown cpu with good silicon quality for overclocking that's available for $25-30 generally. If you wanted to just use it as a home server, I can't say if i7 sku's are compatible with ECC-U memory but 980x/990x's still sell for $80~ on ebay last I checked while something like a X5670 can be found for $10~ with out of the box settings that are a little bit more low power friendly.

 

Ouch, well it can't hurt I guess.

 

Can't say, every board responds differently. I'd expect the ram to work if it's timings are fairly conservative and not anything crazy or off the wall, PC3L low power DDR3 might not post on default settings.

 

If you have another video card, anything else at all I'd toss it in there and see if it boots.