ATI HD 5750 not compatible w/ ABIT AT8 MoBo?

[TouringBubble]

I've had an AT8 based system for several years, and am in the process of upgrading. I purchased an ATI HD 5750 (1gb) video card as once of the first steps, as the PCI-Express interface is universal and should work fine with the current setup.

With the HD 5750 installed in the primary PCI-Express slot (and the shadow card in the secondary), the system will not boot. The boot sequence hangs as CMOS takes over (according to the manual) with a "9.0" code diaplayed on the motherboard.

I've updated all of the motherboard drivers from ATI. The ABIT drivers on the disc and online don't work with Windows 7 it seems. I've reset the CMOS according to the manual and verified BIOS settings.

the HD 5750 card does work and has been verified on another system. My system boots fine with my old X1600 Pro card installed. Also, an ATI HD 4830 card worked fine in the system in question.

So, it seems that the ATI HD 5750 will not work with the ABIT AT8 board, or possibly with the ATI Xpress 200 chipset in this configuration. Is this the case, even though PCI-Express is supposed to be backward compatible?

Any help is greatly appreciated as I'm not able to upgrade the rest of my components currently, and this video card will sit for months if the configuration will not work.

Thanks.

- Matt

SYSTEM:
ABIT AT8
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
2gb DDR 400
Antec 550w PS
ATI HD 5750 1gb PCI-Express 2.0

[TouringBubble]

Just thinking through things ...

According to the Xpress 200 Crossfire page on the AMD site, the chipset supports up to 2GB "peak bandwidth," so the 1GB memory on the card shouldn't be the issue ... unless this refers to the HT ... but that would be GHZ, right? Not GB.

I'm worried about the video memory because I'm considering sending the card back for a HD 4850 1GB as the HD 4830 I had before worked with this setup, and it's the same card basically.

[TouringBubble]

Just got off the phone with ATI tech support (they answer the phone. What a novel concept).

They verified my thoughts that if the MoBo can't start or pass post, then it's a BIOS related issue. So, I need to know if I can flash the BIOS via Windows 7, as I have no floppy drive.

They expressed concerns about running Win 7 on that MoBo and chipset as there is no driver support, and I understand that. But, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it ... literally. When I get the thing to boot I'll see how well it works with Win 7.

[Blaineoliver]

You can flash using memory sticks for most recent mobos as far as i know.

[TouringBubble]

I'm fairly certain I have the latest BIOS. It hasn't been updated since '06.

[ThatGuy5]

TouringBubble have you tried pressing the "reset" button once the motherboard gives you the error code? . . . Don't power it down and back up . . just reset . . sounds funny but i'm having that issue . . no post until i get an error code then i press reset and everything loads up fine. let me know.