Hi,
I bought a new EVGA GTX 480 in mid march and have been having more than a few problems with it.
My motherboard has 2 PCI-E slots. 1 16x and 1 8x. Both slots change to 8x when 2 cards connected.
If I connect the GTX 480 to the primary PCI-E slot then I typically lose signal to monitor when windows begins to load (sometimes it will get to the desktop but rarely and after a minute or two the system will crash/monitor will lose signal.) I can view bios or enter safe mode without issue.
However if I connect a second card (8600gts I borrowed from old system)to the second slot so the primary slot is operating at 8x the card seems to work ok. This is also true if I connect the GTX 480 to the second slot which is 8x. I say the card works ok although I have noticed a few system freezes when running at 8x but I cannot be sure that these are card related or something else.
I contacted EVGA support who suggested RMA however while trying that I've been told that if the problem is not replicated then I'll be charged and get the same card back. The blame is being pointed at my PSU and/or Motherboard. When running stress tests at 8x the card works fine so I find it hard to belive that the PSU is the issue. How could it power the gtx 480 under load at 8x but not when idle at 16x? I've tested the PCI-E slot with a 8600gt and 8600gts as thats all I have available to test with at present but until a few months ago I ran ATI 5850 CF. I tested both the 5850 on the Primary slot at 16x before selling them on without issue.
So I return the card accept the costs and risk getting the same card back or somehow try and convince MSI or ANTEC that my motherboard or PSU is faulty despite them working fine with every other setup I've tried.
I know the difference in performance between 16x and 8x is small. I'm not to bother about the performance more just having a card that works as intended with any system I choose.
It seems all parts of my system work but just not when the GTX 480 is in the Primary PCI-E slot with no second card.
So is the card , motherboard or PSU the problem?
Any advise would be appreciated.
Thanks