Z820 and Dual AMD GPU issue

[JonnyChimpo]

I was excited to pick up a new workstation for some rendering and occasional BOINCing/F@H and gaming, but ran into a serious issue.  

System Layout:

1 x E5-2667 v1

2 x 8gb ram

1125w PSU

2 x AMD R9-280X  installed in slots 2 and 6, power adapter cables installed

BIOS: 3.91

Windows 10 LTSB 64bit

System will boot fine, no Crossfire bridge installed, Crossfire turned off on ATI settings, both cards recognized by the sytem. Thing is, as soon as I try to do anything with the GPUs, the system will blackscreen and reboot. Everything is fine with one card installed in Slot 2, but that kinda defeats the purpose of buying this machine. This is also replicable in Windows 7 Pro, so I dont think its a driver issue.  My worry isnt a compatibility issue, but maybe a motherboard that's shot. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

[iMaxx]

Chances are it's a compatability issue as our workstations  are not tested to work with consumer cards, only nVidia Quadro and AMD Firepro at this time.

GeForce cards can't even be SLIed in them.

However, let me see what R&D says.

[JonnyChimpo]

Thanks for checking. If it matters, I attempted jumpers on E14 and E1 when I did the Bios update, but Boot Block still shows 2011.  

Also, information is a bit convuluted on GPU cards for this system. Can 2 cards with video output be used symultaneously, ie: 2 Quadro cards, or does it have to be one card with video output, and a compute-only card?  I see nVidia lists SLI compatibilty with ths Z820 and K5000/6000 cards, but wanted to ask. 

[iMaxx · Accepted solution]

Two Quadro cards will work and they can be SLI'd. It's just the consumer cards (IE: gaming cards) that the system has trouble when when two are installed.

[MtothaJ]

---

@JonnyChimpo wrote:

Thanks for checking. If it matters, I attempted jumpers on E14 and E1 when I did the Bios update, but Boot Block still shows 2011.  

---

Having the newer 2013 bootblock is pretty much irrelevant with regard to the problem you are experiencing.

And you are correct - placing jumpers to update the boot block does not work, even though this is precisly the reason they are on the board. Having looked into this the problem is that the boot block area was write protected by HP at the chip programming stage. It seems that this was not thought through on HP part - they included the necessary jumpers on the board and provided the necessary microcode updates in the v 3.50 bios but then it transpired that actioning this update was not possible since write protection at the bios chip level has been enabled for this region.

Updating the boot block is still possible, but not without an external programmer.  

[iMaxx]

Cards are seen by the AMD Catalyst software and in defie manager, yes?
What actions are you taking when the screen(s) go blank?

[JonnyChimpo]

Basically, as soon as I run anything like diagnostics, benchmarks, any rendering, or games it will crash as soon as the cards are utilized.

Both cards are found by AMD software, and I can even move my display port cable to the other card and my monitors will load. Crossfire is disabled via software, no bridge installed between the cards.

[JonnyChimpo]

Wanted to update the situation. Ended up with a different AMD card, with 2 processors on the same single card. Other than a software compatibility issue here and there, the system works fine and sees the card as 2 individual cards. Kind of a bummer I cant use 2 of these though.