Hey all, first post on this forum, and it comes with an interesting question.
I recieved my Aurora R4 ALX last week, I ordered it with the 3.2 6 core processor (OC to 4.1), 16gb of ram, the standard 1tb 7200 rpm HD (already upgraded with a matched set of drives I have here), and dual Radeon HD 6950's in Crossfire config. I got everything up and working with my dual 27 inch monitors, and its been working awesome. I loaded up the normal things (WoW, etc.) on the system in an effort to test everything, and get some benchmarks before I swapped out the factory HD with a matched set of 1tb Seagate 7200 rpm drives for Raid 0 config. As I was preparing to go thru that process, I noticed (had not paid much attention before) that there was no video displaying during POST. No Alienhead splash screen, no Windows 7 splash screen, first video that displayed was the login screen. I wondered if it could be cables (am using shorter DVI's for now), so tried a different set of DVI cables, tried HDMI cables, and none of that made a difference. The major problem there is that not being able to see any of the bios, f12 boot screen, or RAID config screen, there was no way to progress.
I got frustrated, and walked away for the night, shut the system back off, and decided to sleep on it and think. Woke up the next morning, pulled the dual 6950's and threw in a spare GTX560 that I have here. That worked like it should, all splash screens, etc. So I went ahead and did the RAID config, then installed windows using that video card. Once the base install was done, I decided to test every permutation of the 6950's. I tested one card in the top rail, that worked as it should, then tested that same card in the bottom rail, and again it worked. So then I tested the other card in the same manner, and again, everything worked in it's seperate functions. So I left the one card in, updated to the most current drivers using the solo card, updating the CCC and all. Once that was done, I went back to the 2 6950's in crossfire. Back to the no video during post, but once Windows was loaded, the video then would display.
My logical conclusions is it has to do with Crossfire, and the bridging, however once windows loads up everything is fine, the crossfire functions as it should, am seeing the proper GPU's, Vram configurations and such. Is there some setting someplace that I am missing that would allow the crossfire'd 6950's to display POST, or is this something that is normal given the configuration? I will be calling Dell for help, but figured I would see if anyone else here had seen this issue, or had any recommendations. Again, just to clarify, there is no video until the windows login. I am unable to see the bios, splash screens, raid config or anything. The first time a video signal is sent to the screens is at the windows login. Thanks in advance for any help!
Alpha
Alienware Aurora R4 ALX
Intel Core i7-3930k Six Core Processor @3.20GHz
16.0GB of RAM at 1600MHz
Dual Radeon HD 6950 in Crossfire Configuration
2x Seagate Barracuda 1TB - 7200rpm, 32mb cache in RAID 0 configuration (2TB total in RAID)
1x Western Digital 1TB - 7200rpm, 32mb cache in traditional non-RAID configuration
I recieved my Aurora R4 ALX last week, I ordered it with the 3.2 6 core processor (OC to 4.1), 16gb of ram, the standard 1tb 7200 rpm HD (already upgraded with a matched set of drives I have here), and dual Radeon HD 6950's in Crossfire config. I got everything up and working with my dual 27 inch monitors, and its been working awesome. I loaded up the normal things (WoW, etc.) on the system in an effort to test everything, and get some benchmarks before I swapped out the factory HD with a matched set of 1tb Seagate 7200 rpm drives for Raid 0 config. As I was preparing to go thru that process, I noticed (had not paid much attention before) that there was no video displaying during POST. No Alienhead splash screen, no Windows 7 splash screen, first video that displayed was the login screen. I wondered if it could be cables (am using shorter DVI's for now), so tried a different set of DVI cables, tried HDMI cables, and none of that made a difference. The major problem there is that not being able to see any of the bios, f12 boot screen, or RAID config screen, there was no way to progress.
I got frustrated, and walked away for the night, shut the system back off, and decided to sleep on it and think. Woke up the next morning, pulled the dual 6950's and threw in a spare GTX560 that I have here. That worked like it should, all splash screens, etc. So I went ahead and did the RAID config, then installed windows using that video card. Once the base install was done, I decided to test every permutation of the 6950's. I tested one card in the top rail, that worked as it should, then tested that same card in the bottom rail, and again it worked. So then I tested the other card in the same manner, and again, everything worked in it's seperate functions. So I left the one card in, updated to the most current drivers using the solo card, updating the CCC and all. Once that was done, I went back to the 2 6950's in crossfire. Back to the no video during post, but once Windows was loaded, the video then would display.
My logical conclusions is it has to do with Crossfire, and the bridging, however once windows loads up everything is fine, the crossfire functions as it should, am seeing the proper GPU's, Vram configurations and such. Is there some setting someplace that I am missing that would allow the crossfire'd 6950's to display POST, or is this something that is normal given the configuration? I will be calling Dell for help, but figured I would see if anyone else here had seen this issue, or had any recommendations. Again, just to clarify, there is no video until the windows login. I am unable to see the bios, splash screens, raid config or anything. The first time a video signal is sent to the screens is at the windows login. Thanks in advance for any help!
Alpha
Alienware Aurora R4 ALX
Intel Core i7-3930k Six Core Processor @3.20GHz
16.0GB of RAM at 1600MHz
Dual Radeon HD 6950 in Crossfire Configuration
2x Seagate Barracuda 1TB - 7200rpm, 32mb cache in RAID 0 configuration (2TB total in RAID)
1x Western Digital 1TB - 7200rpm, 32mb cache in traditional non-RAID configuration