Dual Nvidia Card Issues Win 8.1

[jujubee]

I'm having issues with the following setup and have been scouring the web. Hoping someone here has some ideas:

1) Asus P9X70 Deluxe MB.
2) 32 GB RAM.
3) 3930K Processor.
4) Corsair 850M power supply (PSU.)
5) Three monitors: Main monitors 30" Dell. Secondary 27" Dell. Third Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

5) EVGA Geforce 590 GTX (main card.)
6) EVGA Geforce 480 GTX (secondary which I'm trying to install.)
7) Latest nVidia drivers.

Everything works fine without #6 installed.
Installing #6 shows that it is detected under Device Manager, but it is disabled by the OS due to some hardware issues - it doesn't say what those issues are.
nVidia Control Panel doesn't even show the card.
Even without the other two monitors attached, the issues still remain.

I realize that you can't run these two different GPUs under SLI, and besides, SLI isn't helpful for non-gamers.
However, I do think it would be beneficial for the main display to offset the other two monitors to the 480.

My initial thought is that the PSU isn't powerful enough to handle both graphics cards.
What do you guys think?

[Morne]

Have you tried swopping the 2 cards around? (just temporarily to test the PSU theory)
Put the 590 in the 480 slot and the 480 in the 590 slot...

[Donald2B]

Okay...this should work fine. I do this all the time.

My process for adding a second video card:
- Install additional video card
- Make sure that there is a monitor plugged into both cards before turning computer on
- Install video card drivers, even if you already had the drivers installed from the initial card...install the drivers again
- reboot and should be good to go...that's my process and it's worked great.

I think your PSU should be okay...it's a little small, but it should still get you up and running. If you are planning on lots of GPU rendering, you may want to step up to a 1KW PSU for a little breathing room.

[jujubee]

It turns out that my older EVGA 480 GTX from 2010 was dead aside from the fans spinning up.
Recognized this when I added it to another system and it still didn't boot.
Contacted EVGA and they told me where I purchased the card from. Fortunately, I had a receipt still.
They're kind enough to RMA it although it's well out of warranty. They said they'd send an upgrade for free since that card is no longer produced.
Gotta absolutely LOVE EVGA. That kind of friendly and useful technical support is hard to come by these days!!!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Get on new card extended warranty for couple of extra bucks my EVGA has 7 year warranty

[jujubee]

I honestly have never had any issues with a card before. In the past I've overclocked older models (before the 7800) and they didn't give me any issues. Since then, I don't bother due to instabilities.
However, it might be worth the few extra dollars as you said for piece of mind.

[Donald2B]

EVGA has always treated me well! I almost exclusively buy their cards now. Fortunately, I haven't had one go bad on me yet.

[jujubee]

I've never had to call their customer service until a few days ago. Knowledgeable and friendly. Took their time. And didn't seem to mind at all about replacing a 2010 card.
Honestly haven't seen that level of customer service in any company aside from the responsiveness of Vlado over the years.
It's the reason why I've stuck with both EVGA and Chaos over the years.

[jujubee]

Also turns out that my motherboard (ASUS P9X79 Deluxe) had some known but obscure IRQ conflict issues with both USB devices and the Marvell Controller.
I had previously noticed that the Marvell Controller seemed to have run slow and read from various people that you shouldn't use it.

Disabling the Marvell Controller and reinstalling the graphics drivers allowed me to finally use another GPU in PCI-E X16 slot 4.
Hope this helps.