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First post, by Demo85

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Really struggling with getting my Win10/XP dual boot machine up and running. Have a 2600k, ASUS P8Z77-V LK, and a Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Dual-X. No matter the settings I try to use in the UEFI I cannot get the motherboards BIOS to display through the 7970. The dream is to have a SSD with Win 10 installed and another one with XP installed and press F8 or whatever during boot to switch between them. Right now if I install Windows 10 using the iGPU and the motherboards onboard display port, shut down, switch to the 7970s output I can boot into Windows 10 without an issue, everything works great, still don't see the BIOS though. So I know the 7970 its self is not broken. I believe the issue is some sort of UEFI/legacy issue as my 7970 doesn't support UEFI. tuturoj.jpg b%5D. I've tried every possible combination of settings with no changes in BIOS display. Sometimes it will break my Win10 install depending on settings and I gotta reset the UEFI settings to get it back to working. I did try to flash UEFI modded BIOS to my 7970 which is a thing people did 10 years ago but all I did was brick one of the BIOS on my card, thankfully it has dual BIOS so the card still works but I can't get any display out of the 7970 when set on the flashed BIOS. I see people online running 7970s and 2 and 3rd gen core CPUs without issues. I've tried booting from a legacy boot USB stick with no other drive connected but that still doesn't show up on my 7970. It's only once the computer gets inside Windows does it have video out. I haven't tired to get XP running yet. I'm not sure what is holding me up here. I also can't help but feel like the Asus UEFI is lacking settings, for example I can't disable the iGPU at all and no setting flat out says "Legacy BIOS". I also flashed the mobo to the most up-to-date BIOS from the Asus website. I'd really like to stay with the 7970 for it's more feature rich XP drivers (GPU scaling and HDMI color settings), I can change the motherboard no issue if it's indeed a compatibility issue. Last resort is buying a GTX 960 which has UEFI support but doesn't have GPU scaling or HDMI color options under XP. Would really like to get up and running with what I have though.

This is now multiple weeks of trouble shooting this and I can't even put into words how frustrating this is. If anyone could shine some light onto the issue i'd be forever grateful.

Reply 2 of 6, by pentiumspeed

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Looks like your HD7970 is UEFI only firmware. There is different makers of HD7970 with legacy bios firmware and some does have both but finding one is guess work.

I had two Asus HD7750 cards converted to UEFI & legacy combo using a ASUS UEFI utility to get them working on a UEFI only computer.

Second. XP *does* not support UEFI features. Please note this!

You'll have no choice with this to stay in legacy mode for computer to make XP to work and that also requires video card with legacy firmware also.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 3 of 6, by Demo85

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porschemad911 wrote on 2022-05-29, 11:13:

Have you tested all the different display outputs? Perhaps DVI would play better with the legacy compatibility modes of the UEFI?

I tired every output, GPU would not output the BIOS. I ended up running a HDMI cable from the onboard HDMI to the monitor. But I had other issues with the mobo, getting random blue screens, random restarts, this is with known good RAM and PSU, CPU. Got a new mobo coming to see if maybe a new mobo will change the BIOS issue

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-05-29, 18:40:
Looks like your HD7970 is UEFI only firmware. There is different makers of HD7970 with legacy bios firmware and some does have […]
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Looks like your HD7970 is UEFI only firmware. There is different makers of HD7970 with legacy bios firmware and some does have both but finding one is guess work.

I had two Asus HD7750 cards converted to UEFI & legacy combo using a ASUS UEFI utility to get them working on a UEFI only computer.

Second. XP *does* not support UEFI features. Please note this!

You'll have no choice with this to stay in legacy mode for computer to make XP to work and that also requires video card with legacy firmware also.

Cheers,

Thanks, that's what I thought. Didn't matter anyways as that mobo would not put the bios out over anything but the onboard

Reply 4 of 6, by porschemad911

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Hope you have better luck with the new board. I imagine the legacy support tends to vary a lot between different UEFI boards.

For my WinXP box I'm intentionally running a legacy BIOS Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 which handles WinXP very well with my overclocked FX-8320 (with one core per module disabled in the BIOS).

I have used multiple video cards successfully with this board, an EVGA 980 Ti, a Powercolor 7750, an Asus R9 270X and an Asus GTX 680. I'm with you on preferring the Radeon driver features but had to regrettably swap back to Nvidia to get grass rendering properly in Star Wars KOTOR. Scaling is so much clunkier but I can mostly get it to behave (with the GTX 680 and driver version 327.23).

Reply 5 of 6, by Demo85

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porschemad911 wrote on 2022-06-05, 22:45:

Hope you have better luck with the new board. I imagine the legacy support tends to vary a lot between different UEFI boards.

For my WinXP box I'm intentionally running a legacy BIOS Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 which handles WinXP very well with my overclocked FX-8320 (with one core per module disabled in the BIOS).

I have used multiple video cards successfully with this board, an EVGA 980 Ti, a Powercolor 7750, an Asus R9 270X and an Asus GTX 680. I'm with you on preferring the Radeon driver features but had to regrettably swap back to Nvidia to get grass rendering properly in Star Wars KOTOR. Scaling is so much clunkier but I can mostly get it to behave (with the GTX 680 and driver version 327.23).

New mobo is supposed to come today, gonna rush home after work and complete my honey do list so I have time to mess around with it when it comes. The behavior of my last board was kinda nuts. I had two SSDs, one with XP and the other with 10 that I installed using the onboard video then swapped to the 7970 and installed drivers. If I switched the SSD both 10 and XP booted perfectly with the 7970, just couldn't see the bios. Also, and I know this shouldn't work but XP booted fine when "legacy" bios mode was turned off. So I dunno, that board had other issues as I outlined earlier in the thread. At some point, after we move and my computing room goes from bedroom sized to basement size this PC will go WinXP only, maybe Win7 too if I find games that run best on 7. I only need this to dual boot xp and 10 because room is a little tight and I need a win10 PC in my game room to manage SD cards and whatnot for my consoles and just general web browsing. Kinda happy I upgraded because the Gigabyte board I have coming has a Intel NIC which I've always had better luck with then other brands.

Really want to wrap this up so I can focus on my 98 build and get that wrapped up. Still gotta paint my game room too, so many projects so little time.

Reply 6 of 6, by porschemad911

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Demo85 wrote on 2022-06-06, 08:57:

At some point, after we move and my computing room goes from bedroom sized to basement size this PC will go WinXP only, maybe Win7 too if I find games that run best on 7.

Just for fun ... Win7 will work with 2 x 7970s in Crossfire, whereas WinXP will only work with one (can disable the second). Be fun comparing say Crysis on WinXP in DX9 with one 7970 vs Crysis in DX10 on Win7 with 2 7970s in Crossfire.