Unable to detect X-Fi Titanium

[ralish]

Hello,

I purchased a Creative X-Fi Titanium about a week ago, one of the new PCI Express models, and am having enormous difficulty getting it to work on my computer. Whatever I do, I am unable to get the computer to detect it, either at the OS or BIOS level. I can verify that the OS won't detect it, as it's not listed in Device Manager (Vista x64 SP1), but, it's also not listed in the PCI Device Table just before the OS begins to boot. I've tried several things, listed below:

1. Confirmed that the sound card isn't faulty, as installing it in a different box showed it detected in the PCI Device Table.
2. Tried moving the card to a different x1 slot in the same box, with no effect.
3. Tried explicitly disabling the onboard audio in the BIOS (it should disable automatically when a discrete sound card is detected, but wanted to be certain).

The motherboard is a GA-EP35-DS3P running the latest BIOS, F6a. It was running F5 but I had to update to F6a to get the CrossFireX setup working. I'm hoping this is most likely a BIOS compatibility problem and not a physical defect of the motherboard, as replacing it will be painful, not to mention the time it'll take to actually get the replacement in.

So, what do you guys think? What in your opinion is the most likely problem? Is there something else I should try that I haven't thought of?

By the way, I intend to try and test a different PCIe card in the slot I'm using come Monday, but finding one can be difficult (I don't want to pay for a card I'm never going to actually use). This should entirely rule out the board itself being physically defective, but I've already tried a different slot, and it seems to me unlikely that 2 of the 3 x1 slots would be defective (I haven't tried the 3rd).

Thanks for any help.

 

[Ghouler]

You said you tried to disable onboard audio in BIOS, but did you actually disable it? It should not show up in the device manager at all... I guess you really have to get another PCI-e card to test the board, maybe there is something wrong with the PCI-e bus.

 

[mpilchfamily]

There is a good chance the card is DOA. So return it for another one and see if things change. If not then there may be an issue with the motherboard.

 

[ralish]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I finally found the problem.

It turns out that on my motherboard, the second PCIe x16 slot shares the same bus as the three PCIe x1 slots. As such, when running a CrossFireX setup (dual graphics cards) the x1 slots are inoperable. I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the Intel P35 chipset or specific to the design of this particular motherboard, I am leaning towards the former however. Upgrading to a P45 based motherboard should remedy the problem.