Hello good folks of the EVGA forums,
I have an older AMD FX 990fx motherboard and AMD 8350 cpu that I have just gotten up and running with Windows 7, so far so good.
I got it running with an old EVGA GTX 780 3GB that I bought a few years ago when they were new, never had a problem with it and it's still running well today.
Since this new-old computer is running so well I decided to buy a second EVGA GTX 780 3GB off of Amazon and see if I could get SLI going.
This video card that I just got off of Amazon was a refurb for $200, I went ahead and registered it incase I need to RMA it, which seems like it could be a possibility.
Because I am unable to get it to start up all the way, I have tried running it in several different configurations, in both of my pcie 16x slots, either with my old card or my new card in slot1, and just now with only my new card.
So far my computer will boot to Windows 7,but will go to a black screen, my keyboard will still respond, but no video.
Or after successfully uninstalling my old drivers in safe mode, which works perfectly fine, I was able to go back to regular mode in Windows 7,and was able to install some fresh drivers.
With just my brand new refurbished video card installed, and a fresh copy of the Nvidia version 388 driver, I was able to login to Windows 7 and tried running GPUZ to see what's going on.
It was able to list some, but not all of the details of my new video card, like it couldn't give me any temperature information.
When I went to device manager it would give I believe error 34, which if I remember correctly it means that windows could not allocate the resources to start the device.
Well I removed the video card and put my old one back in, everything is back to normal and I could run Fallout 4 once again.
So my biggest question here is, how much more should I mess around with this video card before starting the RMA process?
I only have one motherboard to test this card on, as I spent the past couple of years jumping between two states for work with my laptop, and I've been out of the loop with desktop computer stuff.
Should I drop Windows 7?
I've had several bad experiences with Windows 10 and I'm not looking forward to going back to it, but if it will give me a better experience with pci express management I'll do it, however I can also throw Ubuntu or Opensuse Linux on there.
Any suggestions?

Run DDU -

• Select: Safe mode (recommended)
• Select: NVIDIA software and Drivers
• Select: Clean with reboot

 
 
Loading Nvidia driver (offline, all background software is Off including security software)

• Select: CUSTOM
• Uncheck EVERYTHING except the GPU driver & PhysX
• Check the CLEAN INSTALL box
• Finish install
• Reboot

If DDU & clean install does not help - (I run Nvidia driver 372.90 on Win 7 - test it and see if the driver your using is the issue)
 

wmmills
After install, did you do a mobo cmos reset? If not try that and then boot into your bios and setup your voltages, ram timings, boot devices etc... and then save and reboot that setup and see if that helps.

I have not done that yet, right now I'm jumping back and forth between safe mode and normal mode trying out that Display Driver Uninstaller.
Nvidia driver 388 is still failing with my second video card installed.
I had shutdown, switched my powersupply off, attached my second video card, went into safe mode, ran DDU, rebooted,
Got into windows without a display driver installed, installed Nvidia driver 388 with just the base driver, physx software and the Nvidia audio driver (I don't have any other working sound card right now, sucks.)
After rebooting, Windows 7 starts up, but either sits at a black screen where the login should happen, or completely crashes where I can't get a caps lock on my keyboard to see if the system is still responding.
Btw after doing all of that, simply unplugging my second video card, the one that is refurbished from Amazon, I am able to boot up as normal with my original video card.
I am going to try changing my video cards around, and try booting up with just the refurb card,
Otherwise I'll go back into safe mode and run DDU again and try Nvidia driver 372.90 as Cool GTX recommended.

Starting to sound like a defective video card. What happens when you try to do a manual install?

I do not think so -- never tried

JADabandon

Cool GTX
I do not think so -- never tried

 
So I reboot back into regular mode and so far things seem promising, no more black screens or crashes...
Only the video card that is sitting in slot #5 is reporting error "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"
I also noticed that GPU-Z is showing two video cards, but the Nvidia control panel only shows one card and no option for SLI.
Any suggestions on where I should go from here? Just keep on reinstalling the driver until something happens?
Or should I just RMA this refurbished uncooperative video card?

Did you try swapping the cards to each other slots after you got the code 43 to see if the same code comes up if they are swapped? If so, that could point to the mobo slot having a issue. I asked about the cmos reset cause usually when you add new hardware to your system like a gpu, its good to clear out the bios settings/cache and let it redetect the current hardware on board to hand off to windows. Although, that means you have to resetup your bios settings. I suggest you do it manually, even if you are running stock, just to make sure you have a solid stable base to work from.

I am finally getting my RMA for my refurbished GTX 780 off to a start, if EVGA can find another GTX 780 for me that would be pretty cool,
but I did like how the tech support person did state that if they can not find one for me, they will replace it with newer card, which would be nice.
He also did say that if they replace it with a newer card, that I can send it my original GTX 780 to match it with the newer card, so I can still do SLI.
I will be Very sad to let go of my GTX 780, I've had it since 2014! And the GTX 780 is still a very good card!
If I have to let it go to move on to a newer card, I better do as much Folding on it that I can!

Sorry about the late reply but yup I did try different refresh rates, while using my hdmi and display port cables it was defaulting to 60hz, but my Asus monitor supports 144hz at 1080p with Adaptive Refresh.
Using my dual link DVI cable I can then select 144hz.

Glad it is sorted
 
Crank up those case fans, till you get the block - ACX will dump most of the heat inside the case

 
Glad the replacement solved the problem.