Issues with nvidia 760 Ti (Dell/Alienware OEM)

[austinpike]

So I bought this card on Craigslist... (always a good start to a story.)

Listing was a bit unclear, said 760 in one spot, 760Ti in another. Card is completely unbranded, black 760-style reference shroud. Since the 760Ti is pretty rare and apparently OEM-only, I figured it was most likely just a 760. From what markings there are I've concluded it is an OEM Dell/Alienware 760 Ti.

I've tried the card in a couple machines, Ivy Bridge era.
Z68 Gigabyte (legacy bios) - No bios/splash screen, nothing on windows boot (on any port.)
Z77E Asrock (UEFI) - Boot screen and boots to Windows only on DVI-I, nothing on any other port.

I didn't install drivers as the machines are currently running Radeon cards; shouldn't matter for just booting to desktop.

Fwiw the DVI-I also works on my Mac Pro tower; nothing on the other ports. (generally speaking, a 760 should work in a Mac Pro with no boot screen; I don't know about a 760 Ti - I doubt many have tried this specific card.)

So obviously it is happier with UEFI but I have no idea if the card is defective on the other ports, or if there is some Dell-specific firmware causing problems?

 

[xorbe]

Wow, you have the unicorn GTX 760 Ti, I am jealous. I think it was indeed Dell OEM only. There could be some bios trickery going on. Would be curious to know results with nv driver installed.

 

[Araxie]

you can boot in windows? great, do what many people do, Flash it with a GTX 670 BIOS (it's absolutely the same card).. you will even get G-Sync support =).

 

[xorbe]

you can boot in windows? great, do what many people do, Flash it with a GTX 670 BIOS (it's absolutely the same card).. you will even get G-Sync support =).

Holy crap, I didn't know that. Man, I never noticed the specs were the same.
I follow nv pretty closely ... I am just surprised that this detail slipped past me.

 

[Araxie]

they are the same in every aspect with reference PCB so any BIOS for non customized 680 PCB, should work good without any kind of issues, which is common issue, for example EVGA FTW 660TI and 670 utilize GTX 680 PCB so this kind of BIOS made for those cards may have issues in a reference PCB, the rest should work really good without issues, at least those are my experiences with OEM cards =).

good info:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Ti appears as rebranded GTX 670

 

[austinpike]

Would be curious to know results with nv driver installed.

you can boot in windows? great, do what many people do, Flash it with a GTX 670 BIOS

To follow up on this in case it helps anyone else....

I read elsewhere that the 760 (or at least some of them) require UEFI to boot. So that explains the no-boot w/legacy BIOS machines.

Flashed it with a 670 ROM. This allowed it to at least boot on a legacy BIOS, but the other ports still did not work. With drivers installed and multiple monitors plugged in, the digital ports would show up in the Windows control panel, but no image would display on screen. At this point I assume the other ports must simply be defective.

The seller was understanding, and had offered a refund up front if I had problems. I hate to be "that guy" as I generally view CL as caveat emptor, but I took him up on it. Turns out he had previously sold it to someone else who was also not able to get it to work. I'm assuming the seller had only ever used it with DVI-I and thought the card was fine.

I've since picked up a deal on a 680 which I expect to have a much better time with.

 

[xorbe]

Turns out he had previously sold it to someone else who was also not able to get it to work. I'm assuming the seller had only ever used it with DVI-I and thought the card was fine.

Last week there was a similar issue with a used Radeon card on tpu forum. Only the vga port would give a signal, all the digitals were dead. I guess it happens.