3 out of 6 Intensity Pro cards "bad"?

We just put together three new Windows 7-based encoders. SSD drives, MSI Motherboard (1600 Intel LGA 1144 Motherboard Z77A-G45) with Intel Core i7-3770K quad-core processors...

And we purchased six Intensity Pro cards (as we wanted two cards in each unit).

Three of the Intensity Pro cards don't show up (either with the Blackmagic Control Panel, or in Wirecast as a 'source' option).

Even when we take two of the "recognized" cards and put them into a single unit, only one Intensity Pro card appears.

For the "bad" cards (the ones that don't even show up as being installed)... I put them into the same motherboard slot as one of the cards that worked... but it still doesn't come up as being recognized.

The cards that are recognized seem to work just fine... but I'm still curious as to why TWO cards are not recognized when two known-to-be-working cards are installed.

Anyone else have a similar experience? or solutions/recommendations?

As far as I know you can only have one of any of the Blackmagic Cards in a machine at one time.

Maybe BM can shed some light on this.

As far as I know you can only have one of any of the Blackmagic Cards in a machine at one time.

That is absolutely not the case. Plenty of posts on here from Blackmagic and other users making reference to multiple cards. It can sometimes require careful choice of slots - but it definitely is possible.

Thanks for the info about multiple cards working in a system. I'm obviously uninformed about this as I've never installed multiple BM cards in one system with success myself.

Try testing each card individually and if they all work then put two known working cards in one machine and as the previous poster suggested try different slot orders. If this still doesn't work contact BM about the possibility of different firmware versions on these units. I have purchase multiple identical cards from some vendors and have noticed up to a 6 month difference on the date stamps on the card or chips, suggesting poor stock rotation.

The next thing to try is the Device Manager and do a "Scan for Hardware Changes" from there. If the second card is recognized Windows will not always install Drivers for it automatically, you may have to force the OS to search for the drivers or install the driver software a second time.

Thanks, hope you can resolve this issue.

Try testing each card individually

As stated originally (although I may not have made it clear) -- Once we found a "good" card we noted the slot and then placed the "bad" cards into that slot... and the machine still did not recognize those cards. Normally I would assume that the card is bad based on this -- but the fact that we have 3 out of 6 cards that are not recognized makes me think this isn't the case (thus my post). I can understand getting a bad card every now and then... but three bum cards and three good cards all at once just seems to be very unusual for a Blackmagic product.

This firmware update you mention -- exactly how do you go about performing that on a card? I went to the Blackmagic support site and the only thing I seem to be able to do is to download the latest "Desktop video" software. Maybe I missed something on the site -- there just aren't a lot of support options/files that I could see.

Firmware updates if available may only be available by contacting BM directly. Some manufactures require you to send the cards directly to them to have the firmware updated.

Get in touch with BM and see if they can verify by serial number if there are any differences in either firmware or revisions of the cards. Also check with the motherboard manufacturer (usually on there website) for BIOS Updates, this can fix some issues at times.

Thanks

The units were built from parts. All new parts. They are basically four streaming encoders for use with Wirecast. With the "working" Intensity Pro cards these new encoders are awesome!!

I'll do as you suggest and contact Blackmagic directly. I didn't realize that firmware updates were something I might have to ship the cards back to take care of -- but I'll confirm that with them regardless.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I just updated my post to add another option so please check it again.

Trying installing them in the short pci-e slots and try with vmix software. I had 2pros and I shuttle in this machine now. First they were not seen but after moving card around they all showed up. Using ASUS Rampage 2 & 3 boards