Radeon 9500 Pro Asus A7N8X no boot

[dolanenwindrift]

Got my radeon 9500 Pro today, but when I installed it in my Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard I got no video! I tried the card in another system and it works without issue. I have stripped the system down to nothing but the video card, PSU and RAM but still no joy. And yes, I did connect the 4 pin power to the video card. Any help would be appreciated ASAP!

[cadaveca]

any previous Nvidia driver's installed on the system?

Can you get in with safe mode?

[GrahamGarside]

Can you test another card in the asus system?

[dolanenwindrift]

This system was running a 5200 FX previously, the issue is not XP the system doesn't get that far - the yellow light comes on the monitor when I power up with the 9500 installed. I have the 5200 back in at the moment and it is running without issue.

[cadaveca]

something comes to mind with asus boards and ati cards...

[dolanenwindrift]

Nothing on google about it - rather infuriating to be honest. I have the card installed in my wife's PC for now, I'm going back to my TI4600 until I can get some more info on the problem.

[DaveBC]

Originally Posted by dolanenwindrift

Got my radeon 9500 Pro today, but when I installed it in my Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard I got no video! I tried the card in another system and it works without issue. I have stripped the system down to nothing but the video card, PSU and RAM but still no joy. And yes, I did connect the 4 pin power to the video card. Any help would be appreciated ASAP!

I had a similiar problem with wife's a7n8x and 9700pro. Would not post. I finally had to disable SPD for my ram and loosen up the settings. I was using 1 stick of Geil PC3200 512mb 2-2-2-5 1T. Switched to 2.5 3-3-7 2T and presto it runs fine. Give it a try, hope it helps

[dolanenwindrift]

No luck with the RAM settings, but I did contact ASUS tech support this morning - actually got a live person at 8am on a saturday morning! In any case, he did some checking and it was his contention that the BIOS on the particular video card I have is the issue, that some of the very early 8X Radeon 9500 pros had some issues with 8X and that a fix was available from ATI by simply flashing a newer BIOS. I'm looking about for the right BIOS and atiflash utility now - actually heading to the AOA files section first. If nothing else, I am very happy about ASUS tech support .

[cadaveca]

you are lucky..i have 16 RMA tickets in right now...still waiting for a response. what number did you call?

[dolanenwindrift]

1-502-995-0883

[snipe3d]

this is a wild guess...VIA chipset??


i used to own a A7V880 with the VIA KT660 or something chipset, and it would not have anything to do with my ATI 9800 pro.

if you google ATI and VIA problems, youll find plenty of other people.




i ended up buying an epox. even though it really didnt have much to do with asus, ill never touch them again. good luck with your problem, the only advice i can try to tell you is google for possible solutions (there were part solutions for my problem, no full ones though) or try a new chipset.

[cloasters]

Originally Posted by cadaveca

something comes to mind with asus boards and ati cards...

Ack, I didn't know that this can be a problem. I've run two Asus boards with an ATi 9600XT with no problems. Perhaps the Vidcard being made by Asus makes a diff?

[cadaveca]

something about the gart driver having issues with the 9500/9700 is what a remeber, but not much more than that. I dug a little last night, but could not come up with the info.

[snipe3d]

thats exactly it. you coudlnt get smartgart to work properly.

it only seemed to happen on the VIA chipset though, so it may not be relevant to this threads problem.

[dolanenwindrift]

Yeah this is the nForce2 Ultra400 etc. chipset. I have contacted ATI and waiting to hear from them before proceding - seems like this 8X bios issue could be the problem, as the other two boards I have plugged the card into only support 4X, and work perfectly. I have downloaded all the tools to flash the BIOS but won't have time until tomorrow morning to mess with it.

[snipe3d]

try uninstalling the ATI video driver, and use the default windows one. i know it sucks, but at least its runnable maybe.


also check if you have the latest chipset drivers.

[dolanenwindrift]

Video bios flash did not work. Again, this is NOT a windows issue, the machine will not post with the Radeon card installed. I appreciate all the suggestions though! I have a ticket started with ATI - hopefully they have a solution for this, otherwise my wife will get to keep the 9500 and I will start saving for an nVidia 6600GT.

[dolanenwindrift]

Well I am in luck! Talked to ATI and they are going to replace the card with a later revision - apparently there was an issue with this particular unit. I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the Tech support personnel from both ASUS, who identified the problem, and ATI, who are going to resolve this issue in spite of the card being discontinued.

[cloasters]

Excellent, this is very good news! I don't know if this has any bearing on your Vidcard woes--it's said that switching from an nVidia AGP card to an ATi Vidcard or vice versa requires deleting all the drivers for the card that you remove from your machine.

[dolanenwindrift]

Yes, when I get the card back from ATI I am going to do a full fdisk/format/reinstall, the machine is needing it anyway. There was something wrong with the 8X AGP configuration, don't know if it was hardware or software but I am thinking hardware since they wanted the card back in their hands. It will be very interesting to see what they send me back - I would not be suprised if I got a later model of card altogether, though I would really prefer just to have a functional 9500 Pro and be done with it.