Graphics card upgrade issues

[Minty Malc]

Hi,

I've at a loss as towhat is happening when trrying to upgrade my sons PC. He was given "the need for speed 2" and whilst his PC was more or less up to the min spec, we desided to upgrade the RAM and the graphics card. We tried the game on my PC to see if it was smooth enough on a 64MB card, which is was (my PC is an Atholn 2700+ 512MB PC2100 RAM and a GeForce MX400 64MB graphics - which is fine for me as I'm not into games etc).

Anyway, we've purchased some extra RAM for his PC and a Radeon SE9250 128 MB AGP card to replace the old 32MB GeForce MX440 card. I installed the memory and re-booted the PC before installing the new card as I wanted to check that it recognised the DIM ok, which was fine - Windows showed 384MB.

Powered down and exchanged the graphics card, powered up and nothing... not a sausage. The card would not provide a standard POST display, in fact the monitor did not receive any signal as it went into sleep mode ! There were no beeps from the speaker indicating a problem either.

To test the card I exchanged it for my 64MB GeForce card on my PC. This time the PC booted fine into windows with a standard VGA screen. XP detected the new hardware, and installed the driver from the CD. It runs fine on my PC and the performance for the game is silky smooth I then installed my old 64MB card in my sons PC and whilst its fine, its not really as smooth as it could be so I would really like to get the 128MB card running on his PC.

The specs of his pC are:
P4 1.5GH
P4VXASD2 motherboard
384 MB of SDRAM 133Mhz
40GB Hard drive
16x CD-RW drive
AMIBIOS

Hope the above is enough to go on and look forward to any help and suggestions

Cheers

Malcolm

[danrok]

Does that motherboard support the new card? Not all AGP cards run at the same voltage.

Do you have a link to the specs for the motherboard?

[danrok]

I've found a link to the manufacturer's site:
http://www.ecsusa.com/products/socket478.html

But, there's a few versions of that board and it doesn't say much about the AGP port in the specs. Do you have a manual for it?

[Pitch]

My Dad had a ECS board, couldn't for the life of me get it to work with a 9800PRO.

Found out they have a problem with AGP stabilities on new cards.

Fixed it by flashing the BIOS. I'd suggest starting there.

[Minty Malc]

Thanks for the info guys,

I've never flashed the BIOS on a motherboard before, and have read loads of stories of the process going wrong and boards been rendered useless after as you can't revert the board back to the old BIOS, so I'm a bit apprehensive about doing that.

The manual doesn't give much away either. The BIOS settings are:
AGP Mode : x4 (max option 1x, 2x 4x)
AGP Comp Driving : Auto
AGP Apature : 64MB (tried setting this to 128 - mades no difference)
CLK GEN Spread Spectrum : Disabled
Auto detect DIM/PCI CLK : Enabled
Manual AGP COMP DRIVING : CB

I've had the board since 2001 and I have never flashed the BIOS so it still got the original BIOS. However I still can't understand why it wouldn't give out any error beeps, or won't display anything in standard VGA mode before it loads any drivers under windows. The card supports 2x, 4x AGP so shouldn't it still work on older boards?

Any more advice would be welcome, would I still get the same thing if I purchased a different make of card with the same sort of spec ??

Update:

Ive just checked out the link to the web site and the board we have is ver 3.X - its not the vers 5.x as our board has both DDR and SDRAM options. This is the board http://www.ecsusa.com/products/p4ibasd_v3.html we have.

Update:

Now I'm really confused. I checked the site for confirmation of the board and to see if there are any downloads available. The board version is 1.1A although the layout is the same as ver 3.x

The BIOS has "P4VXASD2 - 151 - AZ88 9979" on the chip.

But I can't find anything for ver 1.1a on the site, either ver 1, ver 3.x or ver 5.x

[~* InSoM *~]

Before you tried the card in the other machine, did you make sure the video card was seated properly?

[Minty Malc]

Originally Posted by ~* InSoM *~

Before you tried the card in the other machine, did you make sure the video card was seated properly?

Yup, removed and re-seated it twice just to make sure - still nothing

[~* InSoM *~]

Does the card have both DVI and VGA out?

IF you have DVI out, try using a DVI - VGA adapter and plug your monitor in that way, my old video card would only work that way.

[danrok]

Sounds like a new BIOS is the best thing to try.

[fantomfreq]

I'm by no means a graphics card wiz, but could the fact that the kid is switching from a Nvidia card to an ATI card make the difference there? I always hear about people having problems after switching.

[~* InSoM *~]

there cud always be a conflict in the drivers if you dont completely remove the old drivers, but it wouldn't stop the machine from booting up properly.

[Minty Malc]

Yes I read about issues with having other drivers installed, but this won't even show the POST test that happens before Windowz is loaded, so its not functioning in standard VGA mode.

I spoke with a friend who is in IT and he said that some cards require 3v some 5v or something like that, and this may be the problem, that the card is looking for 3v on a pin and not getting it so it fails to start. The thing is the PC will continue to boot with out errors, so the PC must be detecting the card??

I couldn't locate the support desk for ATI in the UK so I mailed the US help desk from that web site, only to receive a reply this morning informiong me that they can only support guys in the US

I might just try a new card (possibly Nvidia rather than ATI) to see if that works. It would also make the gameplay a tad better as the 64MB is still a tad jerky given the amount and type of memory in my sons PC

[Chernobyl]

Hi
this BIOS looks like its for your board
http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/138/138501.htm

I took the liberty of downloading it for you as its a right pain in the ass to get it!

I had to repackage it in a zip to allow it to be posted. Be assured its safe and clean

[Minty Malc]

Thanks for that. I'm a bit warry of flashing Bios as I've read so many reports of dead PC's after doing it !

The strange thing is I tried this Radeon card in my Daughters PC which is an old AMD K6 500 and that booted up fine.... The only thing I haven't tried is swaping the ADI monitor, but I doubt if thats the cause.

If all else fails then I'll try flashing the Bios.. If I can get ny nerve up

[Minty Malc]

Originally Posted by Chernobyl

Hi
this BIOS looks like its for your board
http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/138/138501.htm

I took the liberty of downloading it for you as its a right pain in the ass to get it!

I had to repackage it in a zip to allow it to be posted. Be assured its safe and clean

Just ran Everest (diagnostics utill) on his PC and the version running on his machine is the same as that in the zip file.. many thanks though for your help!