Graphics Card... the continuing saga!

[Davi]

dave_s13 said:

Your motherboard sounds like it might a load of crap TBH.

Just save yourself the pain and spend 50quid on a shiny new one.

LOL the whole PC sounds like a load of crap to me at the moment!!!

Unfortunatly missed the boat on a great Dell from Outlet recently, nothing there similar now in price or spec, so have just been trying to spec one up from Novatech... which works out bloody expensive and bloody confusing.

I hate PC's, I'm going to become a hermit and live in a cave

[recalluk]

If you defo looking for a new PC try www.dinopc.com ... then click build your own pc from top left.

They are normally better bang per buck then DELL

[pdV6]

dave_s13 said:

Your motherboard sounds like it might a load of crap TBH.

Just save yourself the pain and spend 50quid on a shiny new one.

Not always that easy if you're starting from a Dell case & m/b; haven't looked inside any of the most recent ones but they always used to have proprietary case to m/b connections which made it a pain to upgrade.

[Davi]

pdV6 said:

dave_s13 said:

Your motherboard sounds like it might a load of crap TBH.

Just save yourself the pain and spend 50quid on a shiny new one.

Not always that easy if you're starting from a Dell case & m/b; haven't looked inside any of the most recent ones but they always used to have proprietary case to m/b connections which made it a pain to upgrade.

indeed - even getting a good spec PSU that'll fit without taking a dremel to the case is tricky.

I do like the DinoPC site though - they make it nice and simple to compare! shame I haven't really got a clue what I'm looking at but at least it's easy to compare Appear to be up to £850 already... just hope that includes vat!!!

[Davi]

TheLearner said:

I'm going to repeat and echo here I know, but lets do a proper job.
First things first, this is a replacement for the old card, that was working (remembering the original thread).

Right.

Pull all the power connectors from the drives, remove USB devices, remove ALL PCI cards. Does the system POST?

Insert another AGP card. Does the system POST?

If the answer to the first one is no. Then it's one of the following:
MOBO's taken damage (AGP socket is dead).
PSU's on it's way out and that's what fried the card.
Card is duff... still.

If the answer to the second is yes. Then you've narrowed it down to either PSU or Card. Try the card in another system (the one that donated the AGP card ) and if it POST's you know it's your PSU.

Swapping an AGP for a PCI won't give the correct response from the system, whilst AGP = specialised PCI bus, the system deals with them differently... and yes, dead sockets do happen. Although if the PSU has started to fail, I'd expect a smell of ozone to appear.

Right, I've just stripped it down again, removed every single last thing, and hit go.

sat there for a while, then gave 2 short beeps.

plugged in the keyboard and get the same 2 beeps, lights do their normal thing on keyboard.

Plugged in the old AGP card, 2 beeps

plugged the monitor in so I could see, runs through bios, tells me it can't find any drives, finally get 2 beeps

Took old AGP card out, put new AGP card in.

and get absolutely nothing. Not a thing. no beeps, no keyboard lights, nothing happens at all. Exactly the same as before.

So I look up the beep codes for the Phoenix Plus V1.10 bios, which tells me that post codes should be a series of 3 sets of beeps and that errors can be gleaned from these.

So getting 2 short ones hasn't really told me much

feck knows. Tried another power supply on a whim, no difference.

Contacted BFG again for their input into the situation, got the standard "send it back to us for replacement"

asked if it truly was 8x /4x compliant as per the 6800..... "send it back to us for replacement"

absolute total Lobbocks. I feckin HATE PC's, wish I'd never moved away from Mac.

[ajg31]

as already stated you should get it working with the old card, go into the bios and see if there is anything you can change regarding agp settings and aperture sizes

[jimmyjimjim]

Davi said:

The motherboard has absolutely no markings on it whatsoever, except "Dell" which is really helpful, but a mate sent me a bit of diagnostic software which came up with 4x max support from the motherboard.

Going to do another strip down and POST test tonight using the above and see what that comes up with, but WRT the graphics card itself, this bit of info from BFG here says 8x/4x compliant, which is also what the original 6800 that worked said, so I presumed that meant it would work in either. Is that not correct?

The link also says AGP v2.0, which is basically 4x. Hopefull. Yes, you are correct it SHOULD work in 4x or 8x modes.
As the board says Dell, what was the Dell pc model number originally? Start looking for updated BIOS versions would be my next vote.

[Mr Whippy]

Check bios for any 8x AGP related material.

If no luck, go to windows and get that app that gets bios data from mobo, and then check latest version and get bios update (also check AGP 8x/4x functionality, and do a google with your mobo and your gfx card choice to see if others have had issue)

If no luck, buy a new PC. Parts, relatively speaking, are cheaper than they have ever been for more than you need type specifications.

Dave

[Davi]

jimmyjimjim said:

Davi said:

The motherboard has absolutely no markings on it whatsoever, except "Dell" which is really helpful, but a mate sent me a bit of diagnostic software which came up with 4x max support from the motherboard.

Going to do another strip down and POST test tonight using the above and see what that comes up with, but WRT the graphics card itself, this bit of info from BFG here says 8x/4x compliant, which is also what the original 6800 that worked said, so I presumed that meant it would work in either. Is that not correct?

The link also says AGP v2.0, which is basically 4x. Hopefull. Yes, you are correct it SHOULD work in 4x or 8x modes.
As the board says Dell, what was the Dell pc model number originally? Start looking for updated BIOS versions would be my next vote.

Mr Whippy said:

Check bios for any 8x AGP related material.

If no luck, go to windows and get that app that gets bios data from mobo, and then check latest version and get bios update (also check AGP 8x/4x functionality, and do a google with your mobo and your gfx card choice to see if others have had issue)

If no luck, buy a new PC. Parts, relatively speaking, are cheaper than they have ever been for more than you need type specifications.

Dave

Got a bit of software to check the Mobo out, which lists the slot as AGP v2 as well. The Dell is a Dimension 8200, with the Mobo being noted in the data app simply as "Dell Dimension 8200". Bios is listed as Phoenix Rom Bios Plus V1.1 Rev A07. I started on the hunt for an updated bios last night but got hacked off when the Tag number returned the computer as an Optiplex GX725 or something like that

I'll try again later!

ETA: Just googled for people with similar problems - appears I'm not the only one! haven't found an answer yet though, just people saying they have exactly the same problem, and others saying they have the same combo running fine... joy.

Edited by Davi on Friday 21st September 09:52

[GregE240]

To be honest, you could upgrade this PC with the latest and greatest for around £200. You'd need RAM, a board (I'd recommend S775), a CPU and you could use your new shiny graphics card.

This board sounds out of date WRT RAM speed, CPU and the AGP slot speed. Whilst you may get it working, your RAM or CPU will soone become a bottleneck.

ETA: Its an ATX motherboard by all counts....

Edited by GregE240 on Friday 21st September 10:56

[Davi]

GregE240 said:

To be honest, you could upgrade this PC with the latest and greatest for around £200. You'd need RAM, a board (I'd recommend S775), a CPU and you could use your new shiny graphics card.

This board sounds out of date WRT RAM speed, CPU and the AGP slot speed. Whilst you may get it working, your RAM or CPU will soone become a bottleneck.

ETA: Its an ATX motherboard by all counts....

Edited by GregE240 on Friday 21st September 10:56

yeah but if I'm doing that I might as well spend the cash to get a much better machine

TBH I intend to get a new one anyway, but wanted to get this one running to use in the workshop so I don't have to trapse through the house to check things every 5 minutes, also to run the CNC stuff.

I've been googling all morning and have managed to turn up loads of people with Dell Dimensions that can't get this board to work at all, wish I'd tried that earlier! Also managed to get contact details for BFGeurope, who unlike their american counter parts are helpful, intelligent and actually seem to WANT to help! Think I'll just ask if they can downgrade the board to a known working configuration.

[Mr Whippy]

My mate just got mobo, ram, cpu and gfx for about £400

Core2Duo, 8800GTS, 2gig fast ram, heatsink/fan and an ok Asus board.

Already overclocked to nearly 3ghz from 2.33ghz, getting over 10k in 3DMark and generally cheap as chips for what is now an 'overkill' machine for almost everything out there today on anything but a stupidly big LCD screen.

Dave

[Davi]

Mr Whippy said:

My mate just got mobo, ram, cpu and gfx for about £400

Core2Duo, 8800GTS, 2gig fast ram, heatsink/fan and an ok Asus board.

Already overclocked to nearly 3ghz from 2.33ghz, getting over 10k in 3DMark and generally cheap as chips for what is now an 'overkill' machine for almost everything out there today on anything but a stupidly big LCD screen.

Dave

I'm speccing up a machine at the moment - I'll post it when I'm done, see what you reckon!

Now I'm dealing with BFGeurope things are starting to swing - chap seems most apologetic for all the hassle, and is sending out a slightly lower spec board to try that he believes shouldn't have any issues - it's actually a 512 rather than 256 card but only DDR2 rather than 3, and clock speed is slower. If it works, I don't really care what it is now!