I just finished building my ideal video editing machine
with P4 3.06 Northwood and 2gb ram. It runs well with
on board graphics and has intel 845GE chipset with
the latest driver from intel. But when I come to install
Geforce 6600 (256) on AGP nothing works. Mostly it
won't POST - sometimes it does. By doing a lot of resets
I can get to XP welcome screen before it freezes. I
tried disabling on board graphics and then I had no
monitor and had to flash the bios to get my graphics
enabled by default. I only have a 220W psu (Its an
Ice Cube) but nothing else is running except HDD and
I've studied the reviews of this machine and it runs
other graphics card no problem. I see others on this
site had the same trouble - how did you sort it?

Hello and welcome to techspot!

I am pretty sure your problem is the PSU. Almost positive. A 220W psu running a 256Mb 6600?!

220Watt PSU, I didn't think they still made something that small, most definately your PSU. For $50 you can get a real PSU, look for Antec or OCZ.

Your P4 at 3GHz is pulling >100W, the video card wil pull half that again, then you have the HDD, fans etc. You'll need at least 450Watts.

My little PSU

Yes I know it's small but an Ice Cube doesn't have room for a normal size
psu. I did a proper wattage calculation on everything in there and it only
came to 260w so I thought I might get away with it....I just have a gut
feeling it is a software/driver problem though I agree the card might get
hungry for juice once it is doing some real work.

Ok 260W, so that's continuous power. Most cheapies qoute their power as a max (they can put this out for a few seconds or so) and their continuous power is more like 0.7X the rated power, so 260/0.7=372W. I said 450W for some nice safe comfey head room.

Cheers.

extra card?

So you have an extra video card you can toss in there for testing purposes?
That is the first thing i would try.
Also make sure the agp slot is 8x or agp Pro to match the card.
If you can look at your voltages for the agp slot to verify that it is correct. Not sure where to send you to to verify that one though.

Thanks. There are two voltage calculator sites I went to and they
both come out that I need about 230W only. The GeForce 6600 only
rates at 65W and I have only a HDD and three fans in there. I've got
enough power to install the damn thing even if it stalls under pressure.
Currently looking at bios settings as the possible culprits...if I get out
of this with my sanity intact I'll pass on any tips-

Your PSU is a 220W putting out a maximum (average) of 70% of that juice. In other words your PSU is actually only putting out about 154W.

You simply can't run a 6600 graphics card on that kind of power. No need to look any further, this is your problem.

OK my psu is stupidly small. Would anyone agree the future lies with smaller kit - who wants to house a tower case when the same can be got from a box that is small and portable? So I opted for an Ice Cube - it is elegant and beautifully built and runs a variety of external USB equipment with no fuss. Even with P4 3.06 (hyperthreading away) it stays cool and unfussed. Before I built it up I read four reviews from different sources and two of them ran Radeon 9800 pro cards with no problem - on the same 220W. That card is supposed to draw 54W and the GeForce 6600 (not GT) 58W at most.
Can anyone tell me who is making a 300+W psu which is small enough to fit in a cube? It will come in the future I am sure or I will just have to get someone to construct it for me.
It seems from several other similar posts here the GF 6600 problem has not been solved by getting more watts - annoying after buying a new 400W unit.
I got advice from the support site for my card that the card should be OK on 220W nominal supply but not much good for some games. I don't want it for games anyway. I just want to INSTALL it for now!

Well, I'm not sure what you can do with that custom PSU, but we're all pretty sure that 220W is not going to cut with that 6600GT card.

Did you, (can you) set the AGP to 4X in the BIOS (as opposed to 8X)? Some mobos just go weird when you set 8X AGP. Disconnect any case fans for now, but NOT the CPU fan , leave that fan running. Try again, but I'm sure you'll have the same response, that 220W is just not enough power. Can you temporarily connect a regular PSU to the mobo and HDD externally (if the cables are long enough that is)? This way you'd at least know if the prob is under powered system.

Hmm I've been having the EXACT same problem with my 6600 AGP

I have a 2ghz 512mb RAM and a Audigy LS installed along with my 6600.

I have a 350w PSU that I bought as the card says it only needs 300w and Im not running much else in there. A friend and numerous PC store staff assured me that my PSU was enough, and recommended I install Motherboard drivers. Which I did but still no joy. I'm not really privvy to shelling out another £50 for a larger PSU but I've tried everything else.

Well I'm glad to hear there's yet another with this problem. On the PSU subject I asked the support dept of the card supplier about whether the card will run with a 220W supply and they said, I quote "If you can give me more information about your BIOS settings I can advise you further, as for your PSU, it should be ok for windows use but for high end games you will have a problem I have a feeling the problem lies in your system BIOS". ---So I sent all my bios settings to them and the reply was "Everything in your BIOS seems ok - your card maybe faulty. Please re-insert your card and try again. "
I've tried and tried in every way and combination possible. I really wonder about the quality of the card so I'm taking it back to the retailer so they can demonstrate it running in another machine, hopefully. IF it goes OK then I will hook up a much bigger PSU and try again but I'll be surprised if that is the cure. Watch this space...
Meanwhile a question - Did you get warning beeps when first installing the card? I had to keep resetting to get a POST with the card in place and things halted at that stage. Impossible to enter the bios with the card in the slot (AGP).

When I first installed the card I was only running a 250w PSU, the card wouldnt boot at all. I went back to the store and had the card replaced and bought a 350w PSU. Which worked for the first couple of boots. But then the startup would go as far as the welcome screen before going black. Upon the advice of a friend I installed the new Motherboard and Graphics card drivers, cleared the ECDS, everything, I can only think it must be either:

1. The PSU
2. Motherboard incompatibility
3. A problem with 845 chipsets and this card.

Im going to try installing the latest GFX card drivers again, as I have done so since about a week after I got the card (mid 2005).

I think it could be the 845 Chipset, which I have too. I had slightly more success with getting the card as far as the Welcome screen BEFORE I installed the latest chipset driver. I think I will roll back to the previous.

By the way I see the Apple G5 comes with the GeForce 6600 installed..

More later.

Well, The card got returned for the retailer to test it - they said it was fine on one of their machines. I went on trying to install it and to be sure of no software conflict I reinstalled the O.S..with no drivers for the on board graphics.
Fitting the card caused a full stop after the memory test every time. So I went and bought the ATI Radeon 9550 and popped it in and sailed through the installation. Anyone want to buy a Sparkle GeForce 6600 - cheap?

By the way, I got a 350W PSU and it made no difference.......It wouldn't fit
in the case so I went back to the 220W.