GeForce 4 MX440 on Asus P4B-LA

[eternallight569]

Hi everyone:

I have an HP Pavilion 7955 (1.5GHz Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD), which according to HP has the following motherboard:

ASUS P4B-LA (Amazon)

Pictures seem to visually confirm what I have inside my case.


I want to replace the default 32MB TNT2 AGP card with the following:

Gforce4 MX440 128MB 8x/4x AGP card

At least, that's how it was advertised (8x/4x).


The trouble, however, is this...

Everything works fine when the TNT2 is in the AGP slot. When I replace it with the Geforce4, the computer gives me beeping noises on startup and gives me a blank screen. It won't even display the BIOS POST, and the monitor's LED flashes as if it isn't even receiving a signal. When I put the TNT2 back in, all is well.

I know it's not the Geforce4, as it works fine on another machine.

The motherboard doesn't have on-board video, so there's no way for me to troubleshoot this. Does anyone know what's going on? Help!

 

[dmill89]

Did you download and install the latest BIOS?

Aside from that there are only two things I can think of.
1. The new card draws too much power for your PSU to run.
2. The card is not "playing nice" with your older motherboard. The TNT2 is a 2x/4x card where as the MX440 is a 4x/8x card. In theory your motherboard should work with the mx440 if the listed specs are correct since it has 4x support, some older motherboards have issues with 4x/8x cards.

 

[eternallight569]

The latest BIOS is the 2001 version, which is installed.

The PSU is not the issue, as I covered that base by swapping out the original PSU for a 500W one. Still no difference.

I think it just might be the AGP version incompatibility, although - as you pointed out - the card and port *should* overlap at 4x.

Perhaps the version of the card I have simply isn't backwards compatible with 4x as was advertised? Or perhaps the P4B-LA's AGP port simply won't play with anything that's not 4x/2x?

Either way, I've given up on trying to make the two work together. Thanks for the reply, though!