Geforce FX 5200 query? (graphics card experts please help)

[andygibbs]

Hi,

I have recently bought a new XFX Nvidia Geforce FX5200 256MB PCI graphics card. My PC is up to minimum spec in all except for PSU power. The recommended is 300W and mine is only 250W. Could there be any consequences if i continue to use my existing power supply - what would they be? Is it necessary to upgrade my PSU. Please advise.

thanks.

 

[Merc14]

It's dependent on your other power needs but a 250w PSU should have no problem running a 5200.

 

[andygibbs]

my reason for asking is that when i installed my graphics card, my wireless network which i connect to through another PCI slot, stopped functioning. Any ideas?

 

[Merc14]

Could you have knocked something loose like the network card? FWIW I have a Dell w/ a 260w PSU and it has no problems running a 6800 AGP vanilla, sound card, network card, 1 hard drive and dvd. It came w/ a 128mb 5200 AGP.

 

[andygibbs]

No thats not really a possibility, I've tried taking them in and out multiple times. Also, just to point out my graphics card is PCI (I have no AGP slot), thats why I was wondering if maybe the graphics card is stealing power from the wireless card seeing as their both PCI cards. Any other suggestions?

 

[kadath]

5200 problems

OK. This could get dirty.

I just bought a 5200 myself, and had to reinstall PowerDVD to get it to play movies properly. Works great now.

But first let's try something simple. Sounds like you might have a COM or IRQ problem.

Get your drivers for the Graphics Card and the Wireless on your HDD. Make a Directory and just dump them into it. One sub-directory for each so you can point your system to it if they are needed. Much easier than popping disks in and out.

Move your PCI Graphics Card to the First PCI slot. Move your Wireless Card to the LAST slot. PCI is still the poor sister of engineered design in computing, so it never really works as well as it is supposed to. It is better than ISA (does anyone remember manually configuring COM channels and IRQ settings??.....)

Restart your computer normally and go through the detected hardware junk. Point your computer to the drivers on your hard drive.

Restart your computer again and see if everything works. If it doesn't.....

Restart your computer, get into your BIOS and choose 'Load Fail Safe Defaults' or whatever it is called in your BIOS. It won't give the the most popular settings, but it will start your computer. Hit save and exit (Yes on confirmation).

Let your computer boot normally. Go to System Information under the System Tools menu (should be under Accessories) and find the Problem Devices option. If anything to do with PCI, PCI bridge, PCI to ISA bridge or something like that is listed, it's probably a BIOS problem.

Try removing those devices under SYSTEM PROPERTIES and restarting. No matter what, remove your graphics adapter and your wireless card using the Add/Remove option if available or under Control Panel/System.

Get back into BIOS settings.

Make sure you have graphics adapter selected as PCI if the option is available. Make sure all other PCI settings are on AUTO. Trust me. Your BIOS is better at this than you are. Or I am for that matter.

Now, your computer will reinstall these when you reboot. Please note. It is much better to do a full system power off when doing these things. Turn the power off on your power supply too, wait 5 seconds, then restart. Don't rush the power-on. It takes 3-5 seconds for the coils on your MB to lose all power.

If you still have a problem, Go to System information under Accessories. (Sorry, I like doing things the old fashioned way). Find the Problem Devices tab and select it. If anything appears, you will need to Uninstall it using the Add/Remove option in Windows.

Your only other option is to manually remove ALL system devices and let your computer re-detect them all. It a pain. I know. But work through it. It will assign IRQ and COM ports in the order they are detected. And prevent conflict.

Now. If nothing works, check your power supply. I tend to get a new one every 2 years myself, because they somtimes get a little wonky with the power output. One of the lines might not be pushing the volts it is supposed to, and if that is the case, you have to be careful. You could burn out the CPU, MB, or even your HDD....You never know where that DC power is going if your power supply is geting old.

The other awful option is to reinstall your version of Windows.

I'll check back in a few days to see how you did. GL. I just fought with a new Nvidia Chipset MB and the 5200 I just bought to get everything working right. I think it was the hardest upgrade I have ever done....but now that everrything is working it is working very well.

ijust wanted to add that no matter what the 'suggested' PS is supposed to be....unless you have ALL your PCI, RAM, and VGA slots filled, if you have 2 masters and 2 slaves on your IDEs, it is VERY unlikely you will ever run into power supply problems with a properly working PS.

The ONLY caveat to this is the Voltage requirements of the newest Video cards, and a reminder that 2 256MB RAM cards will use more power than 1 512MB card. Since you are using a PCI Video Card....It is unlikely in the extreme that PS is the issue with a good PS.

One thing you may also want to try, because PCI uses IRQ settings that can be shared (I tried to help you avoid that by moving your Graphics card and Wireless as far from each other as possible on the MB - and your COM ports are also unlikely to conflict), is to change your BIOS setting for graphics to 'cacheable'. If you cache your Video, it will reference the addresses less frequently.

 

[andygibbs]

Thanks, i'll try what you've suggested. Just thought I'd mention that all of my PCI slots are full, all my RAM slots are full, I have a master and a slave on IDE channel 2, just a master on IDE 1. Could this be causing power problems?

 

[kadath]

5200 problems

Thanks, i'll try what you've suggested. Just thought I'd mention that all of my PCI slots are full, all my RAM slots are full, I have a master and a slave on IDE channel 2, just a master on IDE 1. Could this be causing power problems?

OK... everyone here mentions what CPU they have, ram, blah blah blah. Nobody really cares about that junk. The important info is what you just mentioned.

All your PCi and Ram slots are full. Thats a lot of power requirements.

Plus you are using a PCI graphics card. It should be obvious, but Graphics cards should NEVER be sharing COM or IRQ with anything else.

I'm guessing you are maxing an older system. No problem tho.

There are a couple things you can do.

If your MB has onboard sound, and you have a sound card on one of your PCI slots, get rid of the PCI sound card. You will not notice a difference in the sound quality unless you are using a surround sound speaker system.

If you are using anything funky like a parallel PCI card (so your Printer and Scanner can operate separately or something like that) get rid of it. Slave them properly. The ten extra minutes a week you spend just freed up 15% of your system resources.

If you have a USB PCI card. Get rid of it. USB is nice, but it traps about 5% of your system resources permamently for every USB channel you have installed. In other words, those KB and Mouse ports don't look so bad since they only use resources when they need them.

Basically get rid of every piece of PCI hardware that you can, while still getting all of the features....

Now here is the low down on PCI slots.....

Your computer has 4 COM channels. They work on your PCI on 1-3, and 2-4 slots....so if your graphics card is on slot 1, whatever is on slot 3 probably won't work. Ya. You have 5 PCI slots. Here's the OS trick. Shared resources. But one of your COM ports and a few of your IRQ's just got eaten up by your graphics card. Doesn't work so well now.

Of course it's not that simple, as there could also be an IRQ conflict with the same device that doesn't work, or even another. It all depends on the routing capabilities of your MB. Some are better than others. Your Operating System is Irrelevant here. Windows is pretty stupid really. Giving Steroids to a 90 year old man won't have any really positive effects.....

Hope you find something to remove from your PCI.

Now for your RAM. You didn;t specify the RAM, but I'm guessing you are using parallel RAM cards. 128mb, 256MB, 64MB, whatever. I just mean that whatever you have is probably the same in each slot.

I can't help you there, except to say that if you live in north america, I happen to have a 256MB 133MHz DIMM card I am not using and I would send it to you if you want it. If your system will support it. RAM is very forgiving of MHZ, but as long as you can run 100MHz it will be ok for you.

I just donated a previous MB to another needy soul and the RAM was extra. If the RAM card I have frees up 2 of your slots (remove any ram from the 3rd slot if you have one, regardless of the total RAM). you will save a lot of power requirements. And it will run MUCH faster, even if it is lower total.

To answer your question, yes you are using a lot of power. Probably too much safely for your PS.

I already suggested you get a new PS. DO it. YOu are a high power user and shouldn;t risk burning out your other system components.

Ya know, I used to do this tech support thing for a living (in person, I wasn't some call center geek with a Hollywood script). One thing I've learned. If there is no hardware problem, there is no problem that can't be solved.

Cheers.

Just noting....if you have 1 master on your primary IDE and 1 master and one slave on your secondary IDE, it's a little unorthodox, but it should be ok.

It might cause you problems down the road tho. Most Primary IDE slot have IDE cabling made for them because it is assumed that most users will never have more than 3 IDE devices (I have 5, (DVD, CDR, HDD, HDD, LS120 - Much better for booting system files if I have to, and doubles as a floppy) but we'll leave that for another time).

2 devices on Primary and 1 on secondary is the usual.

As a result, MB are designed with this in mind.

Usually, you can stick any old IDE cable on your secondary slot, but it is almost always the case that you need a specific IDE cable for your primary. My old IDE Primary cables do NOT work on my current #1 IDE slot. Well, they do, but they have a hard time picking up secondary devices. Usually they work very well as secondary devices, unless I have something from HP, DELL, COMPAQ. Those companies only wanted to sell computers. They never knew how to make them. Their cabling will not work with anything else. The PINs are all wrong. And I dont't have the patience to tear their crap apart and redo it, even tho it wouldn't be that hard (with a little research).

ryleh17 @ hotmail. com

is my email address. delete all the spaces. seems to be the only way to get it to work here. Too bad they don;t want to encourage us to communicate.

 

[edp873]

FX5200 & Power Supply

Kadath .... (et. al.)

I have twin nieces who own Dell Dimension 2300 PCs with 200W power supplies. They want to be able to play SIMs2, but according to EA, they need a video card with a heftier chip, eg. GEForce FX 5200. It seems that all the cards carrying the required chipsets demand 250W power supplies.

Their PCs do not have significant power requirements. They have one 30GB UATA hard drive, and will have a wireless adapter card. The PCs have integrated audio. To me this appears to be a very meager power drain. Do you think these 200W PCs can handle a video card that requires a 250W power supply?

I realize that a more robust power supply would be an asset, but remember, when there are twins, you gotta buy two of EVERYthing!

Thanks
EdP

 

[kadath]

200W PS should be ok

As you say your nieces computers don't have high power requirements. These systems will be ok with the new VC.

If you start plugging in other HDD and CD/DVD burners, or peripherals without external PS (such as USB DSL modems) that could change. Most 200W PS are sold with 'starter' systems that have no high-end peripherals.

The requirement for a larger PS comes from the fact that most people who get nice Video Cards are also heavy power users...

But. one thing. The PS will handle what you are doing, but you need to make sure you aren;t going to damage the VC or the MB.

Check the Voltage to the AGP slots. Old VC slots are 3.3. New ones are 1.5 or less. If the MB's are less then 3 years old they should be ok, but just check to make sure. On many MB the voltage is stamped right beside the AGP slot.

If you have doubts go check out the MB website and see compatible VC.

 

[edp873]

Kadath ...

Thanks for the quick response.

There's probably something somewhere on their PCs that indicate when they were built - I'll have to look next time I visit. The PCs were purchased in December 2002, so their build date would probably be pretty close to that 3-year period you mention.

Their PCs have PCI slots - no AVG slot. The PCs have a Dell MB and I can't find anywhere on the Dell site that lists details such as slot voltages. Any other suggestions on finding MB-VC compatibility?

EdP
Thanks again for your help.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Incompatible AGP cards are usually physically incompatible, too.