AGP video cards and the ECS L7VMM3 mobo

[neongrey]

I recently purchased a geforce 5700 personal cinema video card, which is an 8x AGP. My motherboard can only handle 4x, but I was assured that my video card would run at 4, as well as 8.

I installed the card, disabled the onboard video in my BIOS, turned the machine off, hooked the monitor to the new card, and restarted. I was given the beep code for display memory read/write failure (8 beeps, on an amibios), and my monitor went into standby mode. I was forced to clear the cmos to restore my display.

I then borrowed an ATI Radeon 9250, which outright states it can run at 4x/8x. I proceeded as before, installing the card, disabling onboard video, shutting down, connecting the monitor, and restarting. I had the same result of the 8 beeps and the standby mode.

I borrowed a PCI video card (an ancient mach64) just to test if my machine would boot running that, and it did, after disabling the onboard video.

I've heard there might be issues with the power supply (350 watts, but used and fairly cheap), but the fact that it runs fine with the PCI card leads me to think otherwise.

Does anyone have any idea what the issue might be?

 

[JustinPS]

The problem might be that your motherboard freaks out becuase the video card is telling it to run in 8x mode, and the motherboard can't handle that.

You said you can "install the card" and then disable the on-board video in the BIOS, but can you boot up with the card installed and with on-board video enabled? In other words, can you "install" the card, boot up using the on-board video, and install the card's drivers?

If you can't, then post back with exactly what you do (more precise wording might help, since "install" could mean a lot of things). However, if you can, then try this:

Install the video card into the AGP slot and boot up using the on-board video. Don't disable it. Now boot up using the on-board and install the ATI drivers that came with the video card (or just download them from the ATI website and install them). Restart--don't disable the on-board yet--and right-click on the desktop, select Properties, the the Settings tab, then click Advanced. Are all the ATI tabs there? Hopefully they are (I would assume they would be after you installed the drivers), and if they are, then click the SMARTGART tab. Do you see the AGP settings slider? Move it down a notch (so if it's at 8x, which it might be, then move it down to 4x, and if it's at 4x, move it down to 2x). Reboot and go into BIOS and disable the on-board video, and boot back up with the monitor plugged into the video card. Hopefully you won't get the beeps. If you do, boot back up with the on-board and post back (actually, post back either way).

-JustinPS

 

[neongrey]

Yeah, by install I mean physically install, and nothing else. Sorry about that. I'll get the card(s) back tomorrow (my dad wanted it if I couldn't use it), as well as talk to the service department where I bought my machine.

So I'll post results tomorrow.

 

[neongrey]

Ended up taking it back, got a PCI card instead. Which is having issues of its own...