The radeon 9600 mystery... a quest for some video output

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kinkytwinky

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Hi there, i am absolutely bamboozled by my graphics card, and iam not ruling out that it could be broken.

I have a blasted packard bell from hell, but years of battling with this machine has led to a new peace. today, war broke out again!

It has a celeron 3.2 ghz, an ASUS P5S800 motherboard and a gig of ram.

The system came with no graphics card and i used for a long time, the onboard graphics. one day however i realised how bad they were, when it turned to night on GTA vice city, and i couldnt see where i was going when driving as it was too dark, which led to many failed, blundered and embarrasingly short police chases.

So i decided to upgrade, at first my freind lent me a positively ancient Nvidia Geforce TI 4200. After realising i had to change the BIOS to prefer the AGP slot rather than onboard, it worked fine and i got drivers for it.

This was however, just a temporary solution, so i recently purchased an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (256mb) with an arctic cooling system. This should be fully compatible with my system, and it fits in where it should fine, and when the system is powered up the fan spins, so obviously power is going through to it.

Prior to installation is uninstalled all the drivers for the Nvidia 4200, i then set the bios to prefer the AGP slot. i followed the manual and installed the card correctly, its a two slotter, but it still went in ok. upon turning on the computer there is NO OUTPUT, nothing, nada, bugger all from my monitor (and i made sure it was plugged in well) from both the AGP card, AND the onboard.

I then unplugged the card, rebooted, and set the BIOS to prefer onboard. hoping i could install drivers in windows with the device plugged in and not being used as the primary video output. i reinserted the card and rebooted BAM! nothing again, from both the onboard or the card, even though in thoery the video output shouldnt be touching the card anyway.

So i unplugged the card AGAIN and uninstalled the drivers for the onboard, the generic SIS VGA card drivers and then installed some catylyst suite which apparently has something to do with the card, i ran a driver installer from the disk and installed microsoft .NET framework (which the catalyst suite needed) so, i then reinserted the card, powered up the computer and AGAIN no video output from either the motherboard or the card itself.

Long story short: absolutely no video out put when the card is inserted, and power is going to the card.


so iam utterly perplexed and fed up, so ive reinserted the Nvidia Geforce TI 4200, which is allowing me to make this post :)

any ideas? i really dont want to have to dismiss the card as i need an upgrade to run Studio tools for my course.

Cheers, and thanks for reading my rambling nonsence

-Callum
 
does the new card have an extra power connection? most new cards will need a power connection straight from the power supply, sometimes more than 1 if you have a super high end card ;)
 
Sounds like bad news to me im afraid...

I have a packard bell pc. with sis 650 onboard graphics. which i upgraded to a radeon 9600 pro 256 mb. Though its only a single slotter (agp), maybe the artic cooler?? my card requires no extra power connections, and works well just jamming it in the slot and turning it on, no bios alterations, no drivers, no disabling on board graphics... windows recognises it and sets up a general driver for me. Of course the full catalyst control suite and up to date drivers improves screen resolution and games compatibilty, but the point im trying to make here is this card for me was pretty much plug and play. sounds like your card is dead sorry :( Try it in your friends pc. see how it gos.. Good luck :)
 
the card has a 3 pin plug to the left of the plug that powers the fan, however depsite the fact that its pins are spaced evenly compated to what you would get in a regular computer power supply, it is way too obscure and having only 3 and not 4 pins makes me think that the card only needs the one power source.
I was also told that the card shouldnt need secondary power as secondary power supplies didnt start being used by ATI until the 9800 model (?)

What baffles me most is that when the card is plugged in no video output is delivered by the motherboards onboard graphics too, even when the bios is set to use the onboard specifically. i would have thought that even a dead card wouldnt be capable of doing that. that is probably a clue to what is happening. as soon as i can get the chance, iam gonna try to install it on another AGP system, my freind has upgraded to PCI-E so i cant try it there.

It had been tested prior to my purchase and was working fine, so i dont think it should be broken, especially as the power is getting through to it and the fan is spinning.

any more ideas guys?
 
It sounds like your motherboard and video card has compatibility issues, so the two may not work together. I don't know of any mojo that will allow your video card to work with an incompatible motherboard. If when you install a video card and boot your computer you don't get any motherboard post messages to scroll up your monitor you either have a dead video card, compatibility issues, or improper video settings in the BIOS. You have a simple BIOS so I doubt that you have set something wrong. That leaves only dead card or compatibility issues. :( Make sure the card still works in a friends computer if you can and then get something different.

Oh, ATI started demanding extra video card power with at least the 9700.
 
well given the relative modernity of the motherboard, i find it hard to believe that they may be incompatible, it supports AGP 8X and that is what the card is, ill do some searching and find out.

The BIOS isnt that simple, there may be settings that need to be changed further, and given that the card is powered up, and that the motherboard output is disabled by its presence, i cant be certain that its dead.

Ill have another go at it at some point, at least have a proper look at the BIOS and see if there are any other options, i think testing it in a freinds comp is a definate must.

cheers
 
Conflicts

Why are you doing this ? Quote :

(and i made sure it was plugged in well) from both the AGP card, AND the onboard. :rolleyes:

In add remove,remove all ATI entries.Disable Onboard.
Restart computer.Insert ATI cd.Do a recommended install.
Note : The monitor must be connected to the ATI.
Is it an LCD or CRT ?
p.s.I have an ATI 9600 and a 22" LCD,connected by the DVI-D CABLE.
Stay with ATI.You need Net Framework 2.0
But systems like yours and Dell are HELL.
I CUSTOM BUILD MINE.:)
 
Right.. now ive got my pc reassembled ill tell you what i discovered. Plugging my monitor in to the original vga socket and not the graphics card does stop the normal ouput working. i got black screen followed by a no input message from my monitor. The card was still in the machine so it must overide it. The 3 little pins next to my fan power cable have a jumper across the 2 furthest from the fan plug. Is yours still there? i think its a memory selector jumper.
 
Hi zipperman

"In add remove,remove all ATI entries.Disable Onboard.
Restart computer.Insert ATI cd.Do a recommended install."

this is the first thing i did, like i said the problem is that when the ATI card is inserted there no video out put from it. so when i get to the stage where i instert the ATI card, i get no out put from which to install my drivers.

and cheers for the useful advice zipperman but before you gloat to much about having the option to custom build your comp lol i didnt get to choose my packard bell from hell, beggars cant be choosers.

Fimbles, thanks for making the effort to have a look at your card for me, and im interested to know a littlemore about what your 3 pin plug next to the fan power cable are doing? in my card they are not connected to anything and there is a little lump of plastic connecting the two pins that are furthest from the card, is this the jumper of which you speak?

Iam gonna give it another go now, wish me luck! lol
 
Yups thats the jumpers and by the sounds of it they are set correctly. You switch the little plastic thing between the left and centre and or right and center pins to select either 128mb or 256 mb versions. well... the factory does :) hmmmm. ill try to think of something else :) good luck :)
 
You don't need a video card driver to be loaded for your motherboard to POST. All video cards will display simple graphics during the boot sequence for diagnostic and maintenance reasons. The only thing I can think of your motherboard may allow you to control is the AGP aperture size, and I couldn't tell anything more than test the various settings it gives you.
 
Cheers for that cinders, well that further adds to my confusion, as no graphics or indeed video are displayed upon boot up.

basically ive just been back to the start and uninstalled and disabled EVERYTHING i then rebooted, ran BIOS and went through the three options regarding selection of VGA adapter

PCI
AGP
onboard AGP

now obviously i wasnt expecting much from PCI as theres only a firewire and tv card in there lol but nether the less i restarted the computer with each setting with the card plugged in. No video output from the card. Out of curousity, i also plugged the monitor into the onboard slot each time, and no output from that either. EVEN when the BIOS was set to use the onboard, and NOT the AGP.

So whatever the card is doing seems to be stopping the onboard from working too.

I just read an interesting thing on another forum

http://www.rage3d.com/board/archive/index.php?t-33776750.html

"You will want to install the newest chipset/mobo drivers before you install the video card driver. Part of the chipset driver set is the GART driver, which tells your computer how to efficiently use the AGP slot, and is needed for your video card to install and operate properly."

if i update my BIOS / GART drivers, do you think this will make a difference? to be honest even if they were out of date i should still be getting something.

given that the fan is whiring away quite happily and the card is having an effect on the onboard graphics, i cant dismiss it as being dead until ive tried it in another system.

Fimbles, thanks again for your help, what spec is your packard bell? we might have the same model lol
 
Have you named your OS ? To add to Cinders,if you have XP and are connected to the right video source you should get a reasonable vga
video result to continue with The Accelerated drivers and Catalyst Control
Panel.Before you do this check your Motherboard cd for an installation
named AGP driver.My asus board has it in The drivers folder.
There are others listed,so read the MBD manual.
My friend who repairs PC's says this is installed for any choice of AGP.
i don't have internal,but i installed it.
Haveing a Motherboard Manual and cdrom is a must have.
Re "out of date" They won't be unable to get you started,if they came with the card purchase.
Then you can do a driver update.An update is not a complete installation.
Read the update drivers instructions.I just did mine OK.
 
apparently 3.2V AGP drivers are not supported by my motherboard, given that this card has an additional arctic cooling system, is it possible that its drawing double the voltage? iam going to see if i can update the AGP drivers for it, cheers for the advice zipperman
 
Well ok,but remember i have the same ATI card .And not these problems.

You have to update the cd drivers.
The ones for your OS.
 
yeah the CD drivers for windows will need updating but i should still be getting some video during POST. iam gonna try it in another PC tonight, ill let you know how it goes
 
The only thing that might fix this problem would be an updated BIOS. 3.2 volt AGP cards are very old and you don't have one because 8 speed AGP slots are 1.5 volt and so are 8 speed AGP cards. As far as I can tell your motherboard and video card are designed for each other, but you are having compatibility issues that may be fixed by a BIOS update. There is a BIOS update for video card compatibility issues as long as you motherboard is actually a ASUS P5S800-VM. Sorry I should have suggested this before now. The video card compatibility issue BIOS is very old, so you may want to update to the latest BIOS instead, and you will need to know that you have a socket 775 motherboard to use the ASUS Navigation Wizard.
 
My specs.. shamefull as they are.

Packard bell imedia.
2.8 celly.
1 gig ram.
rad 9600 pro 256 mb.

After rebooting, with a standard windows xp disk. no sp2 or anything. No ati drivers whatsoever. i still get a screen up on my graphics card. Though in a low resolution. its either mb drivers or a dodgy graphics card :)
 
I think it has to do with it being a PRO version I have same card with stock fan it works in neither of my old boards ( epox or abit ) but works flawless in a new Abit board that already has a 1650 ATI Haven't quite got the answer why yet but i think the other boards may not support 1.5 4X OR .8 8x or have the universal slot that the card requires
 
Quote asus motherboard manual

Cinders said:
The only thing that might fix this problem would be an updated BIOS. 3.2 volt AGP cards are very old and you don't have one because 8 speed AGP slots are 1.5 volt and so are 8 speed AGP cards. As far as I can tell your motherboard and video card are designed for each other, but you are having compatibility issues that may be fixed by a BIOS update. There is a BIOS update for video card compatibility issues as long as you motherboard is actually a ASUS P5S800-VM. Sorry I should have suggested this before now. The video card compatibility issue BIOS is very old, so you may want to update to the latest BIOS instead, and you will need to know that you have a socket 775 motherboard to use the ASUS Navigation Wizard.
Click to expand...

AGP slot,
Install only 1.5 V or 0.8 V AGP Cards.3.3 V is not supported.
Remember i have the same Video Card.so it's a 1.5.V
So that leaves finding out your what your Motherboard supports.
 
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