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On 3/15/2011 1:30 AM, mike wilson wrote:
On 15/03/2011 06:44, Walter Gilbert wrote:
Hi all,
I've encountered a problem that I was hoping some of the more
technologically experience among the group might be able to help me
with. I'm in the process of trying to Frankenstein another couple of
years out of my already ancient PC by upgrading the video card. I've
already managed to max out the memory to 3GB and have added a 500 GB
hard drive. Now, I just need to upgrade the video from the pathetic
GeForce-2 32MB AGP card to the ATI Radeon X1600 PRO 512MB AGP card I
recently picked up from eBay.
Everything I've been able to unearth says that the card ought to be
compatible with my mother board, which Gigabyte nForce3 250 MCP AGP 8x.
I have a 400-watt power supply, so I'm fairly certain I'm getting enough
power to run the thing. Problem is, when I seat it into the AGP slot and
connect it the VGA, the thing simply will not boot and there is no
signal going to the monitor whatsoever, though there is power going to
the card and the fan is clearly operating. I tried disabling the current
drivers for the old card before installing it -- same result. I tried
installing the legacy drivers for the Radeon beforehand, as well --
which somehow managed to disable my USB wireless adapter until I ran a
system restore.
I've gone into the BIOS to see if there are any settings I might be able
to change -- voltage, manually enabling AGP 8x, etc., but have been
unable to find anything that would seem to be the problem.
Any ideas what may be my problem (aside from the fact that I'm using a
PC with Win XP, which there's not much I can do about at the moment?
Thanks!
Walt
Bet it's your power supply. Try to find an online power calculator to
see what your configuration needs. (ASUS has one but it may only
cover their products) Then assume that your 400W supply is about 60%
efficient (which is possibly generous) and see what the shortfall is.
Then you can work out how much nominal power you need. Add about 20%
for luck.
Frankenputers are good but you need to start at the back end. Then
you can go on virtually (ha!) permanently.
Thank, Mike.
That's what I was afraid of. I am running a few peripherals off that
power supply, so I'm probably not getting the best output to the card,
now that you mention it.
I really can't complain about this old thing. I plunked down a little
over $400 to have it built six years ago, and it's treated me a lot
better than I've treated it. Still zips along pretty well for the most
part, though I finally had to do something in order to deal with RAW and
TIF files, which I'm just going to have to do if I'm ever going to get
the most out of my camera.
Whelp! Off to the power supply store . . .
-- Walt
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