Long live nVidia? Then what's this?

[halcyon]

I purchased this card for one of my rigs ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133177 ) in order to run all the Vista Aero eye candy as I enjoy a little OS eye candy. It got great reviews and the price was close to free. To my dissapointment, however, when I popped it in neither XP SP2 or Vista RC1 would boot, both just reboot as the OS goes into GUI mode (and the GPU becomes active, I imagine).

Wondering if the card was bad or flawed I brought it in to the office and installed it in the Dell Precision WKS 530 and it runs flawless alongside a GeForce MX4000 for a 3-monitor setup, the 6200 pushing dual 21" LCDs at max res. Hmmmm.... No, double hmmmm.....

So something's wrong with that rig at home...somewhere. The 6200 was replacing an ATI Radeon 9200SE ...that could not run Aero, hence its uselessness and necessary replacement.

Specs for the troubled rig:
Athlon 3000+ (not overclocked) straddling a Gigabye GA-K8U
fed by an
Antec 300W PSU
while snacking on a G-Skill PC3200 1GB and 2 x 80GB SATA HD & 1 x 20GB IDE

It's an office-type/test rig hence the weak specs.

Would this problem likely be caused by:
a) weak 300 watt PSU
b) flaky ATI drivers that are still on the system
c) the cheap mobo
d) none of the above

Any constructive advice & assistance is truly and greatly appreciated.

P.S. In the meantime I'm going to try using an FX5200 to see if things are any better, but the 6200 is really the desired card, though a gamer I am not.

- The Order Odonata

 

[balister]

Probably the PSU. 300W is just not enough nowadays.

 

[danny9894]

a) PSU will need to upgraded anyways when you get a DX10 card (If you are a gamer)
b) Download Driver Cleaner and you can get rid of any thing left over by the ATi drivers
c) As long as it works you'll be fine

 

[niz]

I purchased this card for one of my rigs ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133177 ) in order to run all the Vista Aero eye candy as I enjoy a little OS eye candy. It got great reviews and the price was close to free. To my dissapointment, however, when I popped it in neither XP SP2 or Vista RC1 would boot, both just reboot as the OS goes into GUI mode (and the GPU becomes active, I imagine).

Wondering if the card was bad or flawed I brought it in to the office and installed it in the Dell Precision WKS 530 and it runs flawless alongside a GeForce MX4000 for a 3-monitor setup, the 6200 pushing dual 21" LCDs at max res. Hmmmm.... No, double hmmmm.....

So something's wrong with that rig at home...somewhere. The 6200 was replacing an ATI Radeon 9200SE ...that could not run Aero, hence its uselessness and necessary replacement.

Specs for the troubled rig:
Athlon 3000+ (not overclocked) straddling a Gigabye GA-K8U
fed by an
Antec 300W PSU
while snacking on a G-Skill PC3200 1GB and 2 x 80GB SATA HD & 1 x 20GB IDE

It's an office-type/test rig hence the weak specs.

Would this problem likely be caused by:
a) weak 300 watt PSU
b) flaky ATI drivers that are still on the system
c) the cheap mobo
d) none of the above

Any constructive advice & assistance is truly and greatly appreciated.

P.S. In the meantime I'm going to try using an FX5200 to see if things are any better, but the 6200 is really the desired card, though a gamer I am not.

- The Order Odonata

A $350 card ain't gonna cut it for Vista, let alone a $35 card. You do realise that in order to run Vista Aero with all the eye candy you *need* a DX10 card? They're not even out yet. The new nVidias are gonna cost like $450 and $650. Yet another reason to stay with XP or move to Linux.

Also you do realise that any $35 card will be totally worthless for gaming, right?

 

[aczisny]

You should really remove all of the ati drivers before trying to install your nvidia card. When windows boots, it is loading the ati drivers to run your nvidia card which, unsurprisingly, doesn't work.

 

[kamel5547]

Aero does not require DX10, it only requires DX9.

Try the driver cleaner, then try reinstalling the Nvidia drivers. My guess is that the problem is driver related as I don't think the power draw is too much... You could try calculating it here or somewhere else:

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

It all depends... I would lean toward the drivers at this point, with just the items listed I only hit 224 Watts which gives you some headroom for PCI cards etc.

 

[Heyyou27]

A $350 card ain't gonna cut it for Vista, let alone a $35 card. You do realise that in order to run Vista Aero with all the eye candy you *need* a DX10 card? They're not even out yet. The new nVidias are gonna cost like $450 and $650. Yet another reason to stay with XP or move to Linux.

Also you do realise that any $35 card will be totally worthless for gaming, right?

You're joking right? Aero isn't nearly as graphically intensive as you're making it out to be, but it does require a Direct X 9 graphics card. The only thing on Vista that will need a Direct X 10 card for "all the eye candy" will be games, such as Crysis, Halo 2, and UT2007.

 

[halcyon]

Thank you ALL for the cool advice. Funny enough, the FX5200 (PCI) worked right off the bat and I'm using it now (didn't realize its got 256MB of DDR as opposed to the 6200's 128 of DDR2). I did install the latest (I believe) Vista nVdia ForceWare (96.33) and its fine.

I'm not a gamer, not smart enough for that anymore, so I'll not be spending $250 on a video card. I wonde why the 5200 PCI card works like a charm and runs Aero fine but the 6200 flaked out. I'ma going to play with that. I'll try a driver cleaner for XP and I hope to get my hands on Vista RC2 w/in the next few days so we'll see.

You guys do rock. Thanks.

 

[halcyon]

Aero does not require DX10, it only requires DX9.

Try the driver cleaner, then try reinstalling the Nvidia drivers. My guess is that the problem is driver related as I don't think the power draw is too much... You could try calculating it here or somewhere else:

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

It all depends... I would lean toward the drivers at this point, with just the items listed I only hit 224 Watts which gives you some headroom for PCI cards etc.

I just really read this, that's great info. Thanks a ton!

 

[croc]

I purchased this card for one of my rigs ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133177 ) in order to run all the Vista Aero eye candy as I enjoy a little OS eye candy. It got great reviews and the price was close to free. To my dissapointment, however, when I popped it in neither XP SP2 or Vista RC1 would boot, both just reboot as the OS goes into GUI mode (and the GPU becomes active, I imagine).

Wondering if the card was bad or flawed I brought it in to the office and installed it in the Dell Precision WKS 530 and it runs flawless alongside a GeForce MX4000 for a 3-monitor setup, the 6200 pushing dual 21" LCDs at max res. Hmmmm.... No, double hmmmm.....

So something's wrong with that rig at home...somewhere. The 6200 was replacing an ATI Radeon 9200SE ...that could not run Aero, hence its uselessness and necessary replacement.

Specs for the troubled rig:
Athlon 3000+ (not overclocked) straddling a Gigabye GA-K8U
fed by an
Antec 300W PSU
while snacking on a G-Skill PC3200 1GB and 2 x 80GB SATA HD & 1 x 20GB IDE

It's an office-type/test rig hence the weak specs.

Would this problem likely be caused by:
a) weak 300 watt PSU
b) flaky ATI drivers that are still on the system
c) the cheap mobo
d) none of the above

Any constructive advice & assistance is truly and greatly appreciated.

P.S. In the meantime I'm going to try using an FX5200 to see if things are any better, but the 6200 is really the desired card, though a gamer I am not.

- The Order Odonata

Vista does not have a requirement for dx 10 to run Aero, its only requirement for graphics is pixelshader 2.0 or better.

 

[halcyon]

As posted earlier, an old FX5200 seems to run Aero (with transparency, 3D Flip, etc.) just fine.