Inital Bios Post - have to use AGP? or can use PCIe card?

you wont have to use a different card to POST


Have a look at the trouble shooting thread at the top of this mb

What model motherboard did you get??? Also, the video card you have IS a PCIe card.... ??? Is that what your saying???

Need more specifics to help.

P35 chipset does not support AGP, you must use PCI or PCIe.

the motherboard will be smart enough to use whatever video card you hook up. Just go into the BIOS on the first boot and set it to PCIe and all the other options to your liking

Sorry, I meant to basically ask - is a PCI card required for inital POST boot to set bios, or can I use a PCIe card? I have PCIe card 9600GT (9000 series manufactured like a year after motherboard came out). I think dormatderek might be right. After following troubleshooting stuff like 3 times, still cant do initial POST boot.

After only plugging in processor (Pentium D 830) with CPU power and CPU fan plugged to motherboard, plugging in mobo power, installing 1 stick PC2-4200 DDR2 533Mz, plugging in video card with PCIe 4 pin to power supply, and plugging in power switch to motherboard, when i turn on there are No beeps from motherboard, only cpu fan runs and video card fan runs. I think the mobo is DOA. If no inital beeps, does that mean its DOA to begin with??

motherboard is MSI P35 Neo-F LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Troubleshooting says:

Verify that video card is supported
• Many of the newer chipsets will not support 3.3v AGP cards, only 1.5v AGP cards can be used on many of the P4 chipsets.
• Motherboards that require 1.5v AGP spec will list requirement in manual.
• Check with video card manufacture or verify “Golden Finger” (figure below) to determine if video card is 1.5v or 3.3v AGP spec.

Please help, do yall think the mobo is dead to begin with? or maybe the video card is not compatible for POST and messing stuff up?

First of all, your board DOESN'T support AGP. It's a PCIe, PCI slot motherboard. Possibly related to the P35 chipset as Crashman stated.

The MB should actually boot from either a card in the PCIe or PCI slots. I believe you could install TWO video cards, one a PCIe and one PCI to drive multiple monitors. In the BIOS you would then specify which video card is the Primary card to use at boot up.

As for the memory your using, MSI's website says that board has a FSB 800/1066/1333 MHz. And a Dual channel DDR2 667/800 memory interface.

I think your 533MHz memory could be the problem, although you would think you should get some error beeps. I think you need a minimum of 667MHz memory, I would get 800MHz memory minimum myself.

As for not hearing any beeps, did you hook up a speaker to the speaker header pins on the MB. I looked at pictures of that MB and it doesn't have a built in speaker.

Easy answer: The troubleshooting guide was written for an older board. If MSI published it in relation to your board, they did so by mistake.

The problem could be that the board doesn't support Pentium D's, though I've only seen that in recent boards. Core 2's use lower voltage and don't require as much amperage.

On the other hand, I've seen a lot of P35 boards that also wouldn't support many of the 45nm cores until they had a BIOS update. Many simply wouldn't start. That's why I keep an old Core 2 Duo E6300 around.

Anyway, no activity from the board while power remains on usually means it's not initializing the CPU, this can be caused by:

1.) Dead board
2.) Incompatible CPU
3.) Failure to connect the ATX12V (4-pin) or EPS12V (8-pin) CPU power connector to the board.

ATX12V and EPS12V are interchangeable, the 4-pin cable fits 4-pin or 8-pin sockets and the 8-pin cable can hang four-pins past the end of a 4-pin socket (so long as nothing else is in the way).

thanks yall.
i did plug in a little speaker that came with the mobo (forgot to mention).
CPU 4 pin definately plugged in, all specs says the mobo supports Pentium D, so that is ok.

Please dont laugh at my ignorance, but i cant find out from the manual and specs that says it only can work with a certain frequency (timing? whatever its called) memory. I thought FSB was only for the CPU, and some kinda internal adjustment would generally make DDR2 memory work, regardless of frequency.

Please advise, since i dont have enough money to buy new memory, but can return the mobo and get money back and get another board that would support the memory frequency.

Thanks,
Don

omg.
The specs do say: Memory Standard DDR2 800
From quick research, that means the memory should be PC2-6400, i am usin PC2-4200!

Does anyone know if the memory HAS TO MATCH to use the motherboard?
Please advise.

My take on this situation is this...

The Pentium D 830 has a bus speed of 800MHZ, with a clock multiplier of 15, so it runs at 3000MHz (3GHz).

The system bus runs at 200MHz but the processor runs at a quad-data rate, so 200 x 4 = 800MHz. 200MHz x 15 (clock multiplier) = 3000MHz.

Seems to me you should be using DDR2 800 memory to run with it. You could use faster speed memory but unless you specifically OverClock it, it should just run at the slower 800MHz speed.

Other supported socket 775 CPUs are:

Pentium 4 (Prescott) - 533 and 800 MHz models.
Celeron D - 533 Mhz.
Core2 Duo - 1066 MHz.
Core2 Extreme - 1066 and 1333 MHz.
Core2 Quad - 1066 and 1333 MHz.

So it looks like your DDR2 533 would work with a Pentium 4 OR a Celeron D.

If I'm totally wrong about this, someone Please correct me, with supporting info please.

Rereading MSI's description for your board, it does say:
Support FSB 800MHz, 1066MHz & 1333MHz

So actually, I don't think the 533MHz processors would work... not sure tho, I can't get their processor support list to come up.