Can't boot with new video cards. . .

[Narniaman]

I've got a Gigabyte Technology 965P-DS3 motherboard with six gigs of memory and an Intel dual core that runs at 1.87 Gigs. For the last year and one-half I've had a GEForce 6800 video card and it's worked fine.

However, I recently upgraded some video editing programs to edit High Definition video, and the video was just way too slow -- so I thought I would upgrade.

I've tried both a ATI Radeon 5750 card, and a EVGA GTX465 card -- both one one gig of memory -- and in both instances was able to boot okay.

But when I installed the drivers and tried to reboot -- nothing. No boot, no beep, no video.

But whenever I reinstall the GEForce 6800 everything works.

I tested the ATI Radeon 5750 card on another computer, and it worked just fine. I also tried an ATI Radeon 4800 series card on my computer -- and again, it refuses to boot with that card.

It appears to me this must a motherboard issue.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

 

[bilbat]

The first thing I'd try is a BIOS update, to the latest available for your board. You have neglected to provide a board revision number;
revision numbers can be found here:

For the 1.3 board rev, the latest BIOS is F11, here...,
For the 2.0/3.3 board revs, F14, here...
Do not use @BIOS to flash...
Next thing is to d/l and install the latest Intel chipset drivers (should be the same for all board revs) here...

The issue is likely that, although pretty much all modern PCIe2.0 vidcards should be 'backward compatible' to PCIe1.0, and 1.1, the OS/BIOS support may need 'freshening up' to actually accomplish this...


Also, be sure that the nVidia drivers are being completely removed from your system before attempting to install the ATIs - might try Driver Sweeper here...

 

[Narniaman]

Thanks for the reply.

I heard from Gigabyte Motherboards -- apparently my motherboard is quite antiquated, and only supports the PCI1 standards, and won't work with PCI2 cards.

I'm thinking that maybe it's just time to move on to a new board with a quad-core processor instead of trying to mess around flashing bios revisions.

 

[bilbat]

Flashing isn't really a big deal. Your board should support quads (which i am surprised, and saddened, to note have fallen in price very little since the 'iCore' releases ), and does PCIEx1.1a...

from: Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family Datasheet

"One, 16-lane PCI Express port intended for graphics attach, compatible to the PCI Express Base Specification revision 1.1a."

from GB 'home' for that board: "Quad Core Ready - This platform supports the latest Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core processors."

The thing is, that the MOBO shouldn't be the limiting factor (other than the fact that 1.0/1.1 were half the speed of 2.0) - far as I know, all 'to reference' 2.0 vidcards should be 'backward compatible' to 1.0 slots - when the system powers up, they should simply 'negotiate' the controller/switch to the lower spec...

 

[Narniaman]

Thanks for your help.

This is my office computer, and I've decided to just put it out to pasture -- in my basement at home! I'm going to build a new box with a hex core AMD processor and the GeForce GTX400 GPUS video card. I may even upgrade my monitor to dual monitors -- not decided about that yet.

Thanks again!

 

[bilbat]

Once you try 'multi monitors', you'll never go back!

UltraMon, who makes a great multiple monitor manager, used to have a forum where the real lunatics could post pictures of their setups: