I think my graphics card may be dead

[ChopperX]

Hi there. I have an older PC that has been sitting around going nothing for about 2 years. I decided to bring it back to life to use it for a project.

I have an old Shuttle G5 8300G with a Pentium 4, 1.25GB of DDR RAM, an EVGA GeForce 6600 256mb PCIe graphics card and running on Windows XP. As you can tell it is quite an old PC but it was great for its time (2004)

So I plugged in an LCD, PS2 Keyboard and Mouse and turned it on. Sounds fine. All the fans are spinning just like they should. However the screen stayed black. I tried all the inputs of VGA and DVI and no luck. So my first guess would be an issue with the Graphics card? How can I make sure it is the graphics card for sure?

I would like to get this small machine back up an running to use with scanning photos. It's a great machine and for basic web surfing and even when I played BF2 on it back it the day it was a little powerhouse.

 

[Jaxem]

If it has on board graphics, pull the card out and try from that, if not, and you have another card, try that, if not, and you have another monitor, try that to rule out maybe just the monitor, if not...find a friend with a card you can borrow to test with.

 

[ChopperX]

If it has on board graphics, pull the card out and try from that, if not, and you have another card, try that, if not, and you have another monitor, try that to rule out maybe just the monitor, if not...find a friend with a card you can borrow to test with.

Okay I tried two different monitors with each VGA and DVI on the graphics card and no luck. I also tried the onboard graphics VGA connector on both monitors and no luck.

Either my shuttle PC never came with onboard graphics even though it has the VGA connector or it's something else. However I did inspect the graphics card and found some brown rusty looking matter near one of the capacitors.

 

[Jaxem]

A motherboard from that era should have on-board, since there weren't integrated graphics back then, so if there's VGA, there should be something to output to it, what's the model of the mobo?

 

[ChopperX]

A motherboard from that era should have on-board, since there weren't integrated graphics back then, so if there's VGA, there should be something to output to it, what's the model of the mobo?

I found a link to the full specifications for the motherboard on my Shuttle PC. I have the Shuttle G5 8300g or the SB83G5 in other terms. http://www.shuttle.eu/_archive/older/en/fb83.htm#mainboardfb8

 

[Jaxem]

The specifications page curiously doesn't give any info on a graphics chipset...but your card sounds like it could be toast if a capacitor blew or you have some deposits.

 

[ChopperX]

The specifications page curiously doesn't give any info on a graphics chipset...but your card sounds like it could be toast if a capacitor blew or you have some deposits.

It was the most detailed page I found so far on my machine. Yea I don't have a spare card for it to test but I can test out the card in my current tower pc since its still PCIe. So if it turns out the graphics card is toast then my next step maybe to get a new card. With that said I just have a question about that part.

The current card is a GeForce 6600 (non GT) 256MB PCIe. The power supply is weak on this machine at 250W so I can't even get a powerful card which is no trouble for me. I just want a basic card anyways for this little thing. So what would be a good geforce card that can match the power consumption of the 6600 that is slightly newer. I'm going to guess that this card doesn't use more than 45W of power since it draws its power from the motherboard. I took a look at the GeForce GT 520 because its max power draw is 29W according to the GeForce.com website. Would that be a good replacement?

 

[Jaxem]

That should be a pretty good replacement, if you have a little more cash, the 530 GT looks like it will perform quite a bit better (though at a 50W TDP)

 

[ChopperX]

That should be a pretty good replacement, if you have a little more cash, the 530 GT looks like it will perform quite a bit better (though at a 50W TDP)

I'm honestly not looking for a powerful card so I don't mind saving the money and wattage. Besides as much as I would love to get this older PC up and running I don't want to spend a whole lot of money. I have an newer tower as well that I could use but it needs a new psu, hdd, graphics card since I migrated all my stuff to my new current pc. Enough blabbering on.

Okay so I took the time tonight to insert my GeForce 6600 into my current PC and no luck. Screen wouldn't show up. So I think it's safe to say that the graphics card is kaput and that is what needs to be replaced. Until next time I think we are done with this thread.

Thanks a lot for the help Jaxem. You're the man!

 

[Jaxem]

Glad to help, don't forget to close your thread

 

[ChopperX]

I'm sorry. I don't know how to close a thread on this forum. Could you guide me? I'm new to the forums here. This was my first discussion

 

[Jaxem]

Well 'closing' is a strong word, if you choose an answer for your question, it catalogs it as 'solved'. Which will keep it from clogging up the list of new threads.