How to diagnose a new video card problem.
March 17, 2011 8:50 AM   Subscribe

I am having problems with a new video card. I'm wondering if it's the card, the system board or some other part of the whole system. I would like to figure this out in time to send the card back to Newegg.

I have a franken computer which has an older Gigabyte GA-73-PVM-S2H system board, 4Gb of G.skill DDR2 800 memory, an Intel E5200 processor, a 550W power supply and three disks. I had an nVidia 9500 video card which stopped working, so I replaced it with an older, slower nVidia card (8500 maybe?) which worked and works fine, but is too slow for gaming. I got tired of the teenaged whining, so I bought an "EVGA 01G-P3-1366-TR GeForce GTX 460 SE (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card" from Newegg". When I installed it, and tried to boot it the CPU and case fans started for a few seconds, maybe one, then powered down. This happened several times in a row. I replaced the new card with the old card and the system booted just fine. So, I decided I needed a new power supply, and bought a 650W power supply with 35A two 6-pin +12V PCI-express connectors. The 550W power supply had two 6-pin connectors, but they were 18A, and the nVidia 460 wants 24 amp +12V rails. This PS should be in spec for the nVidia 460. I still get the same behavior with the new card. I replaced the new card with the older card and the system boots just fine, new or old PS.

So, my question is: Is the problem the new nVidia card, or is the older MB not able to power up the new card somehow, or is my new power supply too feeble to power the new card? The Gigabyte MB only has a PCI-E x16 1.0 slot. At least it doesn't say PCI-E 2.0, and the new card is a PCI-e x16 2.0 card. However I'm told the card should be compatible with the older PCI-e slot. The new power supply is a cheap Chinese supply, so who knows how accurately the specs are for it. Of course, all PC power supplies these days are cheap Chinese devices, so it may be the best I can get.

I'm betting the video card is just a DOA failure, but I'm hoping someone else has a better idea.
posted by vilcxjo_BLANKA to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
I'm certain other folks will be more savvy with the specifics you gave, but I've had more than one experience of having to return stuff from NewEgg, especially stuff like video cards and motherboards. It's got nothing to do with NewEgg so much as those things are massively produced and I swear there's like a 10-15% manufacture fail rate. The card is bad. Send it back. My two pennies.
posted by elendil71 at 8:57 AM on March 17, 2011


I'm betting you have a bad video card. I ran your system on the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, with the old video card you should require at least 276W of PSU; with the new video card you should only need 376W total (so a true 400-500W PSU with a 24A 12V rail should be sufficient). The video card should at least boot even if you only have 18A coming down the 12V rails on the older 550W PSU. You've had the video card fail on two different PSUs that work otherwise.

RMA the video card.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:08 AM on March 17, 2011


I had the same problem with trying to upgrade my video card. The motherboard has a PCI-E 1.0a slot and from what I had read on wikipedia, it sounded like most PCI-E cards are backwards compatible. Which wasn't true. I returned the 2.1 and exchanged it for a 2.0, also with less on-card ram and less processing power. And then my PC was able to boot.

Yes, I think it is the power supply issue from the board to the card. My power supply did not have an extra cord for the video card and I don't think my (aging) motherboard was able to send enough power to the card. So downgrading the card a bit (still WAAAAYYYY faster than previous) also let up on the power consumption.

So maybe try to lessen your expectations of a video card (at work, so I can't tell you what card I ended up getting). Less power consuming sounds like what you need.

Unfortunately, not all is solved as if too much video processing is required, my PC will sometimes freeze completely. So, new motherboard is on the (maybe next year) horizon.
posted by jillithd at 9:24 AM on March 17, 2011


No other PC (friend etc) that you can drop the new card in temporarily? This would definitely narrow it down.
posted by unvivid at 9:56 AM on March 17, 2011


Response by poster: Unfortunately, the only machines we have at my house are this one, which is a Vista/Linux machine and a handful of iMacs and Macbooks. So, I'm not able to try this card on another computer. I think I'm going to RMA the card and see if another card has the same problem.

Thanks, all.
posted by vilcxjo_BLANKA at 11:07 AM on March 17, 2011


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