Graphics card conflict?

March 4, 2008 10:18 PM

Why might my computer be rejecting my new video card?

It'd been almost 3 years since I built my current machine, and I thought it was time for some upgrades to squeeze a couple more years out of it before relegating it to fileserver duty. Things were going more or less smoothly until I put the new video card in. And that's when this happened:

When I boot the computer, nothing is displayed on the screen at all. Shortly into the POST, the internal speaker emits a series of tones -- long-short-short -- and then, if the displayed POST codes are accurate, proceeds to boot normally. For reference, this is the same behavior it exhibits when I attempt to boot it with no video card installed at all. When I swap in my old video card (ATi Radeon X800), everything works fine. What I'd like to know is why this what's happening, why, and ultimately how to get it working again.

Relevant machine specifications:
Abit AX8 motherboard
AMD Opteron 175 CPU
XFX GeForce 8800GT model no. PV-T88P-YDE4 (I had no idea how many 8800GTs XFX made before I looked this up)

posted by Spike to computers & internet (19 comments total)

Can you confirm that your new video card does in fact work (and isn't fried), but plugging it into a different PC?
posted by krisjohn at 10:20 PM on March 4

Possibly a power supply issue? That card needs quite a lot of power.
posted by alexei at 10:29 PM on March 4

Possibly a power supply issue? That card needs quite a lot of power.

Whoops, I meant to include that. I've got a brand-new power supply that meets XFX's recommended wattage requirements for non-SLI implementations of this card.

And unfortunately, I can't easily confirm that the card itself works, as I don't have another PCI-e capable computer handy. All I can really say to that end is that the card's fan spins when I boot the machine.
posted by Spike at 10:32 PM on March 4

Following up on alexei, I'm pretty sure you're going to need to plug in an extra power lead directly to that card if you haven't done so already (I recently bought an 8800GTS 512Mb and it needed one)... and if you have, it may be that your power supply isn't putting out enough oomph in general.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:33 PM on March 4

Whoops, too late on the power in general, but did you plug in a power lead to the card directly?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:34 PM on March 4

Also, my PSU has the recommended auxilliary 6v (I think) power jack that the card asks for.
posted by Spike at 10:35 PM on March 4

The long-short-short error usually means that there is no display available. That means that either your card or your slot is fried. If you don't have an AGP card, try using it in another slot. If you have AGP only...then you should try your card in another machine - if it works, your slot is fried.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:39 PM on March 4

The long-short-short error usually means that there is no display available. That means that either your card or your slot is fried. If you don't have an AGP card, try using it in another slot. If you have AGP only...then you should try your card in another machine - if it works, your slot is fried.

My board only has one PCI-e x16 slot, so I can't try it in another. But, as I said previously, my previous PCI-e graphics card works fine when I put it back in, so at least the slot is okay. Honestly, I'm kind of afraid that the problem might be with the card, since I had to make a very minor physical modification to it to get it to fit around a badly-placed giant capacitor on my motherboard. All I did was bend back part of the metal cover, nothing affecting the workings of the card at all, but I'm afraid the manufacturer might consider that unreturnable. To further this paranoia, I've been building and selling custom PCs for nearly 4 years now and I've never had a problem like this, so it does seem like a hardware issue to me.
posted by Spike at 10:48 PM on March 4

Also, on the power issue, the card only needs quite a lot of power under full load; I'm having trouble just booting.
posted by Spike at 10:57 PM on March 4

Maybe try clearing your CMOS?
posted by everybody polka at 11:26 PM on March 4

Actually, the idle power for most GPUs is obscenely high.

Doesn't XFX warrantee their cards even if they are used with 3rd party coolers? If so, they might be a little lenient if you bend the shroud back into place.
posted by Good Brain at 11:42 PM on March 4

Maybe try clearing your CMOS?

Tried that, and then some. One of the things I tried previously was updating my BIOS, but the handy-dandy Windows-based BIOS flasher provided by my mobo manufacturer crashed in the middle of programming the main block, corrupting it beyond recovery. So, now I have a fresh new chip, preloaded with the latest BIOS revision, and still the same problem.
posted by Spike at 11:35 AM on March 5

Actually, the idle power for most GPUs is obscenely high.

Doesn't XFX warrantee their cards even if they are used with 3rd party coolers? If so, they might be a little lenient if you bend the shroud back into place.

Still, I meet XFX's recommendations, and it seems safe to assume that those recommendations are sufficient for stability at full load. I know they consume power on a scale rivalling a Vegas casino, but I really doubt it's using more than 600 Watts while booting.

On the second point, it's starting to look like that may indeed be my only recourse, but I was really hoping someone might know of something I could do myself before I sent it off and had to wait another few weeks before I could use my computer again.
posted by Spike at 11:42 AM on March 5

By how much does the new power supply exceed your power requirements? Because oftentimes the power supply ratings are "tweaked" in such a way that in a perfect world, under testing conditions, the supply will give 600 watts. But not in any way that is useful to the consumer.

Check out dansdata.com, he's got a lot of stuff on power supplies.

What is odd to me is that it gives the error, but then does proceed to boot. What happens when it gets to Windows?

Is the card somehow in SLI mode without a second card being attached?
posted by gjc at 5:39 PM on March 5

By how much does the new power supply exceed your power requirements?

Not much. When I wrote 600 earlier, it was a typo. My PSU is rated at 500 Watts, and XFX recommends 500 Watts or greater for non-SLI, 600 for SLI. I still don't think it should be drawing that much when I'm just starting it up, but maybe I'm wrong.

What is odd to me is that it gives the error, but then does proceed to boot. What happens when it gets to Windows?

That was the oddest thing about it to me, too. My motherboard's LED display flashes through the various codes associated with different parts of the POST, all the way to FF, the code for a boot attempt. Then I hear the hard drive engage, and whir, and make all the physical signs of loading something (hey, I never cared too much about a silent-running system). As I said, there's nothing on the screen, so I don't really know what happens, but presumably it gets to the login screen and waits. Of course, I've had to shut it down improperly so many times since this started happening, it's probably booting into safe mode, but I can't really tell.
posted by Spike at 9:19 PM on March 5

Is the card somehow in SLI mode without a second card being attached?

Given my somewhat limited understanding of SLI, I don't see any way that could happen without the physical SLI connector between two cards. I would think the default would be for non-SLI, anyway.
posted by Spike at 9:28 PM on March 5

As if I didn't expect it already, Abit's forums confirm the beep code I'm getting is a video card error:

7.) 1 long - 2 short(Beep) Display card or monitor connected error

As posted here: http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?t=97229

Nothing helpful on what the actual problem is, though. This question's probably dead in the water by now, anyway. Arrr.
posted by Spike at 12:07 AM on March 6

If anyone's still following this, I want to mention that the one time I attempted booting it without the auxiliary 6-pin PCI-e power connector plugged into the card, I encountered very different problems, which leads me away from thinking it's a power problem.
posted by Spike at 8:26 AM on March 6

You're not overclocking, are you?

I would try to find somewhere to confirm that the card works.
posted by alexei at 12:23 AM on March 11