Graphics Card installation problems

[AndrewSchofield]

Hi guys,

We've got three PCs which are all identical. I bought an Nvidia graphics card for one of them last month and after a few teething problems its all working fine. Whilst trying to sort those teething problems I was advised that I would have been better getting ATI cards so that's what I've done for the other machines. Put one in the PC and it does nothing, wont even boot up. Take the card out again and everything is fine.

Any ideas? Or should I just send them back and get Nvidia ones as I'm pretty certain they will work ok?

 

[CylonRaider]

What cards were in them before ?

If it's "onboard Graphics" then you'll need to go into BIOS and select pci (or whatever the option is - can't remember) BEFORE installing the other card.

If you already had a nVidia card in then It'd probably be prudent to remove the nVidia driver before installing the aTi card.

The system should then default to "failsafe GFX mode" allowing you to install the new Catalyst drivers

 

[AndrewSchofield]

On-board graphics at present - hence the new card.

So I need to disable the on-board first? Will give that a go. Thank you.

 

[CylonRaider]

A bit obvious but remember to connect your monitor to the new card as well !

Yes I've numptied myself with that one too !

 

[mattylad]

Rather than disable the onboard graphics, this is generally automatic when you have another card inserted.
If you have no card inserted and onboard is disabled then how will you turn it back on? lol

Do you have an American megatrends (AMI) BIOS?

Check theBIOS under chipset for the "Primary Video Controller" - set it for the one that wants to be used first.
IGFX = integrated on-board graphics.
GFXO = PCI-ex16 graphics card
GPP is PCI-ex1.

I think I have mine set to GFX0 first.

See http://superuser.com/questions/3943...d-gfx-card-alongside-a-discrete-graphics-card

Also do you have the correct 12v power cables going into it?

 

[AndrewSchofield]

Cylon raider - I've been known to do some daft things - but I did check that one!! It isn't just that the display isn't working - with the card installed, the pc isn't booting up properly. No lights come on on mouse or keyboard so it doesn't appear to boot properly as well as having nothing on the screen.

Mattylad - unfortunately I did disable onboard and then had the problem of not being able to get it back on. Reset bios and that's sorted but new graphics card still isn't happening. MoBo manual says use of licenced AMI EFI BIOS so i assume that's a yes. So if I set primary controller to use the graphics card first, will it still default to the onboard if the card doesn't work?

There doesn't appear to be any power requirements/connections on the graphics card.