Video card problem

Hi,

I'm having issues with installing new video cards for my computer.
It is an old computer and I am not expecting anything spectacular from it.
All I want is it to be able to play spore for the gf at setting beyond the minimum ones. Somehow we are able to play spore at the lowest settings using the geforce 5200 AGP card she has in there...but we want it better.

The computer is an emachines s2482 with the chipset KM266-8235. Sandra tells me that it is an AGP 4x machine.

The current card I am trying to install, is an HIS radeon HD 3650...in particular this one
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4103516&CatId=2234

Which is listed as 8x/4x which everyone assures me should work in my 4x motherboard. However...it doesn't work....when I install it and connect to the monitor and boot, the monitor gives a "No Signal" screen ... it seems like the video card is not recognized. I followed the install instructions which amounted to uninstalling the drivers for the other video card, putting the hd 3650 in the slot, connecting the monitor, and starting the computer.

From my recent trials with trying out another card, a pci card, I know that the computer sees agp cards.

Sorta getting at our wits end trying to make this work. I'm not going to get into the problems we had with the other card, simply because it has been returned, and THIS is the one we have and are trying to make work. We got this one because it seems to be the most powerful card that will work (supposedly) in a 4x agp slot.

The card seems to be powering up...the bright blue led light comes on and the fan spins. According to a website that calculates power needed, I have enough. The PSU says 375.5 max, or 348 average. The card says 300 watts is needed.

 

Could be a number of things, but the cheapest thing to trouble shoot first is the psu. I use Radeons all the time, a HIS tuned X1650 I have requires a 500+ psu, I have a 650 or something close PSU, to work.

Also there is a good support group for Radeon, try the omega drivers series and see if they help.

Out of curiosity why if you tried a pci card do you know the computer sees AGP? These are different interfaces?

 

Ahh on an idle flick about the web I see this is being touted as needing a 400 watt+ PSU. I am not surprised, this meshes with my experience. Bear in mind that your system does need power for sundry things like a HDD's, CD drives, mobos, fans, etc before power for the gfx card is considered. Radeons are very power hungry.

 

Rik_na,

Thank you for taking the time to respond.
I'll try and address your questions in order.
The reason I know that the AGP slot works fine when I was trying to install a new PCI card, is that my working card is an AGP. When I was having troubles installing the PCI card I"d often remove the AGP card and drivers, put the PCI card in and try and make it work. When that failed I'd reinsert the old card, AGP geforce 5200, which the computer would immediately see when I booted up, found new hardware messages...etc.

Regarding the PSU issue that you spoke of. I guess I will try to get a larger PSU and see how that affects things. The reason I am thinking that it is getting enough power is that its blue led comes on and its fan spins. Could it not get enough power to operate properly AND these things come on? I'm not sure what the purpose of the blue led would be BESIDES to show that the card is operational.

This computer only has 2 gigs of ddr ram, 1 dvd drive,80 gig internal drive, an exteral 500 gig drive. When inputting information into this site
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
375 watts seems like enough.

Regarding the Omega drivers, I cant get that far with the install.
This is what I think the install procedure should go like, please correct me if I am wrong, or if there is an alternate procedure possible.

1. Uninstall old video card drivers.
2. Shut down machine.
3. Remove old AGP card
4. Insert new AGP card.
5. Restart machine.
6. Machine boots normally , perhaps with the display not working perfectly, but working.
7. I install new drivers from the cd provided, or download them from a site.

What I manage to do is steps 1-6, but when the machine boots I get nothing displayed on the monitor.

 

I had the same issue, the card lights came on the fan span round and so forth, but the PSU was underpowered and eventually completely blew. The only thing I changed was the psu, following some advice someone here gave me and hey presto. However, the reason I start here is that a high powered psu is always a smart thing to invest in anyway, and it is cheap compared to other options. A psu under 400 is a bit low for modern spec systems.

As to the purpose of the blue light, who knows, I never figured it out. You would think it is saying yippie the cards functional, when in fact I think it is saying, yippie I have enough power to power one blue led so the rest of the card must be fine too.

Otherwise the options look to be a card compatability problem, and it might be this. I know this is touted as a x4 agp card, but it is basically intended to be a x8, and this might translate as x4 on some systems but not all. Doubt its a mobo problem. So I would try the psu first and go from there.

 

Also out of curiosity, do you get an input not detected message moving from bottom left of your screen to upper left when the system boots up again.

 

Some additional information while I shop around for some choices regarding a psu.( The reason I hesitate is because,well, my old 5200 DOES play spore at the lowest settings...the video card upgrade is simply to play it on a higher setting...so there is still the possibility that even if the card works...the game wont play that much better...and the whole upgrade was unnecessary. This computer won't be used for any more intense gaming.)

Ok, Rik_na, I don't get that message you inquired about when rebooting the system. With the new card in I simply get a black screen...then if i try to turn the monitor off and then on again, hoping that it just needs a "reset" I get one message, "no device", or something like that.

Here is something new about the matter. I read in a couple spots questions about the boards power source, in the reviews or comments sections for the board in several spots on the web.

Now my old board didnt require any additional power input, it simply seats in the motherboard and is ready to go. This board ...it is suggested that it MIGHT. Here...this is what the instructions have to say about it. "Plug the external PCI-E power cable(s)to the card, if required."

Now...thats pretty vague in my book.

In any case...I noticed a 4 prong thing near where that blue led light is. I have what seems to be an appropriate 4 prong connector off of one of the unused cables from my powersupply. So...I redid the install procedure, uninstalled the old drivers, swapped out the boards, etc. But this time I connected the 4 prong connector. Well, that accomplished one thing. The blue led light goes out. Thats it. Unfortunately nothing beyond that.

Not sure if this means anything to anyone out there, but this is what I did.
I tried it again without the 4 prong connector connected, it failed in the same way it originally did...with the blue led light on.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

 

Yeah you do need to put a power cable straight into the card on a number of Radeons, as described as I recall. That all makes sense. I would guess the fan did not run when you attatched the 4 prong power plug either? If not then this still looks like a power issue to me. The direct power to the card being the final blow if you like to the psu.

However, I am a little lost as to why the PCI-E power cable is used on an AGP card? Now I should say here that I am a die hard AGP user and dont have much experience of PCI/PCI-E, though the next build will use PCI-E cards for a whole host of reasons.

 

Just to inform you of what I ended up doing...
I was going to get a new power supply as suggested. Tiger Direct is close to where I live so I went and visited them...bringing the card and computer in the car. I chatted with a tech support guy who talked me into doing a 30 dollar flat fee install of the card. Since I was thinking of spending 70 bucks on a PSU this fee didn't put me off. So I got the pleasure of watching them take 2 hours trying to install it in all the various ways I had done. They tried a different card thinking it may be damaged or defective. Then they tried one of their ATI cards just to see if the computer would work with any ATI card at all, and that worked but it was only a 128mb card which is not acceptable. At this point I let them know I didn't have my heart set on that particular card, and they picked out a different one...

End of story... it wasn't the PSU, they tried one out for me. Simply said that that particular ATI card was not compatible with my board.

I ended up having them install a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT which is an AGP 8X card and works in a 4X slot with no problems... finally!