ATI HD 5670 PCIe 1.0 compatability

Hi,

My bro is using my parents old machine - it is a prefabricated Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo P machine. The graphics card that it came with was an ATI x300 card which was pretty poor. I bought him a new Sapphire HD 5670 graphics card. However, when he installs it the computer refuses to POST.

Basically, I have come to the conclusion that there seems to be a compatability problem between the mobo and gfx card - possibly because the gfx is PCIe 2.1 and the mobo has a PCIe 1.0 slot. I thought they were meant to be backwards compatible but it appears there are a few out there with similar problems.

Does anyone have any solutions? I thought about mobo bios but the only bios i could find on the fujitsu site was from 2005 (too old to risk). The mobo in question is an Asus P5GD1-FM.

My only other suggestion was to get a new mobo but i dont know enough about Socket 775 mobos and none seem to state whether its PCIe 1.0 or 2.0+. Do you have any suggestions?

Matt

They should be completely interchangeable... but with prebuilts there's a lot of restrictions built in. For instance, the motherboard itself may not support something about the graphics card for some reason, or the slot may not be able to supply enough power, or indeed the PSU.

Either way i wouldn't have got a 5670, it's still very much a gaming card and putting it in that sort of machine would be a huge bottleneck, i doubt they even need the performance.

Thanks for the reply.

I wanted a card that was fairly modern and would last him a while. He's upgraded the RAM to 3Gb so there is plenty there, only thing limiting would be the CPU I guess. Still, it should be a big improvement over the x300?

Would a new mobo guarantee the card to work (assuming the card is not faulty) or could it be not enough power, for instance?

What PSU wattage does the psu use.

I would have thought the stock power supply should handle the card, is it possible to test the new card in another machine.

350w.

He's just going to test another PSU. I would have thought the PSU is fine. I will try and source another machine to test the card in, but i live over 100 miles away so its difficult!

edit: This is the mobo manual http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/boards/Motherboards/asus/P5GD1-FM/asus-P5GD1-FM.pdf

edit 2: He tried a 400w PSU and it still didnt work.

There have been problems reported with some older boards not working with newer cards. There have been some on here involving Asrock boards and ATI 5 series cards so that is most likely the problem.

I had the very same problem with my 5670.

What should have been a cheap upgrade for my non gaming design PC ended with me getting a new GB board just to support the card.

Quite a few people on here had the same issue, it seems that the board cant support enough juice for the card to work.

Why oh why did I buy one!!

It looks like this is the problem im experiencing. A relatively 'cheap' upgrade so my brother can play the latest games and now im looking at a new mobo as well. The only problem is I can't find a motherboard that is socket 775 AND DDR1 ram.

Think it will be cheaper to go DDR2 and buy RAM on top of that.

Anyone have any suggestions?

You could do with knowing if this problem affects other graphics cards. If it was me I'd prefer to buy an Nvidia GT 240 and return or sell the 5670. even if you had to take a £20-30 loss on the 5670, it's still cheaper and much easier than buying a new motherboard and possibly RAM.

Well the only other GFX card I could test with is an nvidia 8600GT - not sure if that would prove conclusive?

It would definitely be easier though. I also might have access to a Socket 775 board with DDR2 - that would only need some DDR2 memory then (assuming it all works)

What CPU is it? A Pentium 4 ?

Yeah a pentium 4, not sure of the GHz.

Ideally he'd ditch the mobo now because it seems a bit pap!

I don't think that I would be spending any amount of money on a motherboard and RAM just to be able to use a P4. It would be worth it if you could source a DDR1 motherboard for <£20. If I was going to go down that route I'd do it properly and get a modern dual-core 3.0ghz bundle. I still think that to spend money just to get his CPU and GPU working together, it would be much easier to just change the graphics card.

Hmmm thats a good point. I was thinking because I can get the mobo for free it would be the cheaper route (just buy some memory). Am I right in thinking that socket 775 allows him to upgrade to core 2 duo etc at a later date?

Im just a bit wary of putting more cash down on another GFX card and it not working. Even if I could return the ATI card, it could just be more hassle in the long run? Or am i being paranoid?

Well if you can get a 775 DDR2 motherboard for free then it's not so bad. What motherboard is it? It should have a full CPU support list on the manufacturers site. I'm not sure if they all support P4. In theory, they should but if it's a motherboard that was released a few years after C2D then they might not have bothered to support a P4.

Apparently it is an Asus P5KSE which supports

Pentium 4, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Pentium Extreme Edition, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Pentium Dual Core, Celeron 400 sequence

Click to expand...

So it should be ok, but I dont know whether this board is 'modern' enough to not suffer the same problems - we will find out i guess.