Hey all,
About a month ago I decide to upgrade my graphics card and CPU as an alternative to building a whole new machine (the need to upgrade something, anything, was burning a hole in my pocket…).
I swapped out my Athlon 64 3500+ for a Athlon 64 x2 4200+, and picked up a HIS 1950 Pro 512MB to replace my HIS 850XT thinking that both would be a straightforward upgrade that would give me the best value for money power increase within the constraints set by my motherboard and power supply. The CPU upgrade went without a hitch (well, if you don’t count the fact that the AMD Dual Core Gaming Optimizer driver caused my machine to reset every time I booted into Windows – something that took me a little longer than it should have to figure out and remove as nothing I did seemed to want to fix this problem…) but it was the graphics card swap where the real problem was.
I followed the usual path (making sure all the drivers were uninstalled before I turned off the machine and swapped the cards), turned back on and got into Windows without a problem – installed the new drivers, and reset as prompted. I then found myself sitting on a black screen, my monitor throwing up a ‘no device detected’ message (or something similar – can’t remember the exact message, but was the usual ‘you haven’t connected me to a graphics card you idiot’ type message) while my computer appeared to continue on its merry way (at least it sounded as if it was rebooting without an issue – no BIOS error sounds, the usual hard drive crunching etc). Turning the computer off again I checked the card was seated, that the PSU connector (a 6 pin from my PSU) was securely connected, that I hadn’t knocked anything else etc and tried again only to get exactly the same black screen and noises of what I’d consider ‘normal’ computer activity behind it (although I never got any sound output to notify me that Windows had been reached – so perhaps there wasn’t any real activity ‘behind’ the black screen so to speak).
Once again I turned off the computer and tried resetting the CMOS – nothing. Then I remembered that when I’d built the machine in the first place, I’d had a similar problem (yeah – how I got this far without remembering that I don’t know…) and could only get a signal by hooking up to an old CRT monitor, getting into Windows and getting everything set up for the drivers, and then switching over to my LCD monitor on the subsequent boot. Not having a CRT to hand this time, I swapped for my brothers LCD monitor in case it was something slightly similar – nothing (and I don’t know of anyone amongst friends or family that have a CRT to try this again – nor does the idea of buying a CRT just to try this sound like a good idea!). I might have tried some more things after this – my memory isn’t all that good, and I don’t want this post to turn out to be about five pages long when all I wanted to do was give an indication of what I’ve tried!
Anyway – I swapped cards back to my 850XT without any problem, but due to an impending summer holiday I had to send the card back to whence it had came via the distance sales act (or whatever its called) as I wasn’t going to risk being stuck with a card I couldn’t use. What I’m wondering now is – was it perhaps an issue with the card being faulty in some way, or was it perhaps something else that I overlooked and couldn’t troubleshoot in the time I had. Which is what brings me here to ask if anyone here has had a similar problem, or has an idea as to what it could have been (and to reaffirm my feeling that its worth ordering another and giving it another try!).
The system specs (with the new CPU upgrade) are:
Athlon 64 x2 4200+ (with a Artic Cooling Freezer 64 on it)
MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum
4x Geil PC3200 512mb
Seagate 160GB S-ATA hard drive
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
X850 XT (for now, at least…)
Enermax Noisetaker 485W
all shoved (neatly) in a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case running two 120mm fans and one 92mm fan (just to give you all an idea of what the power draw in the system might be). I’ve checked and double checked, but from everything I’ve looked at (the specs for the PSU, several online power calculators etc) it seems that PSU should be able to run a 1950 Pro without problems (having dual 12v rails with 18a on each, if I remember correctly) – am I right? As that’s really the only thing I keep coming back to through all this!
Thanks in advance for any help you can give – and my apologies for not being able to make this an any sorter read for anyone who has got this far!
About a month ago I decide to upgrade my graphics card and CPU as an alternative to building a whole new machine (the need to upgrade something, anything, was burning a hole in my pocket…).
I swapped out my Athlon 64 3500+ for a Athlon 64 x2 4200+, and picked up a HIS 1950 Pro 512MB to replace my HIS 850XT thinking that both would be a straightforward upgrade that would give me the best value for money power increase within the constraints set by my motherboard and power supply. The CPU upgrade went without a hitch (well, if you don’t count the fact that the AMD Dual Core Gaming Optimizer driver caused my machine to reset every time I booted into Windows – something that took me a little longer than it should have to figure out and remove as nothing I did seemed to want to fix this problem…) but it was the graphics card swap where the real problem was.
I followed the usual path (making sure all the drivers were uninstalled before I turned off the machine and swapped the cards), turned back on and got into Windows without a problem – installed the new drivers, and reset as prompted. I then found myself sitting on a black screen, my monitor throwing up a ‘no device detected’ message (or something similar – can’t remember the exact message, but was the usual ‘you haven’t connected me to a graphics card you idiot’ type message) while my computer appeared to continue on its merry way (at least it sounded as if it was rebooting without an issue – no BIOS error sounds, the usual hard drive crunching etc). Turning the computer off again I checked the card was seated, that the PSU connector (a 6 pin from my PSU) was securely connected, that I hadn’t knocked anything else etc and tried again only to get exactly the same black screen and noises of what I’d consider ‘normal’ computer activity behind it (although I never got any sound output to notify me that Windows had been reached – so perhaps there wasn’t any real activity ‘behind’ the black screen so to speak).
Once again I turned off the computer and tried resetting the CMOS – nothing. Then I remembered that when I’d built the machine in the first place, I’d had a similar problem (yeah – how I got this far without remembering that I don’t know…) and could only get a signal by hooking up to an old CRT monitor, getting into Windows and getting everything set up for the drivers, and then switching over to my LCD monitor on the subsequent boot. Not having a CRT to hand this time, I swapped for my brothers LCD monitor in case it was something slightly similar – nothing (and I don’t know of anyone amongst friends or family that have a CRT to try this again – nor does the idea of buying a CRT just to try this sound like a good idea!). I might have tried some more things after this – my memory isn’t all that good, and I don’t want this post to turn out to be about five pages long when all I wanted to do was give an indication of what I’ve tried!
Anyway – I swapped cards back to my 850XT without any problem, but due to an impending summer holiday I had to send the card back to whence it had came via the distance sales act (or whatever its called) as I wasn’t going to risk being stuck with a card I couldn’t use. What I’m wondering now is – was it perhaps an issue with the card being faulty in some way, or was it perhaps something else that I overlooked and couldn’t troubleshoot in the time I had. Which is what brings me here to ask if anyone here has had a similar problem, or has an idea as to what it could have been (and to reaffirm my feeling that its worth ordering another and giving it another try!).
The system specs (with the new CPU upgrade) are:
Athlon 64 x2 4200+ (with a Artic Cooling Freezer 64 on it)
MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum
4x Geil PC3200 512mb
Seagate 160GB S-ATA hard drive
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
X850 XT (for now, at least…)
Enermax Noisetaker 485W
all shoved (neatly) in a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case running two 120mm fans and one 92mm fan (just to give you all an idea of what the power draw in the system might be). I’ve checked and double checked, but from everything I’ve looked at (the specs for the PSU, several online power calculators etc) it seems that PSU should be able to run a 1950 Pro without problems (having dual 12v rails with 18a on each, if I remember correctly) – am I right? As that’s really the only thing I keep coming back to through all this!
Thanks in advance for any help you can give – and my apologies for not being able to make this an any sorter read for anyone who has got this far!
