Just when I thought I got it fixed...

[plonq]

I played around with the power leads last night, and replaced the 6-pin plug from the power supply with the 4-6 pin adaptor that came with the video card.  I booted up the machine and... no message!  The card fired up and ran at full speed.  The next time I rebooted though, it was back.



In a few minutes I'm going to call the service desk of the store where we bought the card and see if they have any insight.  I'm sure they'll just tell me to bring it back so that we can swap it out for another card.  Hopefully one that, ya know, works.

I've done a bit of my own research online, but Google has been less-than helpful.  Likewise the card's manufacturer site.  The manual... ah.  What a wonderful piece of work that is.  It's about 100 pages, but it's a single manual for every video card they make (from ISA through to PCI-EX).  80+ pages of it are pictures of video cards with the caption, "If you bought card xxx then it should look like this."  The rest are instructions in every language (English, German, Swahili, Sanskrit) saying little more than, "Plug the card into the only slot where it fits.  If it has a hole for a power cable then plug one in.  Plug the monitor into the other end. Install the stuff off the disk.  If it doesn't work, here's how you RMA it."

I've never had this kind of trouble with an ATI card, but the first two nVidia-based ones I've dealt with have been lemons.  pierrekrahn's 6600 never worked straight from the box (and in the process of trying to get it working, we ended up turning his motherboard into a paperweight).  Now my 6800 looks like it might be bad as well.  Maybe it's not too late to trade across for an X850.  I'd happily take a slightly slower card that actually works.

Comments

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Funny, if I had any money I'd dump my ATi card (in the trash can if I really had money :P) and replace it with an nVidia -.-

[nrasser.livejournal.com]

My ATI 9700 Pro has been the best card I've ever bought. Driver issues are so rare, they don't even come to mind. Performance is still sufficiently up there with the modern stuff that I have no real reason to upgrade it. ATI won that round. :)

How big is the power supply you bought?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

It's an Antec 480W supply. It weights more than my previous two power supplies combined, and the guys at the shop assured me that it should power anything I do, short of trying to hook up dual 6800 ULTRA cards (which is not on my radar).

I have one last hunch to play out before I return this card and exchange it for one that works. I'm going to talk to the service department folks at the shop first to make sure that I'm not at risk of damaging something though.

[nrasser.livejournal.com]

That's definitely plenty of power supply. You shouldn't be having a power problem.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I rechecked the wiring again this evening and fired it up again. First time it fired up fine with no complaints or requestor, but when I did a restart it came back and complained about the power. Either the power supply, or the video card is bad - and in this case I'm pretty sure it's the video card. I'm going to return it this week and swap it for another.

[nrasser.livejournal.com]

I recently had to return a similar power supply for defect during the course of building a bleeding-edge P4 system for a friend, but that system wouldn't boot reliably. If your system is operating otherwise OK, I doubt the power supply is causing your problem.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I've got it to the point where if I power it up from a cold start when it's been off for a couple of minutes, it boots up without complaint, but if I do a subsequent restart, it whinges about the power level.

I redid the wiring again, and this time it finally managed to go from cold boot, through a subsequent restart without complaint. I know that nVidia cards are power hogs, but this is ridiculous. I'll do another restart or two a bit later (after things have had a chance to cook for a bit) to see if it comes back, or if it's finally fixed.

Radeon vs nVidia

[plonq.livejournal.com]

My ATI 9700 Pro has been the best card I've ever bought.

My first serious video card was a PCI-based All-In-Wonder Pro with 8mb onboard. Solid card from the drivers on out. My next card was going to be a Geforce, but most of them had issues with the motherboard I had at the time (ABIT KT7A), so I went with a first gen Radeon, which performed solidly up until I replaced it earlier this year with a Sapphire 9600.

I only ever meant for that one to be a stop-gap card until I upgraded my whole system this year. This time around (against my better judgement) I went with an nVidia-based card. So far, not happy.

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'd personally exchange my Radeom 9600 Pro for an nVidia of equal speed. Then I would actually have full driver support in Linux without having to run the 32bit version of the OS on my 64bit rig.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Why would you waste a perfectly good video card on Linux? =)

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

You're a bad, bad person. ;)

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm running both the 64 and 32 bit version of Linux and on both my Ati 9600 performs a LOT worse than my old nVidia Geforce 256 behaved, and that card was 5 years old.

I so wish I could go back to nVidia :O

[tamarik.livejournal.com]

Try to rearrange the way you have your drives and peripherals powered so that the video card is on its own power rail. Don't let it be down the line from any oscillating source, like a fan or HD. Optical drives might be okay, but if you can stand it, don't put it down the line from one of those either.

I always try to wire my systems so that that the video card is on its on rail, or at the very least, that it's on the first molex before an optical drive (i.e. the molex adapter closest to the PSU).

Does the card work under heavy load? Could be that the message is just a load of BS. Might also want to break out a multimeter and test the rails to make sure you're getting the proper voltage out of the PSU. Antec's the same thing that I have, and I know they make good products, but there's a bad apple in every barrel...