New nvidia 6800GT knackered?

Wavey

Evening all,
Just got my new Gigabyte 6800GT from JES-Computers. Plugged it in and booted up but the screen is mangled.

The white text on black of the boot screen is all mixed up. The letters and numbers are just random symbols.
And the windows loading screen has large blue artifacts up and down the screen.

Managed to get the drivers installed but the artifacts are still there and now the machine is crashing to a stop screen that points to an Nvidia dump file.

Put the original ati card back in and it worked fine.

Any ideas? Is it knackered?

Cheerslads

Wavey

odie

Uninstall the ATI drivers and the ATI control panel first, also uninstall the Nvidia drivers. Shut down the PC....remove ATI card, then install Nvidia Card, let windows locate drivers on CDRom when it boots.

Wavey

Cheers for the reply odie, Did all that al ready though and no joy. :mad:

astec123

Have you tried it in another PC?

odie

What was the ATI card? Was it 8x?

Check Bios to make sure "Init display first is AGP not PCI -
And Pallete snoop should be disabled.
Also check the Bios to make sure that AGP 8x is selected Speed.

Also ensure Directx 9c is installed.

Is1ldur

Does that card take additional power from the PSU? Is your PSU strong enough? Just a thought.

Wavey

Thanks lads,
Dont have another machine to try it in at the moment.
I have check all those bios settings aswell and the are correct.

It does require additional \power but i have a 550w psu and ive disconnect all unecessary peripherals.

But still getting the messed up screen.

The mobo is an ABIT IS7, \any chance this is simply not up to running this card?

odie

Checked out your board here and it looks like it should handle it.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-180-1.htm

There are updated chipset drivers for your mainboard chipset. Worth a try

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-009241.htm

And these are the release notes for the update.

ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/8638/ENG/relnotes.htm

J-blk

If the corruption is evident in the POST sequence and/or when you enter the BIOS, then it may very well be the card itself.

It can't be chipset drivers or even card drivers, cause none of these actually initialize until Windows starts loading.

It could be BIOS options, but I doubt this - you've probably already tried "Optimized Settings" which are less aggresive.

Does your card have 2 DVI outputs or one DVI, one VGA? Have you tried both headers of the card?

Wavey

thanks a million odie,

Was just looking into that. Dont know diddly squat about it though.
Which file on that intel site do i need do ya reckon?

Wavey

@J-blk

Thats exactly what it does. Even if i go into the bios with the new card in I cant read the text.
It has 1dvi and 1 vga. And I have tried both.
Really need another pc to try it in.

DemonOfTheFall

Sounds like the card is fuxored mate. Try "Fail-Safe Defaults" in your bios. Other than that it beats me.

Unless maybe your 550w is a Qtec..... then it could be that.

Wavey

the psu is a 550w Q-Tec alright.

Never had any power problemd b4 though

odie

Try this as it is the latest

INF Update Utility [INFINST_AUTOL.EXE] (788KB) 7.0.0.1025 6/6/2005

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=N&ProductID=1049&DwnldID=8638&strOSs=45&OSFullName=Windows* XP Home Edition&lang=eng

Also try a Bios update...

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/bios.php?categories=1&model=79

Revision history for the BIOS

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/bios_revision.php?categories=1&model=79

Ciaran500

Q tec are well know for under powering devices. You will need to test it in another machine to be definite as to the cause.

Wavey

Thanks for the links odie,

Just updateing the bios at the moment.
How long should this process take after booting from the floppy?
Its been flashing "Please wait" for about 20mins now.

If it goes balls up while flashing the boios is that the end of my mobo? :eek:

J-blk

20 minutes? Oh, oh...

If it does go belly up, that would screw your mobo up, unless if it has a secondary backup chip (my DFI has this and I know some manufacturers implemented it). You can still resurrect a dead mobo on a botched BIOS flash but it does means physically replacing the BIOS chip.

And as mentioned before, drivers will not do anything for you if it's messed up on boot. Only the BIOS setting may affect things here...

Still, it's looking more and more like a bad card though I'd suspect the PSU as well, like others here. Q-tec are notioriously bad - we had them at work for some test rigs (cause they're fairly cheap) and out of 30 PSUs 6 months back, we're down to 5...

Wavey

Its ok, \panic over. the floppy was dodgy so the flash hadnt even started. got it flashed but didnt make sfa difference the gfx card situation.
Will try it in a machine at work tomorow.

Thanks for all the help lads.

Mutant_Fruit

Sounds suspiciously like what happened to my 9600Pro when i was trying to run it off a 200watt PSU along with 2 HD's, 2 CD drivers + usual crap. Corruption and game crashing were the first things to happen.

Stephen

Good ol' Qtec.

WizZard

Plug out everything except the graphics card from your mobo. Leave only one stick of RAM + CPU + Graphics card. Nothing else. Then boot. If there is still corruption in the BIOS then it's most likely the card that's screwed. I'd say even a Q-Tec would run one 6800GT + CPU + Mobo

<edit>But double check with another PSU. Then dump the Q-Tec</edit>

astrofool

Any chance of making a sticky topic of title "DO NOT BUY Q-TEC PSU'S" and merge all the horror stories into it?

Khannie

If you're in the dublin area and it'll help you narrow things, you're welcome to drop over to my house, bring your machine, and try it with my PSU (be quiet 430W). It should easily out-power the q-tec 550.

Or you can try the card in my machine (which currently powers a 6600GT, so not a massive step up to the 6800GT).

Wavey

Thanks for the offer Khannie but I tried it today in another pc with the same result.
Looks like I'll have to send it back to Germany for replacement.
Balls to that anyway!!

Anybody have any experience of returning goods to jes?
I read in another post that itt could take up to 6 weeks to get a replacment.
There goes goes my BF2 weekend!! :mad:

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions lads.

Wavey

Khannie

Wavey wrote:

Anybody have any experience of returning goods to jes?

They're quite slow from what I understand.

Mutant_Fruit

check if you can return it for a full refund, and if you can, do that. Then, while you're waiting for your refund just order a new one. You'll end up paying a new lot of postage to get your card back, but you'll get it a lot faster.