Gaming 9800GT Help

[mrSmiles]

I've been using a PNY 8500GT so far until today when i bought a 9800GT but whenever i have the card in the mother board it never boots into anything kind of like endless restarts, I've tried taking the card out going into the BIOS and changing the PCI settings so its at PCI-Express and then inserting the card back in but the same thing happens, i was also reading on the Internet that the card requires something like a 400w Power supply minimum, which i have but switched it out for a 500w supply.

I have the old 8500gt drivers uninstalled butt that also does nothing.

I'm using a P4M900T-M (v1) motherboard
P4M900T-M Website

Also have 2GB RAM and a P4 CPU.

what else can i do? or what might be the problem that it wont boot? could updating the bios of the motherboard help?

any help appreciated.

 

[Joe88]

could be just a defective card, alot of the 9800GT's require a power connector which I assume you plugged in?

 

[sirdashadow]

My best bet is that your motherboard only supports PCI-Express 1.1 whereas the 9800GT is PCI-E 2.0 complaint. Do yourself a favor, this is coming from someone who use to own several boxes with ecs based motherboards and cough up the extra $50 for a name-brand mobo.

 

[mrSmiles]

My best bet is that your motherboard only supports PCI-Express 1.1 whereas the 9800GT is PCI-E 2.0 complaint. Do yourself a favor, this is coming from someone who use to own several boxes with ecs based motherboards and cough up the extra $50 for a name-brand mobo.

what would you recommend?

 

[MasterXanthar]

PCI-Express 1.1 will run a 2.0 card without an issue. I was running a PCI-Express 2.0 8800GTS 512mb N92 on a 939 AMD Gigabyte K8NF-9 board that is only PCI-Express 1.x with no issues.
As Joe88 points out it is most likely a faulty card. Try clear the bios by starting the PC without the battery in the board then turning off and putting it back in after the POST beep, then try again. If that fails take the card back to where you got it and have them test it for you before spending anymore on it. BIOS updates on the site are from 2008 and mention nothing of updated GFX support, so you probably already have the latest one on it.
Hope that helps a little bit.

EDIT: As a side note the new 5xxx series ATI cards are PCI-Express 2.1 which is NOT compatible with the 1.x spec motherboards.

 

[mrSmiles]

Just noticed this but the card i have doesn't have any 6pin connector on it, apparently i have the power efficient version of the card instead of the standard that comes with the 6pin connector.

 

[Potticus]

My best bet is that your motherboard only supports PCI-Express 1.1 whereas the 9800GT is PCI-E 2.0 complaint. Do yourself a favor, this is coming from someone who use to own several boxes with ecs based motherboards and cough up the extra $50 for a name-brand mobo.

PCI-E 2.0 is backwards compatible.

I am running a 2.0 card on a 1.x board.

Most of them do have the 6 pin connector, but my 9600 is just like your 9800.

It doesn't have the extra connector, but it is "energy efficient" out of the box, I needed this card because a psu upgrade wasn't going to happen.

 

[MasterXanthar]

Just noticed this but the card i have doesn't have any 6pin connector on it, apparently i have the power efficient version of the card instead of the standard that comes with the 6pin connector.

Power efficient version is just a lower clocked re-release of the card as part of the shuffle that occurred with the GT/GTS series cards.
It does use a different PCB to the original version that maybe causing your issues but that is not very likely.

 

[mrSmiles]

before forking over money on a new board im going to take it back and have the people at bestbuy (where i bought it) test it to see if its a faulty card.

 

[754boy]

Sounds like a power supply issue to me. You may have 500w but that means nothing if the 12volt rails are weak. Thats the problem I had with my new card. Would not boot or anything. Turns out I had a crappy PSU. Swapped it out for a decent one and the card runs fine now.

 

[Elritha]

Sounds like a power supply issue to me. You may have 500w but that means nothing if the 12volt rails are weak. Thats the problem I had with my new card. Would not boot or anything. Turns out I had a crappy PSU. Swapped it out for a decent one and the card runs fine now.

I agree, it could be the psu. You should check the amp on the +12v rail of your psu. Most of them have a sticker on the side of the psu detailing this.

 

[mrSmiles]

the sticker on the power supply says +12V - 12A, im guessing this isnt enough for the card.

what would be a recommended PSU to get for the card to run?

 

[Elritha]

the sticker on the power supply says +12V - 12A, im guessing this isnt enough for the card.

12A is pretty poor. As far as I know a 9800GT needs at least 18A or so. Investing in a decent power supply unit (not a crappy make) may be a wise choice, as it can help with system stability also.

 

[coolbho3000]

My 450W Corsair PSU with a single 12V rail has been supporting an 8800GTS 512 overclocked and an e8400 overclocked for 2 years. I even had to use a power adapter.

edit: that's a lot more amperage on this PSU than yours though. :yayds:

 

[mrSmiles]

just bought a new Cooler Master GX 750W PSU which is single rail +12V - 60A and i keep getting the blank screen and beeping sound after trying to boot up with the PNY 9800GT 1GB DDR3 Energy Efficient Version.......
[edit]
Is there something i should be changing in the bios after installing a new psu?

[edit]
after having failed the boot with the card in, i removed the card and started the pc with the motherboard only, after the new psu the boot process has become painfully slow

[edit]
after installing the new psu it doesnt seem to be detecting the hard drive.....

[edit]
after installing the old card back into the pc everything goes normally.........

i figure the mother board just isnt compatible with the card in which case i will buy a new motherboard, cpu and ram

any recommendations on each?

 

[Scorpei]

You HAVE ruled out the 9800 being defective? From my glimps at this topic that seems to be the most likely option (with old setup nothing wrong, with new graka shit hits the fan). Either that or, strangely enough, your motherboard does not provide enough power over the PCI-Express slot for the 9800 (at which point swapping it out for a grafics card WITH external power source should be possible).

A new PSU: does not need anything changed in the BIOS settings, can't really slow the boot process down as it doesn't do anything besides providing power, shouldn't make your disks being undetected as long as the PSU powers the drives properly (thus the problem should be elsewhere and as you say it does work with your old video card I assume it is a problem not related to the PSU).

p.s. Not sure about your setup but swapping the guts of the machine just to get the grafix to work sounds rather harsh to me. Especially (okay ECS isn't a good brand IMHO) seeing as you have DDR2 and a core 2 duo compatible motherboard (if anything you might want to do, assuming the motherboard still works, is upgrade the processor depending on what you currently have installed). Oh btw, do keep in mind that you have an intergrated grafics card in there --> setting the thing to PCI-express in bios (and disabling onboard grafics) is pretty much a requirement.

 

[mrSmiles]

I ended up going back to bestbuy and got a refund on the card apparently other people have gone back to do the same, suggesting multiple people might have had faulty cards.

I was already thinking of building a new system, it just happened to make me build one earlier then i wanted which isn't a bad thing, ill probably stick with the same video card but the standard version over the power efficient at a different store, so im still looking for some recommendations on motherboard, cpu, and ram to go along with the 9800gt, also looking for a recommendation a good monitor.

 

[Raki]

What's your budget and what do you want to do with the system?

If you want to do gaming, I would recommend a AMD Phenom II X4 955, a AM3 motherboard from a trusted brand like gigabyte, and some DDR3 RAM from corsair or g.skill or kingston