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Another rookie wants non-gamer card advice

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sonoferu said:
I get the sense from some of the posts that PCIe is preferred? Why? Accelerated Graphics Port sounds mightier than PCI Express .... 🙂

And I thought AGP was the more recent latest-greatest. PCI was earlier wasnt it?
Click to expand...

AGP was phased out starting in 2004, replaced by PCI-e. By 2006 or so, you couldn't even buy AGP boards -- it was an extremely quick transition.

PCI-e isn't the same as good old PCI.
 
As PCIe is the current standard, older AGP and PCI cards are "legacy" only - so there are no modern models, and only a limited choice of over-priced old models. PCIe has the mass market, and so can provide a wide range of cards at competitive prices. Even the old PCIe 8400GS you have selected is far, far better than the AGP 6200 (EVGA or Sparkle ).
Click to expand...
That is due to the target market... lets say you are a company, you don't have what you need to reinstall software to control a piece of heavy machinery worth 100,000. the company that makes it will gladly have someone install it on a brand new computer... once you purchase 11,000$ worth of upgrades (to bring it to current version)
This was a real situation I had where I had to fix a computer from the year 1996 in the year 2008. As long as I could fix said computer for less then 11,000$ it was worth it.
This is why VERY old hardware goes up in price again.
 
very interesting, all of it. I could have looked things up at wiki myself, just didnt think of it.

Alas, the one PCIe card I tried here as a replacement the other day had only one port - it must have been DVI, but there was nowhere for my little flat male pin on my cable to go into. Looking at the wiki page it's not on the illustration showing all the DVI types. It doesnt have two sections - one of little square holes in arrays, one section for the flat pin or whatever, it's a solid array of 4x15, with one hole "missing" toward one end, just solid plastic

If that one were PCIe that I could have tried, maybe I could find out it my one fear matters - what if the one I ordered wont work because the problem when I first built the box was the PCIe port had a problem???

Well. when the newegg order arrives I will try that one first and see. I will let you know
 
OK, all good - put in the new PCIe and started right up, clean and bright. Sun is shining, birds are singing, fleecy clouds and butterflies, milk and honey all around

Much relieved and much appreciate all the helpful help

Best to all

sonoferu
 
sonoferu said:
OK, all good - put in the new PCIe and started right up, clean and bright. Sun is shining, birds are singing, fleecy clouds and butterflies, milk and honey all around

Much relieved and much appreciate all the helpful help

Best to all

sonoferu
Click to expand...

Good to know we helped!
 
OH NO!! More help?

One thing I noticed early on in the new session, the Windows popup at the bottom, saying new hardware found. A hard drive!!! Never saw that before. I should have written down the exact words, but it was pretty simple. Curious though. And then later when I was thinking, time to ghost this new drive over to the storage drive [I think I mentioned I have 2, one just for ghost backups] and found it was not showing in Windows Explorer

Well, figured I would reboot. I also have SUSE Linux on here, and GRUB loader to go through. So it failed with GRUB error 21. I see that a lot and just restart and that always gets going. Then it hit Error 25. Several times through that and then hit Error 17. So I tried going back to the temp substitute card, and that one let me boot through And the 2nd drive shows in windows

So I wonder now if that was the problem way back when I built it and ended up returning a PCIe card. But how could a card affect the boot, before the card really gets loaded?

Then I put in the new AGP {remember I got one of each} and that let me boot but having trouble with the driver. It's the EVGA card. It's running on the default drivers, and the install disk said "Hey, the drivers here are older than whats on your system." So I said no to that.

ANY ideas??
 
Interesting - I did install the EVGA drivers [this is the AGP card] and when it had to restart to finish, it too got into the GRUB errors - 21, 25, 17

I looked them up

17 : "Invalid device requested"
21 : "Unknown boot failure"
25 : "Unrecognized command"

So is there something in a driver install that rewrites the boot sector to make this happen? I am back to the temp card, which lets me in still, thank g'ness.

I have thought of restoring my drive from the ghost on drive 2. That should be clean, it was made the day before this started. I can save off the quicken files since then, that sort of thing.

But as soon as I do the drivers for the new cards it would probably lead to the same problems, wouldnt you think?

Thanks again for ANY help

This is all kinds of fun, I like puzzles, but sometimes I just want to work WITH my machine, not ON it

🙂
 
talked with a guy here at work

He says he thinks that when the new cards were just fresh the driver install may have made changes to the firmware on the cards. They looked fine in that one lifetime, but when rebooted, they had resources assigned that might have conflicted with something else at boot time and GRUB didnt like it.

All of what I know now has been from one brief session last night and a hurried session this morning before work. So I didnt try everything and dont remember everything, but here are the points I have now:

* the ASUS PCIe started ok to medium resolution, then I installed the drivers and things were great, and it told me it needed to restart to finish things and it did and it came up fine. The next boot went bad
* the EVGA AGP card did the same EXCEPT that it went bad on the reboot from finishing the driver install
* with the EVGA, even with drivers installed I could only get a 1600x1200 so I went into Properties and found some Resource conflicts. I dont know much about that. They had to do with "PCI to PCI Bridge" or some such. I didnt look at the same things in the ASUS card.
* Booting depends on which card is in at the time.

Is there some way to reset the cards to defaults, like with a jumper? So I might be able to get in with one of the new ones, do the drivers again, but set things so there are no conflicts and THEN reboot OK? Does that make sense? I'm trying to imagine things and how they work.

GRUB gets to Stage 1.5 by the way. My pal here thinks the different stages, 1 to 1.5 to 2 are different levels of loading things.

thanks
 
Can I uninstall the drivers from the new cards? If I cant boot in with them, I cant think how to do that
 
Sorry, this is getting into stuff I just do NOT understand.

My friend at work wondered what if I put the new cards back in - how would they behave after removing and reseating them?

Well, the ASUS at least has now gone back in , and let me boot all the way into my Desktop, and ... it's as if the drivers were never installed. Windows "Found new hardware", the resolution is not the best, mouse and scrolling response is slow, etc etc

Wondering - is there somewhere I can get drivers for it other than off the CD, which didnt go so well?

I dont know what to make of the ASUS website, nothing there about drivers.

There seems to be LOTS of websites offering lots of different drivers. Is that where people go? Which one? Who do you trust?

Or is the CD always the best?
 
Still a strange trip

I thought I would try the drivers from the CD one more time, and this time there were no resource conflicts, and it looked ok, but on reboot once again I went into GRUB errors at first, then it started stopping on the initial bios screen at the point that it shows my memory. The next lines - telling me the hard drives found, and CD-DVD drives and all that - didnt come. Just stopped at the memory line. Never saw that in my whole life. But after several more of those it started booting all the way up. did it twice so I would believe my own eyes.

So now I got the NVidia drivers from their site, but ... shall I stick with what looks like now might be ok, or do the nvidia driver setup? If so, do I uninstall whats on now, how do I do that? Or would the nvidia install overwrite, so to speak?

I know so little ....

thanks
 
If it's working I wouldn't mess with it.

Honestly this sounds like the PCI-E and/or AGP controller on the motherboard is just flaky. It could be conflicting with other devices.
 
I only know about conflicts as a general idea, but there were definitely conflicts I saw in the Resources tab of the Properties box when the PCIe card was first in. didnt think of looking when the AGP was in. Sounds to me like conflicts would mess up a boot, if they are something that gets set and has to be rebooted to get "really set" or something like that.

I am going to leave it as is as long as it works and I can boot, I guess.

But I sure am puzzled how I definitely installed the drivers first time around, and then next time I was in with this card, it really looked like there was nothing there.

Maybe the boot failure meant those changes that were supposed to be finalized by reboot didnt "take"
 
For good general information about video cards and a guide to low end graphics cards, you might want to look at [removed]. It also has some information about drivers in the installing video cards section.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
sonoferu said:
I only know about conflicts as a general idea, but there were definitely conflicts I saw in the Resources tab of the Properties box when the PCIe card was first in. didnt think of looking when the AGP was in. Sounds to me like conflicts would mess up a boot, if they are something that gets set and has to be rebooted to get "really set" or something like that.

I am going to leave it as is as long as it works and I can boot, I guess.

But I sure am puzzled how I definitely installed the drivers first time around, and then next time I was in with this card, it really looked like there was nothing there.

Maybe the boot failure meant those changes that were supposed to be finalized by reboot didnt "take"
Click to expand...
I am sorry as I have forgot about the post after my question. You should, in my opinion, buy a new PC, a one with on board IGP + a dual core. You should be using DDR2 so you can recycle them along with your PSU, case, and everything else. It shouldn't cost more than 300 bucks including the new window 7 OS.

Anyways, as to your current problem, you should first reset bios to its original state. Back up everything you have in the hard drive. Shut down PC, unplug, and locate the battery on the motherboard, remove it, then press the power button a few times to drain out all reminding electricity within, then put back the battery back, plug it back then fire it up into bios, find AGP and disable it as you no longer use it, don't be upset if you can't find it.

Boot into safe mode(spam F7/F8 before boot.) Once you are in, restart the OS.

If the problem persists, post again. You may need to update/reconfigurate bios.
 
Well, last night it struck again. Came home from work, screen was black. This is after quite a few days of everything OK, including maybe 5 to 10 successful reboots.

Got the Grub errors at stage 1.5 - Error 21 then 5 straight Error 25.

Discouraged, I went to bed. But I shut it down completely. So this morning it started cold. Literally. My office [in the cellar] is rather cold, about 55 - 60 usually in winter. And in the Setup I have seen the CPU temp around 84 degrees usually.

And it booted up fine.

So ... it runs fine for days, then fails like it did back then, then boots badly and then boots fine when it's had a chance to cool off and take a rest.

But 84 degrees isnt all that hot anyway, right?

Still, does this start to sound like it really IS motherboard issue after all?

If so, I hope the other forums have some nice advice for shopping. I know little about all the different makes and models and why one or another board or card or RAM or power supply. I managed to put this one together myself, but it was just screwing the board in and sticking the cards in. I hope a new one will be as easy and as nice as this one has been
 
sonoferu said:
Well, last night it struck again. Came home from work, screen was black. This is after quite a few days of everything OK, including maybe 5 to 10 successful reboots.

Got the Grub errors at stage 1.5 - Error 21 then 5 straight Error 25.

Discouraged, I went to bed. But I shut it down completely. So this morning it started cold. Literally. My office [in the cellar] is rather cold, about 55 - 60 usually in winter. And in the Setup I have seen the CPU temp around 84 degrees usually.

And it booted up fine.

So ... it runs fine for days, then fails like it did back then, then boots badly and then boots fine when it's had a chance to cool off and take a rest.

But 84 degrees isnt all that hot anyway, right?

Still, does this start to sound like it really IS motherboard issue after all?

If so, I hope the other forums have some nice advice for shopping. I know little about all the different makes and models and why one or another board or card or RAM or power supply. I managed to put this one together myself, but it was just screwing the board in and sticking the cards in. I hope a new one will be as easy and as nice as this one has been
Click to expand...

Is that 84 degrees celsius or fahrenheit? If it's 84F, that's fine, if it's 84C, that's way too hot.

If you do decide to build a new computer, I'm sure you'll get some good advice here. Remember that you'll want to return the AGP card in this case, since no new motherboards will be able to use it.
 
I know the metric stuff and can do conversions in my head - (F-32) x 9/5 - just saying that when I was in school, there was so little metric, no one ever asked what I meant by 84 degrees. Even now I am startled when someone asks such a reasonable question. 🙂
 
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