difficulty installing a new GTX 470 video card

[coleco123]

Greetings all,
I know I am going to get blasted but I figure I have nothing else to loose. I am trying to get a little more time on a several year old build of mine so I thought I would upgrade my video card. The installation is fine (meaning case room, actually fitting it in correctly) , but the machine does not go beyond an MSI generic picture after turning on. I have checked power connections, all connections, etc. about 100 times over the past day. Here is what i currently have:
MSI 975X plat power up
Conroe 6800X extreme core duo
4 GB Corsair Ram
Blu Ray and standard dvd burner
Audigy Extreme Music
320 Barracuda WD HD
Antec tru power 650 (a few years old, not the newer SLI type) It has 3 12Volt rales at 19A a piece if I remember correctly). (All the GTX 470 box says is 38A on 12volt is needed). I am using these terms loosely and I apologize - power is not my expertise.
Now I had a Visiontek ATi 4870 512mb which worked fine as best I can tell. I tired to uninstall the drivers, turn off the machine, remove the old card then insert new card, turn on with Nvidia disk in the DVD but will not get past the initial MSI welcome screen. Can't go into safe mode, settings, BIOS, etc. I took out the new out, put the old ati back in and no problems.

I know just enough to be dangerous about computers but not enough to be a great trouble shooter. (I think if you ask me super detailed questions about software and hardware you will see I am a faker - I can impress family but on forums I get crucified by the more elite) So far I tried to download the newest BIOS from MSI, (I think it worked - it is that online BIOS updater stuff) I tried resetting CMOS a bunch of times using an approved correct method of doing it, I upped the voltage in BIOS from 1.5 to 1.65 (what this does I have no idea) I made sure PCI X was the start up slot if you will in settings, and of course I cursed and prayed. No luck.

No matter what I have done nothing seems to help. I would think if it was a driver issue I could at least get into windows. Can only do that with the old card in.

Any thoughts. At the moment I have no other computer in house to test the new card (old AGP systems yes but that wont help)
Feel free to be brutal to me, I am bracing. I probably should leave this to the professionals.
I should add that i did go to MSI forums site and there just is not a lot of info about that 4 yearish old board and new video cards. I also googled wondering if anyone else was have a problem with newer cards in old 975X type boards. I have it all boxed up ready to go back to store where I purchased it yesterday but thought I would appeal to the masses at least one time. I kind of hope there is something obvious I am doing wrong or missing. In past putting new cards in for me was always plug and play - then after that you would tweek the drivers, etc. but not this time. I will say that there has been no smoke, flames for mobo, bad blinking lights, beeps that are abnormal. It sounds like it will work but just hangs forever on opening MSI screen with the GTX 470 installed in either pci x slot.
Thanks for any thoughts.
Coleco123

p.s. after rereading one crucial piece of info i neglected to put in: when installed with the two power connectors, the fan on the GTX 470 does spin so it is not entirely a brick if the card is the issue.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> turn on with Nvidia disk in the DVD but will not get past the initial MSI welcome screen.
That might be a bad CD/DVD disc.

Did you ever try going into Windows without the disc in the drive?

Did you try downloading the nvidia drivers from MSI or nvidia and saving them to a flash drive or burned CD / DVD?

 

[coleco123]

Thank you for the suggestions. I am almost 100% that I did try turning on the computer with and without the disc in the drive. Because I would not absolutely certain I will try that again.

So you are suggesting if there is a bad PNY driver installation disc in the player, that could be causing me to stall at the very beginning of the boot process? Had not thought of that. I guess when the ATI was put back in it did not matter if the disc was in or not because I have had the disc in for the last several hours of working on this.
As far as burning MSI drivers onto a cd/dvd did not do that. I certainly will go to their web site and if there are drivers there I will do what you suggest.
Thanks so much for the ideas.
coleco123

 

[TemjinGold]

Even if the PNY drivers aren't "bad" I still wouldn't use them as nVidia's own drivers will almost always be more up to date. The other thing to try if that doesn't work is to ensure that the 2 pci-e power plugs going into the card are from 2 different rails (on some PSUs this won't matter.) Otherwise, there might not be enough power going into the card.

Last thing is that the slot is PCI-Express, NOT PCI-X (a very Different slot that only appears on server boards.) I'm saying this because you said you set your bios to start on that. Your bios should be set to start on PEG (Pci-Express Graphics.)

 

[coleco123]

Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I guess I am just plain careless. It is a PCI-Express. I should have been less sloppy.

At this exact moment I am using the MSI live update to get more stuff. Apparently my BIOS was not the latest. As far as the driver, VGA, etc. I will essentially make sure I have the latest of whatever they are offering for my board.

Different connectors from different rails? Now that is a great idea also. My older PSU is not SLI for sure - there are only 2 pci-e power plugs total and they seem to be coming from the same cord from underneath the psu. Now I see that with the video card there are some molex to pci-e adapters. Maybe I could try one of those.
First step will be to make sure all upgrades from MSI are done - I thought I did it earlier but obviously the old MSI live update was just that -old. Next will be to boot without any pny disc as was suggested and maybe there will be some results.

thanks all!

 

[Meghan54]

I'd honestly worry about your power supply first, in this case.

The video card should work and let your pc boot with whatever generic VGA drivers Windows would work with until you got the nvidia drivers loaded.....the display wouldn't be pretty, but it'd display and boot.

But, since you've got an older Antec, which is probably populated in the secondary with the horrible Fuhjyyu caps, it's probably not delivering its rated power at its advanced age.

Borrow a known good medium output power supply, like another 600W+ power supply, and test your system with it. Quick and easy way to determine if your power supply isn't up to the task.

 

[Matrices]

Antec tru power 650 (a few years old, not the newer SLI type) It has 3 12Volt rales at 19A a piece if I remember correctly). (All the GTX 470 box says is 38A on 12volt is needed).

This might be the problem. Split rail designs are problematic. Unless you can figure out which PCI-E connectors are on which rails, you don't know whether you're feeding the card enough power. Try another PSU (borrow from a store) and see what happens.

 

[coleco123]

Well I sure do like my new Corsair power supply. 70A for the 12V rail. Installation was easy enough - it has a lot of connectors. I like the look of it better than the older Antec.
The only problem? It does nothing to fix the problem. Still hangs at the opening MSI screen. So I am guessing that the videocard is in fact getting enough juice. After the install I quickly put the old ATI 4870 in and as before the machine works flawlessly. I did not do anything with the drivers because I figured if I could at least get into windows with the new video card I could then download the latest drivers but again no luck.
I will play with it a little more but am starting to loose faith that I can figure it out.
Thanks again everyone.
Coleco123

 

[ChippyUK]

This is definitley a hardware issue *somewhere*

Some ideas:
The molex connector on the motherboard is also worth connecting up as it supplies extra power to through the PCI-Express slots (it's above the primary slot)
Have you tried the 2nd PCI-Express slot as you have 2?

 

[coleco123]

I thank everyone for their continued support in my quest. I did alternate the PCI-E slots and just did it one more time without any luck. I did connect the additional molex connector above the primary slot. Again the card's fan is spinning, all the beeps and so forth sound fine (no warning beeps or any different type sounds). It just will not budge past the opening screen as I said before. No chance for safe mode, BIOS screen, etc. I am not sure what else to do. I might see if someone I know has a computer that I can throw this in and see how it works. I thought about a reinstall of windows but not sure how that would help. anyway, i need to rest as I have a headache from this. I just keep feeling there is something missing but why the old ati works great and this one does not is beyond me. maybe someone is trying to tell me something about how I am choosing to spend my dollars.
Thanks.

 

[mfenn]

It sounds like you bought the card locally. If so, I would exchange it.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Definitely try swapping power supplies. Also ensure that you didn't accidentally unseat a RAM stick when you installed the card.

 

[Kenmitch]

Maybe try booting the system with no video card at all....Sounds funny but it has worked for me in the past when I ran into a similar situation.

 

[TemjinGold]

Just out of curiosity... did you totally clean out the AMD drivers before switching in the nVidia? Simply uninstalling isn't enough...

The other thing I would do is if you have a friend with an nvidia card in his/her system, if you could try your new card in their system to see if it works. That would help narrow down the problem.

 

[Wizlem]

Do you have Full Screen LOGO Display Disabled in your bios? I believe this is the MSI welcome screen you are talking about. Disabling it will allow you to see POST messages if you haven't tried this yet. Might help determine when the system is hanging.

 

[ChippyUK]

I disagree that doing anything in Windows will resolve this as it does even get past the BIOS. Yup, disabling the BIOS logo *may* show where it's hanging.

Best bet is to try the card in another machine as you've already guessed. I think you've covered everything you can possibily do... You've been patient enough!

 

[Rifter]

guys drivers could not possibly be the problem, he is not getting into windows, hell he isnt getting past the bios screen.

Since you have tried a new PSU and that was my original instinct as well all i can think of is that is most definatly a PCIe 1.0 board right? if so maybe the newest generation of video cards only work on PCIe 2.0 boards, i know they are "supposed" to be backwards compatable but thats not always the case.

Either that or the card is defective.

 

[Keysplayr]

Look in the motherboard manual. Find out how to "Clear CMOS". Usually there are two methods. Disconnect the A/C power cable from the PSU, and either move a jumper for a few seconds, or remove the CMOS battery for a few seconds.
If you have a third party sound card, like a soundblaster or turtle beach card, remove it temporarily to see if there is some sort of IRQ conflict with your new card.

 

[coleco123]

These are all great ideas guys and I really do appreciate it. To summarize I have done the following things:
1. cleared CMOS multiple times
2. installed new power supply.
3. tried the different pci-express slots (my board has two)
4. uninstalled old ati drivers.
5. all the lights on the corsair memory works but will make sure they are all secure as suggested.

However, I probably did not remove all traces of it as suggested. I guess I need a third party program for that? I used add/remove for the catalyst software then made sure the driver was uninstalled in device manager. I will try that.

In regards to an older board and newer video card I suspect it is not pci-express 2.0 due to the age of the board. I will look into the GTX 470 web site and see what they say about that. As far as removing SB audio card and disabling the logo screen in BIOS great ideas! I would not even have thought of that. I guess turning it on without video card should be tried also. I will add that to the list.
If these last few tid bits dont do it I may grab two new (lesser) ati cards - with the new power supply -i have a bunch of pci-express connections now. Maybe try a poor mans cross fire for a year while finishing out the life cycle of this build. I hate to admit defeat but I just don't have a lot of time to figure this out further. I might go to the folks at the store and ask them to see if the card works - if not will return it. (I wont mention store name but they have a particular squad there. hint hint)
thanks all.
coleco123

 

[mav451]

If it's not getting past the MSI flash screen, then it is not driver-related: we can put that to rest now. Ditto with CMOS or RAM being an issue, particularly _because_ you can POST with the 4870 just fine. TBH either exchange the 470 or test the 470 in another PC. Really need to rule out the GPU itself now, otherwise we are just spinning our wheels here.

 

[coleco123]

I agree. I will see if I can exchange it for another. This might take a day or so based on my work schedule.

I will post an update when I figure out what I am going to do - closure wise for the kind folks that posted over the last 2 days. (I hate when someone drops the posts without the solution or ending to the story).
TBH though I am now considering perhaps installing two ATI 5770 just to try crossfire one time before the lifecycle of this computer ends. two of the 5770 from New Egg for example is not much more than one GTX 470. I will think about it a little.

Thanks all!!

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

i have nothing to add except i admire your honesty.

 

[Genx87]

Just tossing this out. Does your MB support PCIE 2.0? I am looking at its product page but it is a bit confusing. As it lists PCI-E Gen2.0 but then in the column states Gen 1(1x16,1x8).

http://us.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=267#menu

Is your sound card also PCI-E? Could it possibly causing the MB to revert to 1.0 standards when using two PCI-E slots? I believe the 400 series requires the slot be PCI-E 2.0.

 

[coleco123]

Those are good questions. The motherboard itself has X16 on the top slot and X8 on the lower one. I did review the mobo website specifications and agree with what you said - it is very confusing. If you look a little more you will see this under further information:

Two PCI Express x16 slot. (supports PCI Express Bus specification v1.0a compliant)

I don't know what they mean when they say the following at a different area:

PCI-E Gen 2.0: Gen1 (1x16, 1x8)

As far as my soundcard it is in a pci plain slot. I will remove that as well as anything else and boot up once again before I give in and admit defeat.
Going to Nvidia website it says the video card is designed for PCI express 2.0 but it does maintain backwards compatability with older boards so I suppose that answers that.

You know part of me feels like I am trying to bring a ham sandwich to a formal banquet - meaning I am trying to put something new and shiny into an older product.

I will try one or two more options tonight then make my decision - either bag it and go with ATI crossfire (or a single newer card like 8850)or as far as Nvidia exchange, order new, etc. a GTX card. (using that companies web site there are no other GTX cards locally but I guess i could go there and politely ask them to show me it works).
Thanks all.

 

[RussianSensation]

This might be the problem. Split rail designs are problematic. Unless you can figure out which PCI-E connectors are on which rails, you don't know whether you're feeding the card enough power.

False. http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/PSU/

The only reason why any power supply is limited to certain graphics cards is simply the total power output of the power supply, something that’s true with any power supply vendor and not a feature of any particular single- or multi-rail design. His PSU is EASILY sufficient if it is working according to specifications. Even a good 500W power supply can power the GTX470.