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New video card displays jibberish on screen

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imported_savage

Member
Hi, I have a computer with the albatron kx400-8x motherboard. Up until now, I had been using the powercolor ati 9200 video card, but recently I bought a brand new BFG nVIDIA GeForce 6800 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-Bit card (http://www.bfgtech.com/6800OC.html). I installed this card and turned on my computer only to find that everything was garbled up jibberish from the minute the monitor turned on. I contacted the tech support and they said that it might be a problem with the bios. So I put back the old card and went on albatron's site (http://www.albatron.com.tw) and got the new version. But when I restarted the pc with the floppy to update all I got was "NTLDR missing. Press any key to restart."
I really want this card to work, so could anyone PLEASE help me out!!!!
Thanks.
 
That video card is very power-hungry. Do you have a high-quality 400W-500W power supply to feed that beastie? Got the auxiliary power cables plugged into it?
 
I can help with the BIOS update I do a little research on how Albatron's update procedure works. I'll start on that in a minute here.

But I have a feeling that the cheapie Aspire power supply is struggling to power your video card. If I were picking a power supply to power a 6800OC, I would get one of these hummers 😎 High-quality wattage and plenty of it, especially in the 12V area with two separate 12V rails totalling 33 amps. Considering what it'll cost you if the Aspire power supply auto-nukes and takes out just your video card, let alone the mobo and drives, $120 is not that crazy of a price to pay for insurance. That unit's forward-compatible, too.
 
All rightie, back with some help on the BIOS update. You already downloaded a Zip file containing two things: the new BIOS itself, and the Awdflash.exe flashing utility.

The next thing you need is to make a bootable floppy diskette. On a WinXP system, put in a floppy diskette, go to My Computer, right-click the A: drive, choose Format, and I believe you have the option to make an MS-DOS boot diskette. Do that.

Once you have the boot diskette made, add the new BIOS file and the Awdflash.exe utility to it, then boot the system from this diskette. It should stop at an A:\ prompt.

Now type Awdflash.exe and press Enter, and you'll be guided along the rest. You'll need to give it the full filename of the new BIOS, such as 4008x105.BIN or whatever it is, so have that written down. Definitely do the update with the older video card in there, you sure don't want it locking halfway through 😱
 
I have win2k and it doesn't give you the option of making a bootable disk under format. How do I get it done in this OS?

-Thanks for all your help by the way.
 
Go to my own site (such as it is 😱) and you see that bottom item with the link, says for 'Cuda IV owners? Download that. It's a Zip file containing four items, one of which is a DR-DOS boot-floppy-making utility. It'll get a boot floppy made and then you can add your BIOS and update utility to the floppy and you're ready for action 😎


(the drdflash.exe is the one, by the way)
 
Hi, I just finished updating the bios. I havn't tried to install the card yet because its getting very late, and I'm just tired, I'll post another reply as soon as I try to install the card again. For now the computer is working fine except it asked me to install the drivers for a multimedia audio controller???? My sound is working fine so I don't know what that means, do you?

Thanks
 
Try running it through the Windows Update site for an updated driver for that, I have a suspicion it'll find one. The BIOS update may have re-enabled something that you had disabled previously, or it may have an updated "identity" and want a driver update for that reason.

Good luck with the test tomorrow 🙂
 
Originally posted by: savage
Hi, I tried to install the card, and nothing has changed. I still get the garbled up crap on the screen I got before.
Click to expand...

after reading the thread ... I agree with Mech's first conclusion ... the PSU is crapping out
 
Hmm, I'm gonna take my pc to my friend's place tomorrow to see if it does the same thing on his computer. Hopefully it does and I'll be able to exchange for another card. Otherwise, I'll have to make an excuse to return it and hope they accept. 🙁
 
Why not get another power supply? This is like returning your Dodge Viper because it idles roughly on 87-octane economy gasoline. Use Premium and see if it runs like it ought to 🙂
 
Because I don't know if its a guarantee. Plus I already spent $300 (before a $50 mail in rebate) on this and I'm a college student, so you can imagine how hard it is to spend another $100 on something I hope will fix it but am not quite sure.
 
I see your situation. What is the amperage rating of your 420W power supply on the 12-volt line, out of curiosity? That's what powers the CPU's voltage regulators, the drive motors, the fan motors, and the bulk of the 6800 too.
 
I have no idea what you mean. You already know the link to the site where I bought it from, maybe that shows the info, other than that I dont know what to tell you.
 
There's a label on the side that should list the different amperages that it can put out, the main ones of interest being:

3.3V
5V
12V

and the 3.3V + 5V combined, since most PSUs generate those two off of a common source.
 
I bet you're right, that's probably the one. It has 18 amps on the 12V rail, which is where your high-end video card and your high-end CPU are pulling from. Label shot of Enermax showing that each of its two 12-volt rails can put out as much 12-volt amperage as your whole 420W Turbolink does.

So I'm almost ready to bet a cookie that some more high-quality 12-volt amperage would help. 😱 I know it's not easy to blow $120 on a boring rectangular thing with some wires coming out of it, but it's the foundation of the computer from an electrical standpoint.
 
BTW, you could go less than that in Enermax's lineup and still get a really healthy PSU. That one's claim to fame is partly that it covers the future needs of 24-pin ATX 2.2 and PCI Express, all in one. Here's a much less expensive alternative if you're content with one that works with what you've got now: link, $69 sound better? 29 amps on the two 12V rails combined.
 
The TruePower550 would be awesome :Q Excellent to know beforehand that it'll address the situation too!
 
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