No video at boot, no error beeps: ASRock 939 Dual SATA2 & ATI 5770 HD

[clone137]

Hi, my old ASRock 939 Dual SATA2 MB has both AGP and PCIe slots for video cards. (So far I've been using an AGP card (NVIDIA 7600 GS) but I wanted an upgrade so I got ATI 5770 HD 1GB (Club 3D) PCIe card for it.) When booting with the new ATI card I get no video signal, it's all blank. I get no error beeps either.All the fans spin fine (including the video card's) and HDD's get power. HDD's sound like they accelerate first, then do some activity for a second and then kind of shut down the spinning, accelerate again etc, repeating that in a cycle.

I took off the PCIe ATI card and put back the old AGP card and everything still works perfect again.

I've checked specs, the MB has 16x PCIe (not 2.0 though) and the card should work in it. I thought it was a PSU problem because my old one was slightly under the minimum requirement but even with the new 700W PSU the same problem exists.

I have tried looking for BIOS options or jumper options. I can't find anything that needs to be switched there to make it work. As far as I know from the mobo manual it should automatically find the video card. I did select PCIe as primary video card (as it can run both AGP and PCIe at the same time) but no luck.

Anyone have any ideas where the problem is?

 

[jackschmittusa]

That's an old board, but does it have the latest bios?

Using an lcd monitor? Did you use a different connection type?

 

[Binky]

Update the BIOS, reset the CMOS, cross your fingers.

 

[ronopp]

how about switching the video to pci and before it restarts, pull power and put the pci card in?

 

[Etham]

Hi, I've the same case of clone137 asrock939 and ati 5770 and update the bios to 1.30 form web asrock but no have video signal. I've put the 5770, remove 5770, change the bios parameters , etc but no have solution
Update the bios and reset cmos is not the solution.
Sorry my english, i'm from spain.

 

[sparkuss]

Probably the same as what you've tried but here's a link to another exact issue with the Bios update, clear CMOS and Driver Cleanup working at least.

NCIXUS Forums

A couple other links referenced the definite power diff between PCI-E 1.0 and 2.0 (75W vs 150W). They mention the 5000 series needing at least 40 Amps available on the +12 volts rails.

For BIOS latest is 2.30. Is that what you meant versus 1.30??

 

[sparkuss]

Also just reading a few more links. They ref changing the PCIE Freq on other boards. I have the same SATA2 and the bios can range the PCIE freq from 70-150. Try checking it and go minimum 100 and raise from there a little at a time.

Wish I had more but I'm still on a HD4890

 

[clone137]

It works! Thank you all. You were on the right track with BIOS. I went to ASRock BIOS page and updated to the latest BIOS 2.3 (10/2/2006 version, my old BIOS was a 2005 version). BIOS update solved the problem, I didn't need to do anything else with it. Everything works perfectly now with the new PCIe card.

I was hesitant to update BIOS at first because I hate doing it (can't afford a new mobo if it goes wrong) and because the latest BIOS is so damn old that I didn't think it would be much better. I'm happy I was wrong. Many other old MB owners have solved this same issue with a BIOS update as well. I tried all kinds of things before that but nothing worked. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Etham]

My Asrock is 939N68PV-GLAN and i only found the version 1.30 to upgrade my Bios.

 

[sparkuss]

Etham,

Sorry, you said at first you had same case but didn't say diff MB. That 2.30 is latest for the Dual SATA2. Looks like that 2009 1.30 is the last for you but it is at least 2009.

You also have diff chipset, Nvidia. Have you updated to that last Nvidia all-in-one driver. Try updating to all the latest drivers on that page as well except for the Nvidia Gfx driver (leave it alone)