What could cause an old GPU to not work on a newer system?

[Agashka]

I'm having some trouble getting an old (~2006, MSI 7300LE) videocard to work on my Haswell, B85 chipset based Acer system (~2015). As far as I'm concerned, PCI-E is backward compatible and this setup, while not powerful, should work.

I tested the card on two other system, an older Core 2 Duo G33 chipset system, and a AMD C60 APU system from 2013, and it works just fine on those.

The Acer came with a 745, which works on the two other systems as well. The onboard videocard only works when there are no cards connected in the pcie connector. With the 7300LE connected, the screen stays in power saving mode. I hear a beep, which seems to indicate the PC can POST fine, then hard drive usage, but still no output to the videocard.

With the restricted bios that the Acer have, I feel like my options to diagnose this issue are quite limited. I would welcome any suggestions and inputs. I bough the card from a local recycler, and most likely will return and try another one tomorrow. I'm just trying to gain some insight here, and avoid playing GPU roulette over this issue.

EDIT: Just though I'd chime in my fix for anyone experiencing similar issues: graphic cards may or may not support UEFI depending on when it was made. Turning on Legacy mode or CSM in the BIOS helps with that.

 

[wilds]

Why do you want to use such an old GPU when your iGPU is significantly faster?

 

[whm1974]

Why do you want to use such an old GPU when your iGPU is significantly faster?

Yes really. And what OS are you using? I doubt you will find Windows 10/Linux drivers for an 12 y/o GPU anyway.

 

[Wall Street]

Some time around 2010-2012 POST moved from being handled by tranditonal BIOS to UEFI for both motherboards and GPUs. Around the time, both motherboard BIOSes and GPU BIOSes were hybrid and could support either UEFI or traditional BIOS boot. Your old GPU should be BIOS only, but your new system is likely looking for only UEFI. I had a similar problem with an old Fermi card on a new system.

 

[Agashka]

Oh man, I kinda forgot about this thread, I understand the confusion so here is the full context: I'm toying with the idea of migrating my workstation to unRAID, since most of my work involve VMs anyway. I'm hoping to use the 7300LE as the 'host' card, terminal output only, and dedicate my newer GeForce to a VM with pcie passthrough. I honestly have no idea if this is gonna work just yet, or if there's any easier way around this.