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Creaphis

If I ever needed tech help before I need it now!

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Creaphis said:

What I'm concerned about is that the heat from the video card is going to cause other things in my computer to get hot - my hard drive, for example, which sits in an unventilated corner of my case. Don't computers have a few temperature sensors in them by default? Is there a way I can find out how hot my CPU and HD are atm? Sorry, I really don't know anything.

I normally use everest for general temperature monitoring, but as far as free options go I would give speedfan a try like the others suggested.

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Creaphis said:

Thanks guys.

Neat. My CPU idles at 64 degrees Celsius.


Not quite so neat O_o

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Sixty-seven now. Strange that it's never shown any overheating "behaviour" (ie. beeping, turning itself off) even when under heavy use, if it's always been so close to the limit. I guess I'll pick up a tube of Arctic Silver and clean the dust out and see if that helps.

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Mike.Reiner said:

Somebody in this thread mentioned that a better GPU always means better FPS.



That was me.

Mike.Reiner said:

This is bullshit.


Your example was bullshit. Let me TL;DR it for everyone here:

Mike.Reiner said:

C'ny, Attteeeen-shun!!! About face x156 !!1!!! Salute! (At-ease). Lowering detail level gives better FPS with ANY GPU. Sieh heil!


Well no shit, Sherlock!
However you haven't disproved that a better GPU gives better FPS at the same detail level. Sure Quake 4 won't run the same with an nVidia 6200 and an ATI X1650 now, is it? Even on an old CPU (Pentium 4 class or worse). Why...well....guess what....perhaps because the faster GPU renders THE SAME FUCKING SCENE FASTER? Maybe because more power = better than, any-fucking-way?

OK, there are games that are very heavily CPU bound (can't think of one right now, but anything running with PhysX software emulation can turn into a CPU hog, effectively killing single core and non-CUDA GPUs) and others that are very GPU bound (e.g. Cogs, scene demos, 3D Mark-like benchmarks) but a faster GPU surely ain't gonna hurt performance in any way, like many do-gooders wanna us to believe.

You must be running something so fucked up that the GPU has such a minimal usage percentage anyway, that even if it had infinite speed it wouldn't help.Enter Amdahl's law. It's actually applied to parallel computing, but if you consider a game as a parallel program involving the CPU and GPU, the larger part the GPU has, the more the game as a whole benefits. A faster GPU will execute raw GPU code faster than a slow one, period. If however the game is 90% CPU and 10 % GPU then yeah, even a light-speed one won't help with that remaining 90%.

Sure, it's pointless to expect to smoothly run a dual-core spec game on a Pentium III even if you somehow manage to put a 4850 on it (which is possible, since they do make them in AGP), however we're talking about extreme performance discrepancies here. Any modern (read: dual core) CPU is very unlikely to be "left behind" in that sense. And still...I think I'd prefer playing Doom 3 on said PIII with a 4850 than on a dual core with a 6200 ;-)

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Maes said:

Creaphis said:

My CPU idles at 64 degrees Celsius.

Not quite so neat O_o

Indeed, especially considering it's maximum safe operating temperature is 71 degrees Celsius.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/30430.pdf

I'd look into doing something about that ASAP.

Of course, the program could be misreading it as well (always possible), but I'd still reseat the heatsink to be on the safe side.

Out of curiosity, is the heatsink warm/hot to the touch right now, Creaphis? At 64-69C you would definitely be able to tell by touching the heatsink.

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Nuxius said:

Out of curiosity, is the heatsink warm/hot to the touch right now, Creaphis? At 64-69C you would definitely be able to tell by touching the heatsink.


Alright, I'll open this thing up... again...

The heatsink feels warm. What does that mean? It's clearly conducting heat if it's warm. Should it be hotter? If it actually felt like it was 67 degrees then I'd know to blame my ventilation for not cooling the heatsink. If it was colder then I'd know that heat isn't entering the heatsink from the CPU. But now I don't know what to blame, and the temperature sensor seems like the prime candidate.

I'm assuming that the CPU temperature sensor is not attached to the heatsink but to the CPU itself, somehow. If it's attached to the heatsink directly then its reading is definitely wrong.

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It's better to cross-check with other motherboard sensing programs. Try PC Wizard 2009, Sysoft Sandra, and whatever utilities may have come with your motherboard, including the BIOS hardware monitor at startup. Sometimes there can be reading fuckups with certain software or with particular BIOS versions. Also, at least older Athlon 64s didn't go into idle throttling mode unless you manually set them for "minimum energy management" in Energy settings.

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64C is almost too hot to touch, you wouldn't be able to hold your finger on the heatsink for any more than a second without pain and probable blisters.

If it's just mildly warm, then the monitoring software is just not calibrated to your motherboard sensor. Like Maes said, try different software. Did your motherboard CD come with some Asus-branded software for this?

Have a Google around for others with your motherboard. Something like "model-number-here cpu temperature sensor". You may just have to add a -20C weighting to the sensor.

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For comparison, my Athon 64 3200+ idles at 25C in winter (core temp), with a 31-32 C heatsink temp. This is in fact colder than the human body, so it doesn't even feel lukewarm. If stressed enough, it may reach 40-45 C but then again, you really have to touch the large solid chunk of metal closest to the CPU to actually feel it warm. It could probably go without a fan for a long while.

By contract, most GPUs I've seen are much, much hotter. The coolest of them were 45 C idle, most were 50 or even 60 C idle. At that temp, you can't keep your fingers on a metallic surface without getting a sharp pain after a while (and if you insist on holding on to them, you can get a blister).

Even hotter are power transistors on your mobo: these can exceed 80C and are just burning to the touch (yet can go up to 120-130 C during normal operation).

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Having just downloaded speedfan it has also told me that my AMD Athlon (a 6400+) is running at 64C. Having touched the heat sink and it being very mildly warm I am doubting its results, I have another programme that came with the mother board, if only I could find the disk.

EDIT: Actually after looking at it again I realise that it is reading -64C. how odd.

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Experiment #1: Restarted computer, immediately entered BIOS menu to check readout of CPU temp. Readout: 60 degrees. Noted discrepancy between this and Speedfan's 67 degrees. Results suggest two conclusions:

  • At least one of these diagnostic tools is not strictly accurate.
  • CPU could still be dangerously hot.
Further investigation needed.

Experiment #2: Left computer off for roughly one hour, presumably more than enough time for all components to cool to ambient temperature. Turned computer on, and accessed BIOS' temperature readout ASAP (roughly 15 seconds after ignition). Readout: 48 degrees. Over course of several minutes, value slowly and linearly climbed to previous stable value of ~60 degrees. Results indicate that one of the following conclusions must be correct:
  • Upon powering up, my CPU increases in temperature by 25 degrees Celsius nigh instantaneously, before beginning a slow, linear temperature increase. Therefore, the laws of thermodynamics would perhaps be better considered as "guidelines."
  • My BIOS' temperature readout is 20-25 degrees Celsius too hot, and Speedfan's readout is 25-30 degrees Celsius too hot.
Meta-analysis: Googled "FIC KTBC51G temperature sensor" as per colleague's advice, discovered several cases of similarly inexplicable temperature readouts. Though in each individual case, the afflicted computer's owner was unlikely to conclude that faulty temperature sensing was the cause, such a conclusion seems inescapable in view of the larger pattern.

Conclusion: Meh, all these little programs tell me that my hard drive's temp. is sitting around 32 degrees, and that's all I was worried about anyway. I don't need to bother with this garbage.

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Maes said:

Wah wah wah i'm a little bitch who modifies people's quotes and thinks it's funny!



If you are gonna retort with that shit then I won't even read what you have to say to me.

the TL;DR version of my post is not what you fucking made it out to be asshole.

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Mike.Reiner said:

If you are gonna retort with that shit then I won't even read what you have to say to me.


Apparently your perspective is skewed by way of having your head shoved all the way up your ass.

Spoiler

HAHA I FOOLED YOU, YOU READ IT !!!

At this point it doesn't matter if I also tell you that your fuck is shit, dickass, and you fuck cows in retrospect, right?

Ninja edit:

If however you insist on a part-by-part concrete ass-filling of "you're" post, here goes:

Mike.Reiner said:

Let's say at 1600x1200 with all settings maxed, you get 15 FPS.
You lower all the settings to minimum, leave the resolution at 1600x1200, now you get 30. Now let's say you drop the resolution to 640x480 with all the settings at minimum still, and you still get just 30 FPS.


You would get something more than than just because of greater memory bandwidth available (especially with older AGP cards with less than 256 MB of memory). Not much though, maybe 5-6 fps. However if your card struggles with such limitations, the GPU probably ain't top-spec either to narrow it all down to bus/memory bandwidth.

Mike.Reiner said:

What does this mean?

If at less than half the original resolution, with all the settings down, and you don't get 60+ FPS, then you never will, unless you upgrade more than you're GPU.


You will get something more, but how much exactly depends on other factors too. Games like Quake 3 with their simplistic physics and OpenGL environments are very GPU bound and can easily saturate bus and memory bandwidth. You won't be seeing 1000+ fps even with a very expensive quad GPU card because you will hit a lot of limits way before that, but that's beyond the point.

Mike.Reiner said:

Lowering the video settings down as far as you can allows you to remove the GPU as a variable as far as what you're performance bottlenecks will be, unless you're GPU is really, REALLY out of date compared to the rest of you're hardware.


Not really. Many games still have too complex environments and pass a lot of data even at their minimum settings. Only an entirely software rendered game can eliminate the GPU as a factor, but they stopped making those somewhere in 1997-1998 if I'm not wrong. Anything using 3D acceleration to a significant degree benefits from faster GPU. e.g. Cogs isn't playable on anything below a 6200 no matter how good your CPU because it does so much GPU side processing as to reduce anything under a 6200 to a fucking slideshow.

Mike.Reiner said:

Back when I had a GeForce 2, I would lower Quake 3's settings to minimum, run a timedemo, then try again with the settings maxed. The FPS was a lot higher with the settings down.
Later, with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, I got the same FPS between min settings and max settings. What does that mean? The bottleneck is not the GPU anymore, it's something else.


Maybe VSync ?

Mike.Reiner said:

Putting the best GPU you can in you're computer usually only guarantees that you can play a game and have it look pretty without the frame rate being any lower than it was at a crappy low resolution with low settings.


Self-defeating argument there, Bobo. Isn't that precisely the point of getting a better GPU for anyone? Unless you choose yours differently.

Mike.Reiner said:

Which means if a game runs like shit at the lowest possible settings, then it will probably still run like shit with the best GPU in the world.


No, it means it runs like shit with that particular GPU (although you may have to go all the way back to the bottom of the barrel: extremely underspec CPUs, and GPUs with single-pipeline and/or integrated gfx, to really find something that bad.

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Yay, my PSU came in the mail! I'll probably hold off on installing it, though, until after Christmas break. The fan and video card will only arrive here after I've already left for my family home, because they were in New Jersey, and are currently in transit to Washington. For a laugh, look at a map and note where Winnipeg, Manitoba is situated in relation to New Jersey, and to Washington.

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I was bored, so I replaced the PSU already, and dusted the computer (for the first time since I bought it - that was fun). I learned a few more things while I was rooting around in there. Mainly, after stripping off the front of my case and some internal hunks of plastic I finally got a good look at my front intake fan, a 120 mm model, and with this immediate representation of a 120 mm fan, it became obvious that there's no way to attach a fan that large to the back of my case. I think I'm limited to 80mm and 92mm fans. I already have this 120mm case fan en route to my location, and returning it would only cost me money, so I guess I'll just let it sit in a drawer somewhere. Or, maybe I'll replace my current front intake fan (AVC brand, model DA12025B12L) with the new one. I can't find any CFM or dB specs for the AVC fan but I suspect the new one is better.

Another thing I learned is that the PSU's fan serves as an exhaust fan for the case (something extremely obvious in retrospect - somehow I thought that a PSU just cooled itself independently), so another exhaust fan doesn't seem crucial, but I might as well pick one up anyway, probably from a local computer store to avoid wasting money on shipping.

Also, does this make sense to any of you?

Finally, what does one do with an ancient, low-end yet functional PSU? I'm thinking electronic recycling.

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Creaphis said:

Also, does this make sense to any of you?


Well we know the CPU measurement is fucked up, no big deal here. I'd be more concerned about those 21000+ RPM fans. They should be sounding like turbine engines and catastrophic failure is imminent :-p

The actual CPU sensor seems normal (there are separate "iron" and "core" sensors, the core sensor is the most variable and with highest/lowest extreme, the "iron" (diode) should be measuring the average temp outside the package, but it's obviously fucked up, if the core one reads just 28 C idle (quite normal for a modern CPU).

Creaphis said:

Finally, what does one do with an ancient, low-end yet functional PSU? I'm thinking electronic recycling.


Depends on how old it is. If it's a standard ATX 20 or 24 pin PSU over 250 W and you know it works reliably, I'd say keep it around: it could save yo ass one day. If it's an older 12-pin AT PSU or one of those ATX & AT PSUs with both types of connectors, donate it to a retro hardware fan: these can come in handy for older Pentium, P-II and even some P-III and P-IV mobos. It'd be a pity to junk it.

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Maes said:

I'd say keep it around: it could save yo ass one day.


This is true. But, when I'm still essentially transient there's a limit to how much stuff I want to hold onto, "just in case." I've found an electronics recycling place in my neighbourhood. If they have a program to reuse old functional equipment then I'll definitely let this thing go to a good home.

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Plug in a CD/DVD drive with a "play" button and a headphone connector, stick a paperclip between the green and black wires on the ATX connector, attach some speakers and voila! Cheap CD player!

I'll gb2 ghetto thread now :P

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\o/ Super Jamie! That's d4 gh3tt03st way to make a CD player. Incidentally, I had seen such a computer CPU attached to an unmounted car radio/cassette player. The 12V rail worked wonders for this sort of job, many car accessories also work just fine in this way.

Also, don't forget that it has particularly strong 12 V, 5V and 3.3V rails, so you could use it a general purpose PSU or as an experimentation deck with some care.

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Hahaha *ghetto five*

I used to use an old AT PSU to power electronic project kits and test car electronics. Cheaper and easier than batteries :P

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The sequence of events:

1. I install my new case fans and video card.

2. I move my monitor's VGA cord from my motherboard's output (an integrated GeForce 6100) to the video card's VGA output (an Asus 9800GT).

3. I boot the computer, and am distressed to see a perfectly blank screen. I freak out and turn the computer off and on several times, in the hopes that I will see something. I realize afterward that my computer is correctly proceeding through its standard boot process; I'm just not seeing any of it.

4. I move my monitor's cable back to the integrated output.

5. I boot my computer back up, and run the setup program on the "VGA driver" disk that came with the video card.

6. The setup program informs me that the drivers it is about to install are actually older than the ones already installed on my computer. Thinking that these older drivers are the magical phlebotinum necessary for my new video card to produce video, I proceed with the installation.

7. Some time during all of this I observe that my system time has been reset to midnight, January 1, 2005. This process of driver installation, hardware assembly and furious booting has had its mysterious effects. I return the system clock to its proper time and date.

8. The driver installation program tells me that it must first uninstall my current VGA drivers (the ones for my integrated 6100)before it can install the new ones. I allow this. The old drivers are uninstalled. A reboot is now declared necessary.

9. My computer boots back up into a very low resolution (which I suppose is to be expected). The driver installation program, before continuing its work, notes that Windows' driver installation service is also active, and gives me two options:
-Wait until Windows' process is complete, and then continue driver installation.
-Cancel installation entirely.
I choose the first.

10. Windows completes reinstalling the driver for my integrated 6100. I am disappointed that it evidently has not detected my 9800GT, but I place trust in the driver installation program packaged with my video card to bridge those gaps.

11. This packaged driver installation program completes its installation.

12. I reboot the computer, hopefully for the last time, to reap the benefits of my efforts.

13. I find that hooking my monitor up to my video card's output still gives me eternal blackness. Much worse, I find that when using my integrated output, I am able to watch my computer's boot up process, but as soon as I would see the desktop, I see an equally impenetrable void.

14. Not particularly happy, I borrow my landlady's laptop so that I may begin hunting for the solution.


So, there are essentially two problems, here. The ultimate goal is to solve problem #2, but I imagine that solving problem #1 may be necessary as an intermediate step towards that goal.

1. I need to get VGA output out of my motherboard, again. I imagine that its complete failure to produce an image may be because these apparently older drivers on the installation disc were installed directly on top of the drivers for my integrated 6100. The installation program tried to prevent this from happening, but then Windows put the drivers back on right away. So, I think that I need a way to uninstall whatever VGA drivers are on my computer again, and let Windows reinstall the drivers for my 6100 - all while I, the user, am completely blind.

2. I need to get VGA output out of my video card. I have absolutely no idea how to do this. When my monitor is connected to my video card, it simply blinks the message "no input signal." For comparison, when my monitor is connected to my motherboard, it remains black and clean, leading me to suppose that it's being told to be black, which is something. I also have no sign that my computer has even detected the video card's presence; it never triggered a "new hardware detected" event. It's correctly plugged in and the fan spins but that's all. Is there some extremely obvious installation step that I'm missing? Some switch on my motherboard that I need to flip?

Other thoughts:

I do have a manual for my video card. It's on a CD. The laptop I have available for use has no optical drive. Using my own computer to view it poses obvious problems.

I did my best to do research into video card and motherboard compatibility. What all sources said was that, even though this is a PCI-e 2.0 video card, and my motherboard's PCI-e slot is some form of 1.x, they would still work together. Perhaps the video card wouldn't work to its full capabilities, but they would still work together. Is there any chance that my video card and motherboard don't work together? That they can't work together? Maybe there's some BIOS update I need?

I didn't know this while I was buying these parts, but it turns out that in about a week's time I should have access to my dad's widescreen LCD monitor. It's a pleasant upgrade in size from this one. It has a DVI input. I would be able to hook it up to the DVI output of my video card. As DVI isn't quite the same thing as VGA, is there any chance that everything will just magically work when it's connected? Or are there deeper problems that must be solved?

I'm going to keep trying to track down answers to these questions for as long as my energy holds. I at least need to bring my own computer back to some sub-standard level of functionality. But I'd also like whatever help and guidance you can give, very very much.

Even if you don't know what I can do aside from blow another wad of cash on a new motherboard, I'd also like your moral support. I'm pretty upset.

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Calm down, it will all work together in the end.

Have a look in your BIOS for a way to disable the onboard video. Essentially you want to go from BIOS onboard and Windows knowing about the onboard card, to no BIOS onboard and Windows going "Hey, you have a new videocard!" then cancel that dialog and run the nVidia Setup for the current drivers. Always download the drivers from the website, don't use the probably-ancient ones that come on the videocard CD.

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Yeah, my landlady-slash-roommate with her unusual skillset (she can replace a toilet but can't plunge it) just gave me some things to try with the BIOS. Also, I found my common sense and was able to use safe mode and a system restore to get my video back, so I'm typing this on my own computer again. It feels good to be back at square one. Will keep you posted.

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Super Jamie said:

Calm down, it will all work together in the end.


Know what? I don't think it will! Let me tell you about where I've gotten since yesterday.

I started with the BIOS. I found that my BIOS has surprisingly limited capabilities. There is no way to do anything so surgical as disable the onboard video. Perhaps I could have disabled all PCI slots in one mass, which may have helped disable onboard video, as I believe that it's connected to the motherboard via some form of internal PCI, but this would have been of little help. There was no separate PCI-e entry within the BIOS menus, meaning either that these slots are lumped together with the PCI slots by the BIOS, or that the BIOS and motherboard are completely unaware that the PCI-e slots exist. This second possibility, in fact, seems likely. The only evidence I ever had that the computer was aware of these slots was that the new video card's fan ran, and that PC Wizard 2009 was able to say that, yes, I have a PCI-e 1x slot and a PCI-e 16x slot, and yes, the 16x slot is populated. With what, who can say.

Anyways, I turned to Device Manager to disable onboard video, as the BIOS was unable to do that for me. It was the same story as before; my computer was unable or unwilling to detect anything new. Find New Hardware Wizard just never got the hint.

Thinking that my motherboard might need a BIOS update, or some other sort of driver update, so that it could actually communicate with PCI-e 2.0 devices like it's supposed to, I started hunting around. It turns out that neither FIC, my motherboard manufacturer, or Gateway, the system builder, have any BIOSes available for download for my motherboard. Both sites only offer drivers that are quite unrelated to what I need. On FIC's shambles of a website, you can only download these drivers via FTP client. The BIOS was programmed by Pheonix Technologies, which only offers BIOS updates over this scam site, and even once I bit the bullet and downloaded the FREE!! software (which charges you $30 to download anything) I was unable to find an updated BIOS for my motherboard. I don't think such a BIOS exists. My motherboard is a decrepit, unsupported piece of crap.

I then turned to Google. I found vast quantities of poor souls with the same motherboard suffering from similar problems, and worse - but never was any consistent solution apparent. Quite a few people have GT4016's that just stopped turning on, and this is a problem that can survive replacement of the CPU, of the PSU, and of the mobo. Of those many unfortunate souls, with a video card that this motherboard cannot detect, only one ever found success. He claims that, in his BIOS menu, he found something limiting video memory to 128 MB, and, after disabling this, his computer acknowledged his video card. Already his story deviates from mine, because my BIOS menu has no such option. Perhaps he had an entirely different, less terrible motherboard, and wandered into this thread on accident. Anyways, I entered my BIOS menu again, and the closest menu item I could find to that was something like "Frame buffer." I saw that it was currently set to 32 MB, and that both 128 MB and "disabled" were options. On a lark, I disabled it.

Now, my computer doesn't boot anymore, at all. Nothing appears on the screen, so even the BIOS menu lies forever out of my reach. However, even though I don't know what "frame buffer" does, I actually don't think my latest BIOS tinkering is to blame, because of what my computer does instead of booting. After a very short period in which fans speed up, and the hard drive makes some introductory read noise, it settles into an eternally-looping pattern of the same few noises and blinks. It's quite calm; almost meditative. I neglected to mention, earlier, that this cycle of spinning and read noises had already appeared before previous boots. After beginning this attempted upgrade, and doing all of the physical handling and rebooting that an attempted upgrade requires, I noticed that my computer would go through three or four of these cycles before booting proper. This is something it never did before. The unpredictable inconsistency of this leads me to believe that it is a hardware issue, which just now developed, independently of all software and BIOS tweaking.

And thus, I have joined the ranks of those with my motherboard with computers that just stupidly spin their fans and drives forever. In my case, the PSU is not at fault; I just replaced it, and it works. Trust me. The new video card is not at fault; I removed it, just in case, and this problem has persisted. I don't think that my hard drive is at fault. If my hard drive were at fault, wouldn't I see some visual sign of this? Wouldn't my BIOS print a message complaining about it? I think that the hard drive is an innocent bystander to all of this. Until I wrestled it from my comatose computer, there was also a CD in my DVD drive, and I noticed that the DVD drive was also participating in this eternal cycle of spinning, reading and stopping. I believe I can safely blame my motherboard. It seemingly "obsesses" over my drives and never comes to any conclusions regarding them. It's quite feasible that while working with the guts of this machine some solder joints have weakened - Google informs me that poor construction is another fault of this board. So, it's toast, and it's not worth repairing, and it's certainly not worth replacing with the same model, and I need a new one.

Here's the part where you come in:

1. I could easily be wrong somewhere in this diagnosis. Can anyone help me confirm it? We might as well do that before I go further into debt.

2. I can't really afford to spend anything more on computer parts. This whole upgrade process has been an expensive disaster. But, I need a working computer, and the only way out of this upgrade is through it. So, can I get some help with choosing a new motherboard? Once again, I'm not looking for anything too high-end or gamey. I'll never bother with over-clocking. I just need something a bit more modern (which I suppose would be dual 64-bit processors?) that actually has quality, and which actually has support, unlike my current motherboard.

3. I guess I'll probably need a new case as well. If you have a favourite motherboard feel free to suggest a case to go with it.

4. My computer currently has a DVD-burner and media card reader that both work perfectly well. I'd reuse them if I could, but they both have fronts that would make them look very out of place in another case. So, I'm just curious here: do new cases come with an assortment of drive bay covers that would fit whatever devices you might put into the bays? Aesthetic coherence is important to me, you understand.

5. Replacing your motherboard means reinstalling your operating system from scratch, right? I can do that. Just making sure.

6. As a Doomer, what problems can I expect to have with dual-core or 64-bit processors? I know that some of these ports and other old programs can struggle with that.

Thank you.

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There should be a setting like "Video card priority" or "Initialize slot first" with the options "PCI", "PCIex" and "Integrated" somewhere.

In any case it's not normal for PCIex devices to be completely ignored unless

  1. The slot itself or the motherboard is broken
  2. The BIOS is broken ( but seriously, what are the chances?)
  3. The video card itself is broken
Try to see if it works in another system (yeah, even if that means asking a buddy with a computer for help, or taking it to a tech). It could very well be that you have a dud video card, especially if disabling the integrated resulted in beep cycles.

Those beeps are error codes, and I betcha they are signaling "Missing video adapter!" if you could find the motherboards' manual.

And yes, frame buffer is synonym with shared video memory, so you really did disable your integrated, only that now you have no video card at all, since the new one is probably DoA.

To boot again, you can either reset your BIOS CMOS setting with a jumper, or find another PCI or PCIe video card (known good ones, preferably).


As for the mobo being at fault... could be. I'll sound tiresome, but you should go through the usual routine of checking both the stability of the PSUs voltage rails, AND inspect the motherboard for bulging, bad capacitors, that can cause anything from random lockups, BSODs, to total hardware failure.

Sometimes, a defective VGA BIOS can also cause "video card blindness" (check out my "The Blind Banshee project" thread. Unfortunately that card totally died, after working temporarily following a BIOS update. Interestingly, it still works if used as a secondary adapter, with no VGA BIOS.)

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Your motherboard will three pins with a jumper joining two which allow you to clear the settings and return to defaults. You can see it's the blue thing next to the battery. Switch this jumper from the 2 pins it's on to the other 2 pins (one pin will be shared), power on, power off, then switch the jumper back.

You're right, neither Gateway or FIC have a BIOS update for your card. Assume that they didn't find problems or choose to add new features.

Like Maes said, test your video card in another PC if you can.

And learn the motherboard beep codes for your BIOS type, those series of noises mean something.



If you really want to buy a new PC, I love my Antec P182B case. It's got the PSU on the bottom and separate areas the hard drives go in for good heat management. I've bought cheap cases my whole life and had varying degrees of success and satisfaction, this case however is an investment which I adore and will be with me for a long time.

No, cases do not come with different colored drive panels. However the P182B has a front door you can shut so it just appears as an awesome tower of black. I have a white DVDRW in mine which I hardly ever see.

You probably have to go out of your way to get something which isn't 64-bit these days. As I understand it, GZDoom has issues on 64-bit. You can always just run a 32-bit OS and it will work fine, you don't have to run 64-bit software just because your CPU is capable of it. Really if you want to play old games I think that's the best idea anyway. Dual/quad core is fine.

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