Through a Video Card, Darkly

[elfs]

My desktop died this afternoon. It doesn't boot, and when it makes it past POST it gives one long beep and three short beeps. I looked this up and it means No Video Card.

I pulled out the video card, an old GeForce 4 TI4200 8x AGP w/128MB (looking at the websites, I can see that it goes now for an average of $40). There are burn marks on the fan! It collected so much dust that it simply ceased to spin and burned out. The glue on the label is dried out from the heat and flaking off.

Yech. I hope just replacing it is sufficient. If its burnout caused deeper problems, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

If you'd messed up other parts of the system, the POST might not have gotten that far. No, I'm not saying you're OK, but I'd be hopeful.

Now, while you have the case open, remember to check the other fans. It's not just dust; the bearings can wear out, but usually you can hear that happening.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

See, that's what has me worried. Although the video card is obviously and visibly damaged, it only makes it past POST some of the time; sometimes, it just shuts down immediately. When Omaha bought this MB for me, it was advertised as a "Linux Friendly Gamer's MB", which means that it's very picky about having something in its AGP slot, and has no on-board video (why bother when any gamer worth his salt will go buy the hottest video card he can find?).

[lovingboth]

Yep, I've had that problem with that card. In my case, it didn't get as far as completely dying, but it was on the way - a missing line of pixels there, a judder of pixels there.

I replaced the heatsink and fan as a combo - with a copper heatsink and new fan, and the card's never run cooler... in one of the kids' PCs, not mine.

Depending on how old the PC is, and what you use it for, you may condsider just replacing it / the internals. We're at a point where new kit is way more than twice as fast as things of that generation, and twice as fast is my personal 'it's worth upgrading' point.

[ex-parasyte688.livejournal.com]

FYI: This indication can often be false. If replacing the video card doesn't work, try rotating your RAM. If that doesn't work and you are sure that your video card is good, than try replacing all you ram (if you have some around). Otherwise, try rotating your RAM with a known good module. I've come across this countless times. If it's not your video card or your RAM than it's your bus system or could be your AGP slot (hope not).

Something else you can try to verify that it is not RAM is pull the AGP video card and slip in a PCI one temporarily.

Last thing: if you have on board video, make sure the jumber/bios.switch is disabled.

Thx for the help on the AJAX thing. I'll get back to you when I finish my prototype. I'm not using JSON quite yet because I just needed a simple table. having that table redraw entirely was fine for now.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It could be the video card and something else, but there's definitely something wrong with video card. The fan assembly is blackened by overheating. I'm going to replace the video card this afternoon: Frys is having a sale on an nVidia FX5500 256MB for $29.95, which makes me wonder if there isn't something wrong with EVGA products, but I tend not to push my video cards too hard anyway.

EVGA

[(Anonymous)]

I have an EVGA 6200, fanless, that I got for $60 after two $30 rebates just before xmas. Worked fine, though I don't like nvidia products (they have more quirky problems with games than ati, but then I expect graphic cards to seemlessly let me run games in windows, have a tv program running, along with a few yahoo widgets going, while browsing and stuff..) Nvidia cards always have some problem that crops up for me, like quirks playing games windowed.

If I were more of a single-tasker I bet I'd have more luck with nvidia, though I'm very happy right now with my new x800gto (only downside is loudness of fan but I'm going to get a new cooler to fix that).

EVGA seems to be pretty decent, the 6200 was a decent card. Its going into a celeron machine I'm making for a friend.

[(Anonymous)]

Wish live journal let me identify myself easier, forgot to add my name at the end there..

BTW, your Ti 4200 was a wonder choice for a card, it has a great price performance, and stood up solidly over time. Here is a list I often use for comparisons: http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-general/54675-graphics-card-ranking.html

...Jeffrey Boser