Just a suggestion, ( and YES I know that their both nVidia cards ) Try removing the video drivers with the old card in place, turn off, replace the card with the new one and restart. Then reinstall the drivers.
This has been known to work.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Just a suggestion, ( and YES I know that their both nVidia cards ) Try removing the video drivers with the old card in place, turn off, replace the card with the new one and restart. Then reinstall the drivers.
This has been known to work.

yeah the bios not showing is obviously the drivers fault which gets loaded about half a minute later

Piss on it.

I took the card back.... AGAIN.

New question: is a Radeon 3850 or 3870 at least an upgrade from my 7900GTX? yes I am lazy, I'll go do some searching now but some informed opinions would be nice too.

Thanks.

3850 should be at about 96gt level and a 3870 is a little slower than a 88gt

Maybe I'll try a regular 8800GT tomorrow, the power specs are definitely in my range. I have a 3850 here but I don't know if I can even bother to install it.

I'd still keep the old 7900, wait, and go Intel E8x00 / 8800GT or faster in a few months!

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Maybe I'll try a regular 8800GT tomorrow, the power specs are definitely in my range. I have a 3850 here but I don't know if I can even bother to install it.

Hey again.

This sounds more and more like an EDID issue and there's every chance you'll still have the same problem with any other current generation nVidia card.

The DVI to D-sub adapter test will confirm it one way or another so if you find the same problem with whatever card you end up with (I still think you can get the 8800GTS or 9800GTX working) I'd suggest digging out that adapter. Either that or borrow a mates panel and try it out via DVI. It should work a treat and would prove conclusively that there's no issue with your power supply, RAM or whatever else people want to suggest is your problem.

In terms of explaining why it worked for a while and now doesn't, the corruption can occur during the installation of a driver and while you had valid EDID data initially and the panel/card combo worked, at some point during the evening the EDID data was corrupted (quite possibly during the aborted Vista install) and at subsequent posts, the EDID information received by the card is not acceptable and so it refuses to send a signal.

Why does it continue to work with the older card? I believe that the EDID is only partially corrupted when this occurs and different cards apparently deal with the corruption differently. While the 7900GTX doesn't barf, the 8800GTS and 9800GTX both do.

If you have any interest in it, you can obtain the EDID information with this little utility. I guess you could setup your system to accept RDP connections, bootup with a dodgy panel/card combo and RDP into the box and run the utility so you can get the data from the failing panel/card combo. A bit of work but not much hassle if you've got access to another PC...

Anyways, best of luck and keep us abreast of the situation.

PS. 22" widescreens are getting pretty cheap and while they're TN panels for the most part, they're very unlikely to have EDID issues with a current gen nVidia card!

Also, I forgot to mention that the softMCCS app has functionality to let you rewrite dodgy EDID data so if it _is_ an EDID problem, you can fix it and still run with the 9800GTX and your current panel.

Very interesting...

Here is the "conformance" results, anything notworthy here?

Also, I can't seem to find where to fix the EDID, is it the option to "restore factory defaults"? There is an "update EDID" command that this version does not let you use..... The thing that catches my eye is that the Timing thing notes "invalid data", not just "unsupported" like all the other unsupported things.... hm...

I don't have a spare PC and am far to lazy to make a remote connection to this one....

I really need to dig up that VGA cable.

edit: ok, got a new 8800GT here, going to slap it in and see what happens. When it doesn't work I will try the VGA cable w/ adapter, which I found (thankfully). Really hoping it works.

Does not work. Not DVI, nor DVI -> DSub

I used a different adapter than the one that came with the card (didn't notice that until I took it out), would that matter? The one that came with the card has all the pins, my adapter only had the pertinent pins. Maybe if I am feeling masochistic I'll try their adapter later and see what happens.

So, if that didn't work I guess it's not an EDID issue then?

I give up. I am doomed to not be able to upgrade my card. I wish it never worked at all, then I'd just whine that I need a PCIE2 motherboard :P

Something changed somewhere, probably during that Vista install. But I have no idea how that could affect anything that happens before POST even occurs. wow.

Ok bud, i'm way way outta my depth here, and to be honest i understand nitch of what's been said in this thread.

But, i did have a sort of a similar problem to this when i got my new card. The first time i turned on the PC i booted into Linux with DVI and got a blank no signal gubbins. Changed to VGA, booted up and got the same again. After several hours and many failed attempts i eventually found the nextdoor neighbours cat and gave it a good hard kick. Tried the DVI adaptor again and lo and behold got a signal, however everything was purple...Switched off, decided to screw in the little screw things on the adaptor and the ones into the DVI socket itself, and it's been perfect ever since .

So, the moral of my story is, i guess i had a bit of a dodgy adaptor or monitor plug thing, that just needed a bit of wiggling or needed to be perfectly set into the socket on the PC.

Sounds like you've tried everything already though BBT, so feel free to treat this post with the distain it probably so rightly deserves I know nothing about this sort of stuff...honestly

Although i'll also add, i do have 2 different DVI adaptors and they do have different numbers of pins in them....give me a few mins and i'll check to see if the other one works..


{quick edit} Ok, tried the other adaptor (the one with a full set of pins) and it's very very sensitive. With just a very slight wiggle it switches between everything purple and everything blank (no signal)
Don't know it that helps ?

Everything helps, thanks for the input. Reconnected, reseated, screwed, wiggled, jiggled and skewed everything possible with 3 cards now to no avail. I've never seen anything like this in all my years of working with PCs. Actually that's not totally true, I had a 3DFX card years ago that only worked if it was NOT seated as far as it would go into the PCI slot. But the system wasn't working in the background with that one hehe.

What is set as the primary graphics card in bios? Try to set it as PCIE if it's not already.

The only other thing I think you could try would be to get a voltage meter and check every connector to see if there is the stated amount of power flowing through each one. You could also find someone with a power supply known to work with the card and try it in your system. Your in a tough situation bud, hang in there.

Quote from arco :

What is set as the primary graphics card in bios? Try to set it as PCIE if it's not already.

Already done

Quote from Dennisjr13 :

The only other thing I think you could try would be to get a voltage meter and check every connector to see if there is the stated amount of power flowing through each one. You could also find someone with a power supply known to work with the card and try it in your system. Your in a tough situation bud, hang in there.

Done, at least metered the connections.

...

Got a Radeon HD3870 in a box here, almost scared to try it.

JAKG: Is the 3870 a decent upgrade over my 7900GTX?

It's an upgrade, however whether it's decent is up to you - if your 7900GTX works then i'd keep it and save up for a new CPU/Mobo/RAM and wait to see what happens to the GPU market once the ATI 4-series comes out.

3870 works just fine, hm...

Off to see how it is in some games.

I won't be upgrading until probably around Christmas at the earliest, so I'm wondering if this card is actually a better match for my mid-level (or is it low now?!?!) than the other cards were anyway.

This card is just as (more than) power hungry as the 8800GT specwise, and it's PCI-E 2 as well so none of the other things are the problem.

i actually had the same problem with my mobo, an Asus Crosshair. First time it did boot, next day: nada, nothing. So after reading allot of reviews etc... i bought a new PSU: Enermax Noistake II 600Watt, very good one, (my mobo really needed the 8 pins connector to got it fired up..meh....) I had a cheapass Xilence 550Watt PSU that sucked around the world.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Very interesting...

Here is the conformance results, anything notworthy here?

Hmmm. The EDID header isn't corrupt so it's not EDID at fault (or at least not a corrupt header) and I'll be buggered! I really thought it was going to be that...

All I could really suggest is a final basic troubleshooting step and that's to try a different panel. If you can get a mate to bring one round or drag your PC to their's it'd give you a pretty good idea if you're stuck with the 3870 till Christmas!

I've returned all but the 3870 at this point, I am too pissed off to deal with anymore nVidia cards right now, even though I like them way better. Also, the ATi unit is brutal in FSX, which apparantly is the way it is and even Phil Taylor can't figure out why. But, I can now mess around in TDU at max res and max everything at great FPS so that's a step foward at least. And it was half the cost of the 9800GTX!

If I did anymore swapping I'd probably wear out my PCIe slot anyway.

Thanks to everyone in the thread, what a stupid problem that was/is.

Ok, well, just an update....

I decided to upgrade now - motherboard, CPU, RAM ... and since I was buying more stuff they had no problem letting me exchange the 3870 even though the exchange period had passed... The 8800GTS G92 now works flawlessly with the new board, so the PS was not the issue at all. Guess it had something to do with my MB!

Athlon 64X2 6400+, 4GB DDR2, 8800GTS. Much happier now!

JAKG: Should I change the MB to a PCIe 2 board? I had read many times that we still don't even use the 1.1 bus fully, but then some people say it does make a difference. Thoughts?

Seems to run well even on the 1.1 bus, but my brain wasn't working at the store and I forgot about PCIe 2.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

JAKG: Should I change the MB to a PCIe 2 board? I had read many times that we still don't even use the 1.1 bus fully, but then some people say it does make a difference. Thoughts?

iirc the advantage is somewhere between undetectable and ~2%

Why did they bother making it?

PCI-e 2 can give more power to the card - PCI-e 1 can only give 75w, which means us 8800GTX / Ultra, R600, 3870x2 & some 8800GT/GTS owners ended up needing 2 extra power plugs, which is really taking the piss.

Also - adding more bandwidth and getting a standard set before the next big PC mobo shakeup (i.e. the next AMD chip & Nehalem with new chipsets, DDR3 etc) can't hurt.

So if I wasn't a lazy bastard I really should rip this new mobo out and replace it with the other one for only $20 difference. The other one is also an AM2+ / DDR 1066 capable but backwards compatible with my AM2 / DDR800 stuff.

Ugh, I HATE doing mobo swaps.

Thanks for the advice.