Video card

General Forums Tech
#1

Motherboard died a few weeks ago. Well dont know for sure if it was the MB or the CPU. Would not POST, wouldnt even give me a beep. Have no spare parts to test either board or CPU.

Sooo, had to get some new gear. New MB/RAM/CPU. MB has built in everything but the video is a S3 Unichrome w/32Meg.

So far the video seems ok for what I do ( I dont game) but I have a PCI 64Meg Radeon 7000 Dual head card sitting on the shelf.

Would I get better video performance out of the PCI video card or the built in S3 Unichrome? Would it be worth it to install the card?

#2

most definately… the 7000 has decent 3d acceleration for its day… far superior to that of the Unijunk.

#3

Well after spending a few hours mucking about with this card and trying to install it into this MB I have to give up.

Seems you cant disable the built in video in the BIOS, it uses system ram and setting that to 0 (thinking that might disable the built in vid) ended up with no video at all and I had to reset the bios using the jumpers.

Put the card into the MB and I just get one lone beep and thats it. BIOS has an option to look at PCI first as video but that doesnt work either. In fact it defaults to PCI but the built in card doesnt want to relenquish its hold.

I so really am getting tired of PC stuff. I used to thrive on building/taking apart/breaking/fixing PC type gear but the last 5 yrs or so its really lost the appeal it used to have.

So I might have a 64MB Radeon 7000 PCI dual head card for sale unless I can get it to work in this board.

Or if someone has a cheapo AGP card that I can try instead and see if it works.

#4

is your mobo PCpartener?

#5

Why yes it is a PCPartner board.

Half tempted to flash the BIOS on it.

You have any info on this board? Via chipset, 8275 I think. Its got SATA on it that can do RAID 1 at least but thats not important.

#6

Thats the same board im am currently running. The PCI isnt enabled on those board as default, its the agp, and I’m not sure if it’ll boot off a PCI card at all. I have used a PCI card in my comp, but as a secondary card for second monitor… Still booted from the agp card. If you stick an agp card in there it’ll work right away. I have an ATI 9250 128mb card in my shop for $79.95. Try flashing the bios before you do anything though. If its the KM400 board that i think it is use this bios:

http://www.pcpartner.com/support/bios_zip/pa36a.zip

#7