Installation Issues with a VisionTek Radeon 5670

The Ender

So, my old card's fan died, and I had to grab a new one. Picked a 5670 up for a pretty good price at Best Buy.

Unbox, plug it in to the PCI slot, boot my PC. Power-on LED blinks, fan whirs, and nothing. Doesn't even load the BIOS logo.

Unplug the card, use the on-board VGA graphics to get into Windows and uninstall all of the nVidia drivers & install the Catalyst drivers (not that this should matter, but hey, I'll humor the manual). Plug in the card, boot my PC. Same result as before.


-.-


...Now, before I go on a rant about garbage ATI's products are (it's a shame they're married to such lovely architecture), I don't suppose anyone can recommend jiggling with any settings or downloading any updates for my BIOS? I've got Pheonix 6.00 PG on a Foxconn 662 7MA board.

Nathrak

Hopping around Google it looks like some newer PCI-E 2.1 cards have compatibility problems with PCI-E 1.0 slots like that motherboard has. It depends on the chipset in the motherboard and if they release a bios update. Couldn't find a recent bios update that mentioned fixing that issue though, and they're all 3+ years old. Don't think it looks good.

The Ender

>.<

I hate ATI. Their products are fucking bullshit.


Says right on the Goddamn box, "PCI Express x16,"

...But yup, all of my digging seems to confirm what you said.


ARGH BLAGH ATI WHY CAN'T YOU RELEASE SHIT THAT FUCKING WORKS???

Gaslight

In fairness to ATI, your motherboard is old/low-end as hell, relatively speaking. It's not hugely surprising that there would be issues trying to use a comparatively current GPU on it.

The Ender

Gaslight wrote:

In fairness to ATI, your motherboard is old/low-end as hell, relatively speaking. It's not hugely surprising that there would be issues trying to use a comparatively current GPU on it.

No, sorry, it's a load of bullshit. NVidia cards work fine on the old architecture, and even the new Gigabyte stuff works on it.

ATI? Lolz no.


Oh well, fuck 'em. I'm trading this fucker back in tomorrow for an NVidia card, which I imagine will do exactly what it's supposed to do without causing me an evening of fruitless grief.

Gaslight

Not sure what you mean by "even the new Gigabyte stuff," since Gigabyte makes both Nvidia and AMD/ATI cards.

And I can find forum discussions referencing similar issues trying to use Nvidia cards in PCI-e 1.x motherboards, although in fairness a lot of it seems to have been back around the time the GeForce 8800 was current or related to the general clusterfuck that was the nForce series of boards.

This is just a guess but now that I look at it, I would wager your problem might have more to do with the fact your card was a VisionTek you got a deal on than the fact it's an AMD design. Skimming through Newegg, VisionTek's stuff seems to get decidedly mixed reviews overall compared to some of the more marquee names.

In any case, I hope you manage to get a card that works for you with your trade-in.

The Ender

Gaslight wrote:

Not sure what you mean by "even the new Gigabyte stuff," since Gigabyte makes both Nvidia and AMD/ATI cards.

And I can find forum discussions referencing similar issues trying to use Nvidia cards in PCI-e 1.x motherboards, although in fairness a lot of it seems to have been back around the time the GeForce 8800 was current or related to the general clusterfuck that was the nForce series of boards.

This is just a guess but now that I look at it, I would wager your problem might have more to do with the fact your card was a VisionTek you got a deal on than the fact it's an AMD design. Skimming through Newegg, VisionTek's stuff seems to get decidedly mixed reviews overall compared to some of the more marquee names.

In any case, I hope you manage to get a card that works for you with your trade-in.

Yes, fair enough, I'm just super frustrated at the moment.

Looking online, the Diamond manufactured 5670s are compatible with 1.0 slots, just not the VisionTek shit. And there was a Diamond model right there, at exactly the same price point, but I figured, "Eh, I haven't bought VisionTek before, so let's see what they can do for me."

Assuming the Diamond model works, I will not be buying VisionTek ever again.


EDIT: And thanks for wishing me luck.

Man I just hate it when I get something home and it just doesn't work.

Effef

VisionTek isone of those brands where its like..yeah it might work, but you might want to spend a bit more on a better brand.

stevencraig

i wish i read this post a couple days ago, i've been fighting the same issues with the same card for about 8 hrs. its a pisser.