Yeah I do.... Presumably the monitor fires up when it detects a signal from the VC
Didn't check the link yet, will in a sec.
But no, I get ZERO - but I know that the machine is booting up and running fine; I just can't see it
edit: before anyone asks, I know that because I can watch the disk access and I can tell when it's at the windows logon screen. Disk access (comparatively :razz stops and I can use the "sleep" button on the computer to put it into suspend; which does not work if the OS is not loaded.
This may seem dumb, but which DVI port is your monitor connected to? Make sure it's connected to port 1, and make sure it's snug on both your monitor and card.
Also when I bought my new monitor the first problem was to get the image to show up. Everything boots up fine but there was no image nor any error messages on the screen. The reason was that the monitor needs specific type of dvi mode (my knowledge is kinda limited here, bear with me ) to be able to show the image.
Simply put, try to check your monitor for different dvi modes (dvi-d works here). Surely the monitor should say that it doesn't support the display mode but apparently that's not always. Worth a shot.
Punching on the side of the case helps sometimes too
EDIT: try different monitor?
EDIT2: check the cable. Look for harassed pins
EDIT3: try different cable
EDIT4: send the card to spanky
To be clear; the monitor knows that it's plugged into the card because when I unplug it the monitor tells me "check cable" etc. That message goes away when I plug the monitor into the card (regardless of whether the PC is on or not of course). I wasn't explicit before - the monitor fails to turn ON when the PC turned on. It never gets a signal to switch on from the video card, so it remains in standby mode. Turning the monitor off and on just makes it tell me that it's switching between polling the analog and digital ports, and then it decides there is nothing and goes back into standby. Whereas with the working card of course when it polls the digital port, sees a signal and switches out of standby mode, and lets me see things.
It really seems like slot incompatibility, I just can't fathom that PSU being wrecked; it's not a crappy PSU and has good specs. I REALLY can't beleive the 8800 worked for that whole night and then just didn't anymore... Man, this is the strangest problem I've ever seen working with PCs.
edit for Hyper:
Both are DVI-D, the cable works with this card, etc etc.
Edit 2:
I doubt this is relevant, but I'll mention it anyway:
The ONLY thing that changed from Friday night to Saturday morning was the fact that I had begun a Vista installation on a different partition. Eventually it was taking too long for my liking, and I'd had a few beers and thought it would be prudent to just shut my machine down cold during that since even if something went awry; I would just reformat the partition and start again in the morning. Why not leave it and go to bed? Yeah, I know. Anyway I fail to see how that could affect this but who the heck knows.
Also, out of pure coincidence, Saturday afternoon my DVDROM drive decided it was going to be an ass and act up. When I try to open the tray, it only opens about 20mm and then I have to pull it open manually. It still works though, I just put CD/DVD in the tray, hit the button (very important, nudging the tray no longer works) and in it goes and works great. That did not coincide timewise with the card not working though, so I wouldn't say that the PSU did something funny.
Don't forget the machine is running fine - just the vidcard is failing to produce a signal for some reason. Have scrutinzed all connections to death, been running great on this 7900 all day. BIOS was set to defaults when I flashed it, to no avail.
Physical abuse is getting closer to the top of my priority list though.
44A over two rails is useless to you as only one goes into your card. You really want a high ampage single rail, like this "+12VDC @ 60A" Which is what my lovely PC P&C offers.
Give this a run, it will only give you a rough guestimate, but I am still saying your problem is the PSU. The problem with getting help over the net is I can't just rip my PSU out of this box for your to test it.
12V 60A is completely useless. Just like 99% of the online powersupply requirements calculators. In reviews you often get the total system power consumption, like Shotglass linked to. Rarely does a single GPU system use more than 300W of power. 60 amps on the 12v rail is 720W alone.. Online calculators add the maximum theoretical powerdraw up. Not only are these values for individual components never or rarely reached, they certainly don't all get used to the max at the same time.
Brands like Enermax, Fortron Source and Seasonic actually live up to what the specs say so, really, even for a dualcore 8800gtx system you could perfectly run a Seasonic S12 380W psu. When you avoid brands like 'Q power' or 'Sweex', 'hipower' .. and some more.. Stick to the true makers brands and you're fine with less power than you think.
The K8N was my previous board. Its pretty dated and I think its the nforce 3 chipset? Its perhaps not unlikely that there is some sort of conflict between the hardware, when I forget that it actually ran once.. Mind you with your setup I'd have kept the 7900 and waited for a large scale upgrade!
The reason that power calculator overestimates is because they can take into account ageing on components which lose efficiency.
60A on a single rail is a bit much for one card yes, from memory my GPU only needs about 25A (recommended), and I doubt the rest of my system will use 35A, but the fact is it has the power to turn over my system, where as BBT has a 22A rail, which is short of what nVidia say he needs. As wattage means nothing if your PSU doesn't have the amps to back it up, which is the case here.
Sounds like it could be an EDID problem. If you can get your hands on another panel it'd be worth giving it a test. Another way to test (if your panel has both DVI and D-sub) is to try a DVI to D-sub adapter and hook up the panel via D-sub. If the display works, then it's an EDID problem for sure.
What panel do you have? There are some with known EDID issues....symptom being a failure for the monitor to detect a signal from the video card and failing to 'resume from standby'.
Well mine never did, everything would power up, but not the card. I tested a PSU from a spare box and it worked first time. But having a spare box did mean I could test it before shelling out any cash, which is always nice.
That was my understanding as well, but two things:
The 8800 spec was asking for a combined rating. Why? It was only a single 6 pin connector card - without a PSU that bridges rails (apparantly they exist) but the specs specifically state that it's looking for combined 12V amperage. Also, the 9800 DOESN'T say that, however it has two 6 pin connectors. It says it wants 24A, but since it has two 6 pin connectors that should not be an issue? Or is that wrong? Would they not put each 6 pin on a different rail knowing that they're used for power hungry PSUs?
None of the PSUs available at the shop here have better amp ratings than mine, they have big wattage but split it up into more rails. People are running much bigger badder systems than mine with these cards - do all of those people really have a $400 PSU with massive rails? That just CAN'T be right. Can it? The card (the 9800) wants 24A, the 8800 wanted less. I don't even think the rest of my machine could push the 9800 to 92% of it's capacity, and booting in a DOS screen would not draw that from the GPU?
Samsung 940B (don't hurt me Shot). Hm, that's interesting because that's exactly what's happening. There's lots of great ideas in this thread; but I'll be forever wondering why the #$% it worked fine for 8 hours of hard use. I'll dig up a DSub cable tonight, and use an adapter. Hopefully I did not throw it away thinking I'd never need it!
I tend to think this (or some kind of problem) as well. Both cards are supposed to tell you if there's a power issue, neither one did. What I would expect to happen if the PSU just "wasn't powerful enough" is that it should at least show me 2D shit, and then cause problems when it's actually taxed in 3D. The card will not draw 24A when you're in a DOS screen, and probably not until you're using Crysis at max detail trying to beat the card into a pulp. If the PSU was really shot, then I just can't see being able to run the 7900 at max load, since that card asks for 20 or 21A on the box. Clearly that's not a problem at all right now. My rig should not even be able to feed the 9800 enough to get it to draw full current, now that I think about it
That's the thing; I'm convinced that the card is "powering up", I'm wondering if this EDID thing might be worth looking into. The fan on the card(s) come on, there are no low power beeps, and no warning light on the 9800 which it supposedly possesses. BTW I'm not arguing with you, you might just be right. I really appreciate everyone input in this thread, it's really great to have this kind of help from everyone!
Well if it is powering up, then yes, I'd try the EDID deal, to be quite honest it sounds rather plausible as I thought you were saying it wasn't turning over at all, not that the screen just wont say hello. The worst that could happen is it still wouldn't work.
I think I jumped on PSU being shot because mine died a few weeks back and it was acting very flaky when it did. If you don't have a DSUB-DVI you can pick them up for about $2 these days.
hm i figured youd already tried that
but since you havent try any monitor you can get your hands on preferably via vga and even more preferably on a good crt that will tell you exactly what kind of signal it gets if it doesnt manage to put it up on screen
does it? i have a 78gtx (previous generation with more or less the same kind of graphics power as your 79 but built with larger gates => should consume more power) and its been running everything including crysis without major problems for over 2 years on a psu that has 2 16A 12V rails
and as you said even with a less beefy psu than yours it should still be able to do 2D
Yeah especially my first post was not very clear because I was still not thinking properly about what was happening. All that's happening is that it's not coming out of standby. The stupid thing is that on Friday night I went through multiple reboots while updating drivers and so forth and all along it worked just fine coming out of standby (it goes in & out on each reboot). Until I aborted that Vista install, everything was peachy. One thing I have NOT tried is to actually completely unplug and replug my monitor before powering up the system (just turned it off). Is it remotely possible that that Vista install had the monitor in some odd mode that I could clear by unplugging it or something? (no, that's probably not right... grasping at straws here...)
Yeah, I don't have an extra monitor I gave it to my father literally 9 days ago... would've been handy right now.
I just looked up the specs, the box says it wants 22A. No one seems to know exactly what that means the more I look into it, maybe I can find some info on what that requirement really means on the nVidia site or something - all I can find so far on the web is "it means this" vs "it means that" with no real proof.
I've also heard something about a "power supply timing issue" on 8800 series cards, but I can't find any details about that yet. It would cause no video signal to be output...
stops and I can use the "sleep" button on the computer to put it into suspend; which does not work if the OS is not loaded.
) to be able to show the image.
