HardwareBanter - View Single Post - Biostar 6100-M9 with EVGA 7600GT PCIx Graphics Card

**Paul** · December 3rd 06, 06:08 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt

wrote:
Thanks everyone for the comments. Unfortunately the PCIx card doesn't
show up in the Windowes XP device manager. I have tried disableing the
onboard video in device manager. All this does it defaults the the
display to VGA and the actual on-board video shows up as a question
mark.

There is no extra power connector for the EVGA 7600GT so that isn't it
either. BioStar Tech support isn't available and EVGA tech support was
there but were not able to help. I don't have another PCIx video card
to try and troublshoot.

Take Care

Examine the video card slot, and the components around the slot. It could
be that one of the lanes is not making contact. I do not recommend
mechanical means ("cleaning" something) - instead, try removing and
reinserting the video card two or three times. If residue was left on
the motherboard video slot contacts, the scraping of card insertion
and removal, could remove it. (Using an eraser on a metal surface,
only removes the metal plating, and is self defeating.)

A PCI Express x16 card has 16 high speed serial lanes. Each lane is
AC coupled, and you can see tiny capacitors near the slot, which
are for coupling in one direction. (There are two sets of wires,
one set for TX and one set for RX. There should be a set of tiny caps
on the video card, and a set on the motherboard.)

If one of the most significant lanes goes missing, it is possible
for PCI Express devices to work with a subset of lanes. But the
subset is probably not arbitrary, and if "lane zero" went missing,
that would probably prevent the card from being seen.

Tomshardware did an experiment some time ago, which demonstrated
the power-of-two lane size possibilities. They used cello tape
on the edge connector, and taped off various numbers of lanes,
then benchmarked card performance. So a x16 card doesn't need
to have all lanes connected, to function. But the valid lane
combinations probably have an ordering to them, so some lanes
may be more valuable to get working than others. (I don't have
a copy of the standard, and don't know what lane combos work.)

You need to test that video card, in another computer.

Paul