GeForce Woes

S

silver samurai

Geek Trainee
I just threw a GeForce 6600 GT into my AGP slot today, and it refuses to function. As far as I can tell, everything is installed correctly - the system boots normally with no error messages, and it recognizes the card. I can surf the web and listen to iTunes no problem. But when I try to play a game, the game boots, goes to the menu screen, then after a few seconds my monitor blacks out and gives me its "check input" screen. The only way out is a hard reboot. I've tried it with DoD: Source, Half-Life 2, Mount & Blade and Far Cry, all to no avail.

Oddly enough, Soldat seems to work, even though it requires DirectX 8 point something. Mount & Blade however, which doesn't use any DirectX 9 effects that I'm aware of, has the same problems as games which do.

I'm fairly certain it's not a power or overheating problem, but, then again, I'm a bit of a hardware n00b.

Does anyone know what the problem might be? I'm at my wit's end and any help would be appreciated.

My system specs:
AMD 2500+
1GB DDR Ram
Windows XP
GeForce 6600GT (though it's about as useful right now as nipples on a breastplate)
NVIDIA 91.31 Drivers
 
RightClick MyComputer > Properties > Under Hardware Tab > Device Manager..

Can you see any Hardware with Yellow "!" sign?

Did you worked on onboard Graphics Card before installing a VGA card?
 
- No, there's no "!" marks in the hardware panel. It only shows my hard drive, floppy drive and CD drive though.

- No, I didn't use on-board graphics. I had a Geforce 440MX in there before, then a Radeon 9800 Pro that caused me all kinds of grief.

- I forgot to mention in my origional post that I'm running XP service pack 2, not vanilla XP.
 
It's supposedly a 300W one, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's significantly less than that as I got it on the cheap.

Also, according to my NVIDIA software, it's running at an acceptable tempurature.
 
Are you sure? I thought my old Radeon 9800 was using too much power so I upgraded mine from a 150W to a 300W, but the problems persisted. I'm pretty sure my GeForce uses less power than the Radeon. What are some common symptoms of a PSU not getting the job done? I don't see why my card works fine for certain stuff and crashes my system for others.

I appreciate your advice, but I'd rather make sure a more powerful PSU is what I need before I drop even more on my comp. I've spent probably around $800-$1000 upgrading from my GeForce 440MX.
 
I'm thinking this 6600GT might have a 4-pin molex connector for power (mine does)

Is that plugged in?

When I forgot to reconnect mine once I had the same problem.
 
There's no molex plug in. My old radeon had one, but the Geforce doesn't, which is why I'm fairly certain it uses less power than my 9800 Pro. Since the 9800 Pro worked (at least for a time) with my current PSU, I am disinclined to think this is a PSU issue. I could be wrong, though.
 
I opened my case tonight and discovered that my 6600 does indeed have a molex port on it. The reason I was so adamant that it didn't have one was that the documentation didn't make any mention of it, and the card itself didn't have one - if I hadn't thought to bootleg my Radeon's old one, I would have been up shit creek for a while longer. Anyways, boo to XFX (the OEM) for providing totally inadequate materials. Still, the card, and my computer, seem to be working fine.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the thread and helped to get me on the right track.

Gaming awaits!
 
yeah it should defo have a molex plug attached. when i upgraded to my current 6600gt i replaced my 300w psu with a 500w psu to cope with the extra power needed.

It uses poo loads of power.
 
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