ATI AIW 9800 Pro AGP fried?

H

hergadawn

New Member
I've been using this card for about 3 weeks and I think it's fried now.

When I tried to boot, it beeped once, and I got the screen where it displays BIOS version, CPU type, memory detected, and all that stuff, and says at the bottom "Press DEL to enter Setup", and it just freezes there, and pressing delete doesn't do anything, unless I press it the instant after it beeps, and then it just displays the message "Prepare to enter Setup" and freezes just the same. If I then restart it (or switch it off and switch it on a minute later, I get absolutely nothing - not even a beep. If I leave it for a couple of hours and turn it on again I get to the same place as I did before again.
Any ideas what's wrong? Doesn't seem like it could be the BIOS (this thing has dual BIOS anyway). It's not displaying any errors saying it can't detect anything or giving me any error messages. I did try unplugging everything, just leaving the CPU, a stick of RAM and the video card in - still no luck.
I think it could be the video card instead of the motherboard. It
does always get quite hot, and I had left the TV tuner running for about 5 hours. I left the PC off all night, and when I tried to boot this morning, it got a bit farther - detected IDE and SATA drives (and displayed the message about the CMOS being clear, as I tried clearing it) before freezing, but the "new part" of the screeen was a bit scrambled.
I haven't got another video card to test with, or another machine to test the
video card in. Could it be the video card?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me - I really appreciate it.
Sarah

GIGABYTE GA-K8NS ULTRA-939 MOTHERBOARD
CPU - AMD Athlon 3500+
450W PSU
Samsung 80GB IDE HD
Samsung 160GB SATA HD
Tried several sticks of RAM
ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro 128MB AGP
Win XP Home, SuSE 9.3
 
1 beep is usually a memory error not the video card. Also since you have stuff being displayed I would think the video card is ok. I would check/replace the RAM.

edit: a few more details --
1 Beep: DRAM refresh failure

Explanation: The system is having a problem accessing the system memory to refresh it.

Diagnosis: This code usually means a problem either with the system memory or with the motherboard itself.

You almost certainly have bad RAM, there is a rare chance it is a motherboard error
 
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Thanks for the replies.
It always has given me one short beep when I first turn it on. I thought most computers did. I've tried it with three different sticks of RAM and it acn't be that they're all bad.
I've tried clearing the CMOS.
 
Why does that narrow it down to RAM or motherboard?
Why can't it be the video card?
I'm don't think it's the RAM, as it POSTs okay.
 
ok explain to me how it could be video card. computers can boot just fine without them. and it is not posting, according to your first post you have a display on screen and then it freezes after giving 1 beep. The DRAM refeash failure is a fatal error.
 
Thanks for the help, but I still don't get what you mean. 1 short beep means "Normal POST - System OK", doesn't it. I can't find anything else. It's always done that anyways.
 
yes.. but as you said, you can see he post screen right?
and when its past the post screen, the pc should write to the ram ti load windows.
so if somethings wrong wih the RAM, it will crash after the post screen
 
So it must be the RAM controller or (all) the RAM slots then, because I've put an old motherboard (that has an old processor in it, and has onboard graphics) and it's running fine with the same RAM stick(s) I was using in the other one. I'll RMA the mobo if you don't think its the video card. Or it could be the processor I suppose.
To the person that said it should boot without a video card - I just got a long beep when I tried taking the card out.
Thanks for all your help guys - I really appreciate it.
 
Thanks for all the replies,
Unfortunately, no. I don't have another video card I could put in. (Only a 2x AGP, which I shouldn't put in a 8x slot, right?).
Do we think it could be the video card then? I'm getting mixed messages?
 
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