Trouble with Nvdia 9600gt 1024mb PCI-E

[Wibble1611]

Specs,

Athlon AM2 5400+
4gb DDR2 Branded Memory
350w Octigen PSU
Nvdia 9600gt 1024mb PCI-E
320GB SATA 8MB CACHE HDD

I've bought a new pc recently but upon delivery i've had a bit of a problem with it due to the video card. i have a fairly old 17" Belinea 10 17 10 monitor and when i boot up the computer all that shows on the monitor is 'no signal'. When i remove the video card and let the onboard GPU (a nvidia 8200 express chipset) work the monitor works fine so that makes me think its either a faulty card, a faulty connection, the card isn't properly inserted into the slot or the card isn't compatible with the oldish monitor (which apparenlly according to the internet is possible due to something called EDID incompatibility). Additionally, the 9600gt doesn't appear to fully go into the slot (i think - one side is slightly misaligned with the other by about 1mm - its quite minimal) but not sure whether this matters. The other thing i notice is that the graphics card is not connected to the PSU via the 4pin connection although when the card is installed the fan does work. I wasn't sure if the power needed to be connected to show something on the monitor or whether some power from the PCIE slot would be suffienct. I've looked on other threads and noticed that the spec of the PSU can sometimes affect this (once of course the card is connected to the PSU!). I've looked at the amp readings and they show the following

DC: +3.3v +5v +12v -12v -5v +5vsb
Output: 20a 27a 10a 0.8a 0.5a 2a

Do you have any ideas what might be the problem? If i can't figure it out i may need to send the whole thing back to the manufactorer!

[Mota_boy]

Have you tested with any other pci-e card, especially some card what does not need extra 6-pin power cable,?

[bridgman]

+12v at 10 amps is really low. Not sure what the 9600gt needs but that doesn't seem like enough power for an add-in card..

[sc3252]

+12v at 10 amps is really low. Not sure what the 9600gt needs but that doesn't seem like enough power for an add-in card..

Hey now, dont forget those 27 amps on the 5v... Kidding aside I would say to try and use a different monitor, since I have read about quite a few monitors not working with the newer cards. If that isn't the case they could have sent you a faulty card. Or there could also be a driver issue. Do you get no signal right at boot up or when windows/Linux/BSD starts?
PS: you didn't say what OS was on the machine, could you specify?

"The other thing i notice is that the graphics card is not connected to the PSU via the 4pin connection although when the card is installed the fan does work."
This is a red flag. Do you get any loud beeps? Also it should be a six pin, but who is counting.

If I were you I would call the company that you ordered from and see what is up. the 10amps like said earlier is very low, and the card not being fed a 6 pin pcie connector is most likely the issue.

[Setlec]

my self i have a problem with 3d acceleration with this geforce 9600gt 1024 MB on my linux box and i'm having issues with video playback with avi, mkv and mp4 (i use movie player with all gstream codecs installed). i'm using 180.22 driver from nvidia website. i don' know what is wrong with card. on windows XP & vista this card works really fine.

@ Wibble1611: what is your PSU?

[Kano]

When you try some GeForce 8/9 cards with standard nv driver (not nvidia binary) then you see absolutely nothing with dvi->vga adapters. Thats a bug which I found out last year but it seems it will not be fixed. TFT work however - so I just bought a new monitor What works is forcing vesa, like using

xforcevesa

option for ubuntu. Then you install binary nvidia driver and it will work fine.

[Panix]

+12v at 10 amps is way too low.

Even without knowing the power requirements, I would say so but here is another claim:

The minimum power supply requirement for that card is: 400W Minimum recommended power supply with a total +12 Volt current rating of 26 Amp Amps.

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t72626.html

I would upgrade the PSU and if you can, the monitor as well. That should solve the connection and power issues.

I think the card should fit all the way into the PCI-e slot. When you get a new PSU and monitor (might as well as that is a good card), try wiggling it back and forth while you push lightly? It should wiggle in. Other than that, I have had issues with VGA to DVI adapters when I took my computer to a place in which my friend only had a monitor with only the VGA interface. (It died so now there is a DVI LCD replacement, though). If a new PSU, LCD monitor (with DVI port) doesn't solve the problem, then the video card might be a culprit or you should try as a last resort another PCI-E card into the motherboard's PCI-e slot to see if it would fit (and work).