geoduck Posted March 20, 2006 Posted March 20, 2006 This started out as what I thought was a possible memory problem as described in http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46989 , but I've now come to the conclusion it is related to the video card. I have an x550 video card that stops screen output at some point after the 'PCI device listing' screen displays. The screen doesn't go black, it just stays frozen on the last image output, all the while the system goes about its business of booting (from a floppy right now) or running memtest from BIOS. I tried a second, identical x550 card today and get the same results so I don't think the card is bad, just that there is an incompatibility between the expert board and the x550 video card. I found someone had a similar experience in the past (http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread...&highlight=x550 ) but I still can't get mine to work. Does anyone have an x550 card that is working with a DFI NF4 board, in particular the expert? Am I overlooking something in BIOS? I'm using the 'load optimized default' setting after I clear the CMOS and then enabling memtest in the BIOS. I'm also not sure if this problem is only affecting the text mode output or if it is similar in graphics modes. Does anyone know a simple program I can run automatically from a floppy that will check the video modes? I've currently got a mininal set-up with 1x512mb memory, video card, floppy, and no disks or operating system. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoduck Posted March 30, 2006 Posted March 30, 2006 I was told by Diamond technical support that this video card comes in two versions, one with a cooling fan and one with a big heatsink, and I needed to swap the one I had (fan) for the other (heatsink). I RMAd the board and received the new heatsink version today but it is behaving exactly the same way. I'm not booting into Windows (I don't even have it installed yet) so I don't think it is a driver problem. Diamond technical support previously told me it was a problem with my system, that I didn't have the right chipset driver or something. I'm just trying to run memtest from BIOS so does it need a chipset driver for that? It also does the same thing when I try to boot from a bootable floppy or a bootable CD. I had an old PCI video card installed and it worked fine but I don't want to live with that card forever! Am I missing something in BIOS? I even set the PCI express frequency to 105 MHz as suggested in http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...75&postcount=15 Any suggestions (other than simply getting a different card, which is my final option)? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddyjaxx Posted March 30, 2006 Posted March 30, 2006 I think it is a conspiracy from Nvidia forcing users to only use Nvidia GPU's. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoduck Posted April 3, 2006 Posted April 3, 2006 In an act of desperation before I went out and bought an nvidia-based video card I flashed the lastest beta BIOS (3/29) for the Expert and the problem has been magically solved. Of course, there was a moment of terror when the machine kept rebooting before the BIOS screen, but this was traced to the old PCI video card I was using which suddenly became unusable with the new BIOS. Once I reinstalled the X550 it worked fine. Hope I don't need the old PCI card again! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ISSA2000 Posted April 4, 2006 Posted April 4, 2006 This started out as what I thought was a possible memory problem as described in http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46989 , but I've now come to the conclusion it is related to the video card. I have an x550 video card that stops screen output at some point after the 'PCI device listing' screen displays. The screen doesn't go black, it just stays frozen on the last image output, all the while the system goes about its business of booting (from a floppy right now) or running memtest from BIOS. I tried a second, identical x550 card today and get the same results so I don't think the card is bad, just that there is an incompatibility between the expert board and the x550 video card. I found someone had a similar experience in the past (http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread...&highlight=x550 ) but I still can't get mine to work. Does anyone have an x550 card that is working with a DFI NF4 board, in particular the expert? Am I overlooking something in BIOS? I'm using the 'load optimized default' setting after I clear the CMOS and then enabling memtest in the BIOS. I'm also not sure if this problem is only affecting the text mode output or if it is similar in graphics modes. Does anyone know a simple program I can run automatically from a floppy that will check the video modes? I've currently got a mininal set-up with 1x512mb memory, video card, floppy, and no disks or operating system. NO PROBLEMS XPERT VISION DDR2 VERSION 256MB - 3 DAYS PLAYING BF2 OK (IT MY TEST SPAIR CARD (MAIN CARD A 1900XTX) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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