Meuchel Computer Services & Office Supplies

Here recently I came across a Compaq/HP computer that had a PCI-e add in slot in it.  Anybody who has ever built a new system within the last little while knows that if you want a decent graphics card for gaming or development it will come in the form of a PCI-express card which is the current replacement to the AGP standard.  The motherboard in said system had on-board video and it did not perform well enough to run the CAD application that the system was used for.  So we decided to upgrade the video card to either a GeForce 8400 or 8800 GS series card.  These are good entry level cards and work with most systems.  Unfortunately for us, not this system.  I shut the computer off and opened the case and inserted the card.  Which was fairly straight forward.  Then I booted the system with the monitor plugged into the analog port on the new GeForce card.  Low and behold the system booted up with no post errors and continued to load with no video.  Thinking okay maybe it is using the DVI port as the default output, I decided to plug the DVI to Analog adapter in and plug the monitor into that.  Still no video.  So shut the computer down with the power button soft off, unplugged the monitor from the add in card and plugged it into the on-board video port again.  I left the GeForce card in the slot just to see what would happen and turned the computer back on.  This time the card’s fan spun as before but I had video.  In a normal situation with an add-in card the motherboard will shut down the on-board video and feed the video output through the add-in card.  So I start tapping the key sequence to get to the BIOS setup but wait.  I got a message on the screen saying this system only supports SVDO/ADD2 cards in the X16 slot.  What?  So I get to digging and I find this.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document…

Cool.  So basically what this tells me is that the only card that will fit this slot and do anything is a $20-$30 card that only has a DVI or S-Video port and actually runs off of and extends the on-board video.  In other words this slot is USLESS!  Good job Intel.  Not your best idea.  Needless to say that new GeForce card will either have to be sent back or used in another system.  As for what we will have to do to the CAD system?  Can anyone say replacement?

Tags: ADD2, Compaq, GeForce, HP, Intel, PCI Express, PCI-E, SDVO

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Computer Corner, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.