GPU Problems

Thorax_the_Impaler

Minecraft Veteran
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127.0.0.1
Hello everyone!

So today I was digging through my closet and found a graphics card I tore out of a computer years ago. I realized that it would work in an old Dell Dimension desktop I have, so I plugged it in to take a gander at it's performance and see if I could learn more about it. Well I ran into some issues. The nice thing is I did figure out what card it was, who manufactured it, so on and so forth. Apparently the card could've been useful for a standard computer......back in 2006. But, I also learned that the Dimension and the card do not like each other. The image I received was weak and distorted, flickering and fluctuating. My first thought was the PSU didn't cut it. Being that it was a "better" graphics card in it's time, I looked into the specs and found that it requires a minimum PSU rating of 250W, which is the rating of the PSU in the tower. I've chalked up the problems to a missing driver (never seen that kind of reaction though), a weak PSU (likely I suppose......), or a problem with the card itself. There is no noticeable damage on the card (no bad capacitors, etc....) that I can see, and it worked fine in the previous PC it was in; until the power supply failed on it. So which do you think is most likely based on the hardware? Missing drivers, not up-to-par PSU, or a bad card?

The card: Newegg.com - BFG Tech BFGR62256OC GeForce 6200 256MB 64-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card (I'm shocked it's on there)

The tower is a mesh-mash of parts that has seen multiple processors and RAM sticks, but the original chipset was that of a Dell Dimension 4600.
 
hmmm my vote is on either the power supply is too weak or something went bad on the gpu. i've never seen no drivers give a "strange" image quality for starters.

you wouldn't happen to have another computer you could test it in would you?

come to think of it though, i have the GeForce FX5500 OC that looks an awful lot like that one :p mine just doesn't have DVI. 256 mb of ram and all lol it look just like yours.
 
hmmm my vote is on either the power supply is too weak or something went bad on the gpu. i've never seen no drivers give a "strange" image quality for starters.

you wouldn't happen to have another computer you could test it in would you?

come to think of it though, i have the GeForce FX5500 OC that looks an awful lot like that one :p mine just doesn't have DVI. 256 mb of ram and all lol it look just like yours.

No, it has an AGP connection and all my other desktops are not old enough to have that slot lol I should point out that no driver is currently installed on the platform, it's just using a pug-and-play function on the machine in question.
 
Gotcha. Hell give it a shot, I wouldn't try anything crazy though. If you're just meeting the power requirements, not so nice things will happen if you push it too hard
 
Yes I have. They all have the same effect. Though some do work "better" than others. I'll just find another system to test it on and if it also fails on that I know it's the card.
 
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