Just tried a 9800 Pro, BFG 5950 Ultra OC and BFG 6800GT OC and all work perfectly in this board... I really hope the 7800 isn't dead. I'll try throwing my Nforce 3 board on a test bench...

Tried in 9NDA3J (nforce 3 Ultra) with latest BIOS, and still nothing. I get post code 25 on the onboard diagnostic LCD. Reset CMOS a couple times, tried a few other things, tried with a PCI card...

I'm not sure if this card will work in other slightly older AGP boards or not... I just want to see it display an image.

EDIT: Well... its not looking good. Just tested it in an Iwill DVD266-R (Apollo Pro 266, dual P3) and I get nothing there too. I wish I had a working Intel 478\775 board with an AGP slot.

I have the club3D versions of the 7800GS AGP (2 cards), a 7900GS from XFX and the Gainward 7800GS+ with G71 core (24pp, 8vs) and all these cards work fine even on P III boards. Also no problems on Asus A7N8X and P4P800.

So your Nforce board should not be a problem, these are the fastest Nvidia AGP cards and should work fine on any late AGP board.

I'm sorry but i think your card is dead.

meljor wrote:

I'm sorry but i think your card is dead.

I'm afraid I have to agree here, the issue you've stated in this thread (i.e. the no video and no problem beep codes problem) is exactly what happened on my BFG 7800GS OC card a couple months ago. I would imagine your card got struck by either bumpgate or bad capacitors since the GF7x00 cards were known for suffering from those two issues. I ended up replacing it with a Radeon X800 which is working great.

Does your system have a reset button? If so, then maybe pressing it a few times until you see a picture can help bring some life into your card, but don't be surprised if it stops working after that. Before you think I'm crazy for suggesting this, this actually worked for a while on mine so it's worth a shot.

I get post code 25 on the onboard diagnostic LCD.

This may also indicate bad contact with AGP slot.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

I get post code 25 on the onboard diagnostic LCD.

This may also indicate bad contact with AGP slot.

Close!

I saw a ding on the edge of the PCB, which led me to check a tall skinny (fragile looking) electrolytic nearby. Turns out one of the leads had been pushed out, so the solder joint was broken. I tried to fix that and it didn't fix the problem (even swapped out the cap in case it was damaged), so I figured if it had taken a hit like that in shipping, it could have damaged something under the heatsink.

So I took the heatsink off, and while the GPU die looks pristine, one corner of the PCI-E to AGP bridge chip is busted off and missing. So that's why the card isn't even detected at all. The interface itself is destroyed.

Too bad. Its an awesome card. It otherwise is in excellent condition and the fan spins with little noise (aside from the insanely loud whine of it running at full bore).

I should be getting a refund for it soon since it turned out to be damaged. I found a small dent\cut in the package that lines up with the dent in the edge of the PCB, so I'm thinking it took a massive hit in shipping. It could certainly have been packed in a way that better protected the edges of the board, but it wasn't that bad.

Anyway... wasted an entire afternoon trying to get it working.

you could also just get it repaired, the 7800GS's are expensive, you can get a bridge from say an artifacting for parts card and just replace the HSI bridge chip 🤣

candle_86 wrote:

you could also just get it repaired, the 7800GS's are expensive, you can get a bridge from say an artifacting for parts card and just replace the HSI bridge chip 🤣

It's already sent back and thankfully refunded. I didn't get it that cheaply and replacing complex surface mount chips is way out of my experience range. I already have several late AGP cards so it was definitely an unnecessary purchase that ended up biting me in the butt. I got it for $31 shipped, which was okay but not great for a card that wasn't tested. It was untested but implied to be working (was listed as good condition and mentioned that the previous owner told him that it was working)... and it was the cheapest I'd seen a 7-series AGP card in a very long time. After learning about the issues caused by bridge chips on boards like these, I'll be content with the bridgeless 6800GT OC I got for $20 last year. It is identical to the one I bought back in 2004 and in a couple minutes will actually be going into a system I plan to use for anything that needs Windows XP, a serial port or a parallel port. It has my old EPoX 9NDA3J Nforce 3 Ultra board that I actually got back after being in someone else's computer for nearly 7 years, now upgraded with an X2-ready BIOS, Athlon 64 X2 4200+, my old Thermalright Ultra-90 cooler, 3GB of DDR-400, and a small SSD I ripped out of a netbook, just because. 😀

While the 7800GS would have been a neat thing to have in this system, the 6800GT is probably going to be less problematic, and it has some nostalgic value as well (despite not being my actual card... I think that ended up being sold to a guy in Italy like 8 years ago).