AGP card draws too much current from board? \ VOGONS

AGP card draws too much current from board?

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First post, by srmeister

Posted on 2016-11-15, 21:58

srmeister Offline

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Hi,
im building a P3 slot 1 system right now. The Mobo is Gigabyte GA-6BA which is a Baby-AT board. It has 1x AGP, 5xPCI and 2x ISA. The board is pretty good but i tried to upgrade the graphics card to a Radeon 9800 SE which according to http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/dis … owercons_8.html draws arround 30W when idle. Its not really alot. Even full load is only 55W. Remember i got a 9800 SE when this site lists power consumption for 9800 Pro, so i should be even lower.

My problem is the PC just crashed after a while with this cards ( i got 2 of these 9800 SE and problem is the same with both).
It has a floppy drive power connector so it draws current directly from the power supply, besides from the AGP slot.
I just saw in BIOS, this board has a Voltage Display in BIOS, and i can watch the +3.3V drop and drop until about the last reading is 3.0V then the machine just goes black. Same symptom when iam idle in Windows (W98 SE). The machine just goes black after ~2minutes.

I tried different PSU's: 2x 350W, 1x220W. Same problem on each PSU. So i guess the PSU Rating doesnt matter.
Also, the PC is mostly empty: connected is only one HDD and nothing else.

What can i do to make this setup stable, if anything? I assume the board doesnt supply enough current to the AGP slot. In the Link above, the guy soldered wires to the graphics card's AGP connector in order to measure the current going through.

Hope you have some ideas about this mess,
Stefan

Reply 1 of 10, by ODwilly

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:06

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From what it sounds like the motherboard may be unable to supply enough Amperage through the AGP slot. I know this was a common issue on AGP systems in that transition period between AT and ATX formats with some Slot 1 motherboards and Super 7. If you have anything older on hand and less powerful, like a Geforce 2 mx, TNT, or something like that give it a try and see if you have the same issues.

Main pc: Asus ROG laptop. I7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 4gb, 16gb DDR4.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 2 of 10, by srmeister

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:11

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yes i have tested it with an Elsa Erazor III (AGP, riva TNT2 based) and an ASUS AGP-V7100 (AGP, Nvidia Geforce 2 MX based) both work witout problems.

couldnt i just solder a wire onto the AGP slot or onto the Card itself to support the AGP current directly from PSU? Has anyone done this?

Reply 3 of 10, by ODwilly

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:21

ODwilly Offline

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I am no expert, but I think the issue there would be regulation. IIRC the technical issue is the chip that regulates/supplies voltage to the AGP slot does not supply enough Amperage, bypassing that regulating circuitry completely I think you would end up frying the video card at the least, possibly the motherboard as well.

Main pc: Asus ROG laptop. I7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 4gb, 16gb DDR4.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 4 of 10, by srmeister

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:25

srmeister Offline

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Yea thats what im afraid of. The guy in the Link above did this tho. You can read it up here http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/dis … owercons_3.html
This really sucks 🙁

Reply 5 of 10, by ODwilly

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:39

ODwilly Offline

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Very interesting solution. I will say that with a Slot 1 motherboard you are pretty cpu limited anyways, so you arent missing out on much using a slower card.

Main pc: Asus ROG laptop. I7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 4gb, 16gb DDR4.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 6 of 10, by candle_86

Posted on 2016-11-15, 22:49

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I agree on a Slot 1 system you'd do just fine with say a Ti 500 or Radeon 8500

Reply 7 of 10, by ODwilly

Posted on 2016-11-15, 23:23

ODwilly Offline

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candle_86 wrote:
I agree on a Slot 1 system you'd do just fine with say a Ti 500 or Radeon 8500

I agree here! Even a Ti200 or Radeon 7500 would be solid. Geforce 3 ti200's are really cheap and easy to find. Save those 9800's for faster machines that can fully utilize them 😀 heck, those cards are getting pretty rare in working shape anyways. They have a bad tendency of running hot and burning up.

Main pc: Asus ROG laptop. I7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 4gb, 16gb DDR4.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 8 of 10, by srmeister

Posted on 2016-11-16, 00:07

srmeister Offline

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OK ill put the GF2 MX back in 🙁
Thanks for all the help anyways, Vogons is great!

Reply 9 of 10, by ODwilly

Posted on 2016-11-16, 00:12

ODwilly Offline

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Any time! Iv been filling out job apps all day so this has been open in a tab. Some nice relief from the monotony.

Main pc: Asus ROG laptop. I7-6700HQ, GTX 960M 4gb, 16gb DDR4.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 10 of 10, by Kamerat

Posted on 2016-11-16, 05:24

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An AT motherboard with AGP slot must have an onboard voltage regulator for the AGP slot to provide 3.3V as the AT standard doesn't supply it. I guess the regulator is too weak for your 9800 SE.
Also some early AGP equipped ATX boards had an onboard regulator for the AGP slot, like the Asus P2L97. Mine couldn't handle a GeForce DDR, the system crashed when the driver loaded.

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