What motherboard? Many older motherboards lack 3.3 volt output on the PCI slots.

tried 6 motherboards 486 to pga 775.

Try newer board... usually it's compatibility issue. Of course if it's supposed to be functional. It can be broken too...

kixs wrote on 2023-09-13, 08:38:

Try newer board... usually it's compatibility issue. Of course if it's supposed to be functional. It can be broken too...

I highly doubt he needs to try something newer than a Socket 775 platform board.

If you use a 2nd GPU, can you see the GT610 in device manager or similar?

Plugged it into a am3 and it works. so is that likely the 3.3v or something deeper? Was hoping to use it in older stuff.

Does the card look like this? (with both 3.3 & 5v keying)

This means these boards does not support this firmware initialization. Use different video card that is compatible with mother board and intended use. By the way 610 is way too new for vintage use and compatibilty issues with games.

486 means S3 or Cirrus logic ISA or VLB, sometimes PCI if motherboard is a 486 board with PCI. DOS mostly.
Pentium too. DOS and optical disc games.
PII or PIII use Geforce2, 3 or 4. Some Geforce FX models as well.
P4 Geforce 6600, 6800
C2D 7800/7900 GTX or so.

So on.

Cheers,

I'd really use some modern mainboard (I used it mostly on NM10/Atom mini itx and Socket 775) because is a complex card to expect much compatibility on older ones. Also too much heat and the whole PCI power required for it to work (29W). I've read about some of these cards failing, probably I'd use some slower but simpler cards done with the same concept (modern GPU with a PCI bridge IC).

andy120 wrote on 2023-09-14, 01:14:

Plugged it into a am3 and it works. so is that likely the 3.3v or something deeper? Was hoping to use it in older stuff.

That's what I thought. I have similar experiences with these "new" generation PCI cards.