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Weird issues with Radeon X600 on Dell Optiplex 380

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First post, by jamesfmackenzie

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My first post on Vogons - a fantastic community here which I look forward to joining 😃

I recently picked up a cheap Dell Optiplex 380 Tower as a Windows XP retro machine

I threw in a known working Dell-branded Radeon X600 (model number F9595) - a passively cooled PCI-E 3D accelerator from the time with low power draw and low/mid 3D performance:

dell-x600-f9595.jpg

Unfortunately I get zero video signal from the card - the built-in Intel 9xx graphics remain enabled and continue to drive the display

I noticed that the BIOS has categorized the PCI-E card as an "SDVO Card". I had to look this up, but SDVO is a proprietary Intel technology used for additional video signaling interfaces (e.g. DVI) to the built-in Intel 9xx graphics. It seems my card is being mistakenly recognized as one of these SDVO add-in cards:

bios-shows-sdvo-card.png

In Windows, the card is missing from Device Manager entirely and does not appear even after a hardware scan:

x600-missing-from-device-manager.png

Using SIW, I can see that Windows recognizes I have hardware in PCE-E SLOT1 but has it labelled as "Proprietary" (i.e. not PCI-E):

x600-shows-as-proprietary-in-SIW.png

I double confirmed that the card works in another machine (it does) - so it seems to be some kind of hardware incompatibility. Has anyone seen something similar before? Would love to get my Win XP machine working - any advice much appreciated here! 😄

Reply 1 of 7, by lawyerpepper

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The first thing I'd try is putting it in a different slot.

Reply 2 of 7, by jamesfmackenzie

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lawyerpepper wrote on 2022-02-22, 00:29:

The first thing I'd try is putting it in a different slot.

Thanks for your quick reply! Unfortunately there's only a single PCI-E slot on this board (see below)

dell-optiplex-380-pcie-x16-slot.jpg

Reply 3 of 7, by lawyerpepper

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I've learned something new! Apparently SVDO slots are PCI-E slots physically, but do not necessarily support PCI-E functionally. See this thread from another forum:

https://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showth … ad.php?t=276564

...and also this one from a Dell support forum:

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives … GA/td-p/3957903

My guess, based on those, is that you don't actually have a functional PCI-E slot on that motherboard. You might try flashing the latest firmware from Dell, just in case it adds a option, but you're probably out of luck.

Reply 4 of 7, by jamesfmackenzie

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lawyerpepper wrote on 2022-02-22, 01:34:
I've learned something new! Apparently SVDO slots are PCI-E slots physically, but do not necessarily support PCI-E functionall […]
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I've learned something new! Apparently SVDO slots are PCI-E slots physically, but do not necessarily support PCI-E functionally. See this thread from another forum:

https://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showth … ad.php?t=276564

...and also this one from a Dell support forum:

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives … GA/td-p/3957903

My guess, based on those, is that you don't actually have a functional PCI-E slot on that motherboard. You might try flashing the latest firmware from Dell, just in case it adds a option, but you're probably out of luck.

Very interesting! Thanks for the info.

In my case, the slot is labelled as "PCIex16" (you can see in the photo attached above). Perhaps my hardware is of the "auto sensing" type - only in this cased it sensed wrong and believes I've inserted a SVDO card 😆

The Dell tech docs also reinforce this - they specifically mention the possibility of both dedicated video cards *and* a "DVI (Digital) Adapter Card". I assume this latter option is a Dell official SDVO card. More info below

dell-optiplex-380-motherboard-layout.jpg
dell-optiplex-380-graphics-video-controller.jpg

Reply 5 of 7, by lawyerpepper

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Try a Dell Radeon HD 3450? It’s listed in the docs you posted, and those are selling for less than $10 on Ebay.

Reply 6 of 7, by jamesfmackenzie

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To close the loop on this. I purchased another graphics card (ATi Radeon X800 XL). It works great.

So seems like this is a one-off incompatibility with between the Optiplex 380 and Radeon X600.

Very strange!

Reply 7 of 7, by BitWrangler

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I've got an optiplex 360... it's a bastard. In that you can either have 4GB RAM orrrr a PCIe card and 2GB... and it's damn picky about which cards it will work with... think it ended up with a non-Dell x600 after nope-ing out on pretty much everything else I tried. Doesn't even take a PCI graphics card.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

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