Did you swap the RAM back? Have you tried the "basic boot troubleshooting" steps where you strip it down to the CPU and add hardware until it stops being able to boot? Tried clearing the CMOS?

Also you didn't happen to try booting up with the Ti 4600 with sheared off RAM did you? 😵

obobskivich wrote:

Did you swap the RAM back? Have you tried the "basic boot troubleshooting" steps where you strip it down to the CPU and add hardware until it stops being able to boot? Tried clearing the CMOS?

Also you didn't happen to try booting up with the Ti 4600 with sheared off RAM did you? 😵

I will try it with the old ram which worked fine and run the other tests you said and report back shortly.

And no I didn't use the ti4600 with the sheared off ram....wouldn't dare! Lol

Ok, not looking good. Took everything out and put back 1 stick of the original ram and the original geforce 2 ti and still no display. Fan headers 1 and 2 also still don't work. Also tried clearing the cmos which didn't help.

This is obviously a motherboard issue as the graphics card, ram and cpu work fine.

Any other ideas?

Board is getting power AOK? No jumpers/DIPs accidentally set wrong causing a no-boot? Original assumed good devices test out okay in another machine? CPU tests okay in another machine? Board isn't no-booting due to an invalid fan reading? (e.g. I have an old Asus board that will refuse to start-up if it doesn't detect a CPU fan; it's a protection feature) Tried reseating CPU, power, etc? Move RAM into another slot (take the originals, we'll call set A, and put stick 1 start in one slot, test, move to another, test, etc then try A2 and repeat through A# until you're out of set A sticks) and test and still fail? Made sure board isn't shorting to case/table/etc?

If yes to all, best guess: either the RAM or card you added is DOA and took the board with it. 😒 (I've never seen an AGP card pull this; I've had CPUs and RAM do it though (in both cases rare, but I have seen it happen)).

One qualifier: some Dell motherboards from "in the day" have non-volatile storage for CMOS and require it cleared via jumpers (I've heard that, in theory, you could leave them "cold" with no battery or AC power for a few days and it should wipe, but the normal "pop the battery, wait 3 seconds, put it back" procedure won't do it) - did you clear with jumpers or battery, and if not with battery, try with jumpers.

Ok, I seem to have found the issue. The slot 1 cpu wasn't seated properly. Took the 2 brackets off and gave it a push and it clipped in a touch. Booted up again and bam! Display and all fans working as they should.

Thanks heaps for the tips 😀

Glad it was fixable and not the end of the board. Does the new hardware work properly with the CPU reseated?

Yep, I ran a quick test using the Quake 3 time demo. Ran it a few times with no crashes etc.

Weird how it caused 2 fans to stop working but not the other one. Now to do some benchmarking 😀

By the way, I ran a 3D Mark 01 benchmark using this P3 1Ghz + TI4600 combo and I got a score of just over 5000. Any reason why the scores so low? My guess is it's because it's a DX8 card but I've currently got DX9 installed. Running force ware 81.98 drivers.

Good information there regarding proper CPU placing and fan operation.

Will keep this in mind and may help others with fan problems.

borgie83 wrote:

By the way, I ran a 3D Mark 01 benchmark using this P3 1Ghz + TI4600 combo and I got a score of just over 5000. Any reason why the scores so low? My guess is it's because it's a DX8 card but I've currently got DX9 installed. Running force ware 81.98 drivers.

Its likely the CPU - 3DMark01 is VERY biased towards CPU performance (which is one of the reasons I really don't like it). I'm not meaning to say anything is "wrong" with the CPU. If the card can't complete the pixel-shader tests near the end it will drop the score pretty dramatically as well, but the Ti 4600 should be fine to run those tests (even if it isn't screaming through them).

I wouldn't worry too much about it, or put too much stock in the 3DMark Composite score. If you run into performance issues with gameplay (assuming the game is something the system should be able to do), then look for problems.

On my S478 Pentium 2.0 GHz Northwood system with a Ti 4800 SE I'm getting 10311.

I got about 8000 with my sig rig. I guess 3dMark01 really likes large cache CPUs.

Hmmm, I'm going to try downgrading to DX8.1 and then run another benchmark. If the scores too low then I'll experiment with different forceware drivers to see if that makes a difference.

m1919 wrote:

I got about 8000 with my sig rig. I guess 3dMark01 really likes large cache CPUs.

That's around what my Pentium 4 2.0GHz (Willamette core)/GeForce FX 5800 Ultra system scores.

borgie83: Honestly I wouldn't worry too much about this; it's kind of a pointless/arbitrary number out there in space. If the machine works and plays actual games that you want, that's what really matters.

obobskivich wrote:

borgie83: Honestly I wouldn't worry too much about this; it's kind of a pointless/arbitrary number out there in space. If the machine works and plays actual games that you want, that's what really matters.

I know you're right and it doesn't really matter when playing games etc but I'm just trying to work out exactly which drivers I should be running for best performance. 3D Mark 01 really is quite sensitive with drivers I've noticed because I've seen much higher scores from others with slower cpu's and graphics cards.

Higher 3DMark performance can entirely be the result of driver "optimizations" (cheats) - not genuinely higher performance due to a driver. In general I'd just load up and play some games, and if you run into performance problems *then* worry about drivers (for example like Mau1wurf1977 has done for Splinter Cell).

You can study the release notes a few months after a game came out and often find fixes and performance boosts. So getting a driver that's 6 months older than a game should pretty much always work 😀