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Recommended graphics card for Tyan Thunder K7 (Athlon MP)

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First post, by jewesta

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So I got a very nice Tyan Thunder K7 (s2462) as the center piece of an Athlon MP retro build I‘m currently working on. Since it is the very first Athlon MP board I was hoping that some of you have it and have some experience with GPU compatibility. I thought this was going to be easy. But to my surprise it posts neither with a Radeon 9800 Pro nor a Geforce4. Both of which I tested successfully in a Super 7 board (GA-5AX). Earlier cards like a TNT work just fine. (All AGP.) As far as I can see AGP settings options (jumpers, BIOS) are very limited.

I am using a 620 Watts PSU by Seasonic and have the required adapter cable. I therefore do not think it‘s a wattage issue.

The symptoms are that the screen stays black and I can tell by the keyboard LEDs that the Tyan is stuck in a loop. Keyboard LEDs do the „power on“ flash, stay off for about 20 seconds, ... rewind, repeat.

Are those AGP cards too „modern“ for the AMD 760MPX? Should I try a Geforce3 or earlier Radeon? Any recommendations? Or might there be something wrong with the board?

Thanks!

Reply 1 of 3, by vlask

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Have for testing Tyan S2469 Thunder K7X Pro and GF4Ti is working on it. So for sure its not about the chipset. Do you have latest bios and have you tried to disable onboard vga chip using jumper (in case your MB have one)?
Been testing also MSI board on same chipset and it didn't supported 3Dlabs cards, but had few more FPS. I needed 3Dlabs so i switched to Tyan.
For inspiration list of tested cards, all of them were working....

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Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 2 of 3, by jewesta

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Wow! Thanks a lot for that list! This will definitely come in handy.

Mine has the jumper to disable the internal Ati graphics. Works as expected because the system doesn’t post with an AGP card in and the jumper set to open but does post with it set to closed.

I know htis now because I have had a bit of progress. First of all I noticed that the board does not post with 4 gig of RAM and an AGP card in. It does post with 3 gig of RAM, though. Also, 4 gigs work when the internal graphics are used. (This is what got me confused in the first place as the RAM apparently worked fine.) I have testet two sets of RAM modules, both of which have the right specs (registered, DDR, PC2100, etc.) and both behave in the same way. So for now it’s 3 gig only with an AGP card in. Curious.

Now that the board posted with the 9800 Pro I unfortunately found out that the card has the RAM chip plague. Vertical stripes and pixel errors in the image. When I press against certain ram chips the visual distortions disappear or change. So unfortunately that card is toast as I do not have the means to resolder those RAM chips properly. 😒 A 9200 I had lying around works without problems, though! Have not tested the GF4 but will.

I can run Windows XP without issues now. Although I think I will switch to Windows 2000 for period correctness. I believe that’s what the board was built for.

Again, thanks for the input.

Reply 3 of 3, by dan86

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jewesta wrote:

Vertical stripes and pixel errors in the image. When I press against certain ram chips the visual distortions disappear or change. So unfortunately that card is toast as I do not have the means to resolder those RAM chips properly.

Do you have a small hair dyer or hot air gun? bake it in the oven?

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