Dell 5100 - Vintage for fun

[DaveU]

Was gifted a dell 5100 with a pentium 4 and an x300 video card (PCI express)
formatted and loaded XP fine, boosted the ram to 4 GB (32bit ya, ya ,ya)
I also had a GT 720 (2GB) that I wanted to throw in to compliment the video capabilities.
The machine runs fine with the x300 (128MB) but with the 720 (2GB) just beeps twice at boot and no video signal whatsoever. Can't access the bios or anything. Replace with the x300, all is good again..
What gives? Would a GT 610 run in this thing or whats the best I can do? (305W PS)
Thanks for the help, I know a little, but not much, I do love to tinker though!

-DaveÜ

 

[Kartajan]

The 720 looks to be PCIe 2.0, whereas your x300 looks to be PCIe 1.0.
a quick scan says it should support up to a Geforce 6800GT with no change of PSU

 

[DaveU]

Thanks! isn't the card backward compatible though?

 

[Bubbaleone]

I've worked on a few Pentium equipped Optiplex's from that era that didn't play nice when swapping PCI-e video cards. Try clearing the CMOS first, then boot into BIOS and select onboard VGA as video source, save and exit.

Reconnect the monitor to the onboard VGA connector then boot to confirm that onboard video is good. Now, reboot back into BIOS again, select the PCI-e x16 slot as video source this time, save, exit, shutdown, install the GT 720 and reconnect the monitor. See if the card doesn't work when you boot the PC this time.

.

 

[DaveU]

Thanks, I'll give that a try this weekend...
Appreciate the help!

 

[Bubbaleone]

One other thought; be sure you're running BIOS version A03 (11 August 2006). Among it's other fixes and enhancements, A03 includes an improved PCI-e detection algorithm: A03 System BIOS.