I just finished building my computer and am trying to install a 512 MB Nvidia 8800 GT on a Biostar P4M900 Socket 478 Motherboard. My computer meets all the required specs for the card, and I am almost 100% certain that I installed it right. I disabled the onboard vga display in device manager and uninstalled the drivers for it. I looked in the Bios for an option that would disable the onboard vga, but couldn't find any. When I hooked the monitor up to the video card and turned on my computer the display wouldn't come up and I didn't get any POST signal. I tried to get help from Biostar online for disabling onboard vga in the bios, but they don't have hardly any of their tech support files on their USA site. Does anyone have a P4M900 motherboard or know whether or not I have to disable onboard display in the Bios for this motherboard to install a new graphics adapter? If so, it would be great if you let me know.
Go under "PnP PCI Configurations" and then "INIT Display First". Change it from "Onboard" to "PCI-E". That might do the the trick.
Most motherboards should automatically detect the presence of a separate graphics card and disable the onboard graphics. But it's a good idea to disable it in the BIOS anyway. Check this page out for more details - Tech ARP - Init Display First
How does "PnP OS" options affect installing a new video card? Unfortunately I set the "Init Display First" to "PCI-Ex" and didn't get any different results. Thanks for the helpful suggestion anyways, though. Under "PnP OS" do I need to set it to "Yes" when using Vista or will that not affect hooking my monitor up to the new Graphics Card?
For Vista, you should disable PnP OS. Details here - Tech ARP - PNP OS Installed Regarding your problem, did you update the BIOS yet?
Biostar's P4M900 I updated the Bios for my motherboard and I'll change the Bios setting on "PnP OS" back to "No." I still keep getting the same results. I read on another online forum that someone had posted basically the same thing I did. They bought the Biostar P4M900 and an 8800 GT and are having the same problem that I am. I don't know if maybe the motherboard just simply can't support a high-end graphics card even though it has a PCI-Express x16 slot. If this is the case then trying to get a "bargain" motherboard with a PCI x16 slot was a bad idea, and I'd really hate having to pay for a new motherboard. I know there is probably not much more help anyone can give, but if anyone has anymore suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.
We need to know your PSU first - and usually running a PCI-E on 20-pin power system isn't helping the PCI-E gfx card properly. Also, we must need to know the PSU details too. I may be wrong here - any opinions? Also, putting an 8800GT to that Socket 478 (i guess yours must be a Pentium4) is a serious bottleneck. jmho.
I made sure to attach the 6-pin power cable from my PSU every time I installed the card. I even tried using the 6-pin PCI express to two 4-pin Molex adapter. My PSU is a Thermaltake 500W with a combined 12v rating of over 30a, which is what the 8800 GT requires. Updating my bios caused my system to start acting very erratically, so now I have start over from the beginning by restoring the bios with a floppy disk. I backed up the bios in the flash program but I can't even get Windows started. Hopefully once I get my bios restored I'll hear back from Biostar tech support on exactly what needs to be done to make my card work. I still would appreciate anymore suggestions on trying to install the card or even suggestions on what would be a good buy for a replacement Socket 478 motherboard (If such a thing exists). I would really like to keep my CPU and CPU Fan. Once again, Thanks for all the help.
Hmm.. That's odd. BIOS updates generally improve reliability, not the other way around. To restore the old BIOS, you will need to boot up with a DOS boot disk. From what I can see, it looks like a motherboard issue. Nothing to do with the PSU or the graphics card.
wow socket 478 with 8800gt? mine only geforce4 xD anyway could try ur card on other PC than u know for sure if it;s ur graphic or not
Can you tell me specifically how to restore my bios? I can't find any updates for my motherboard older than the one I installed from Biostar.com. The site has one listed that is older, but when I click to download it the link doesn't come up.
Unfortunately, that differs from motherboard to motherboard. You have to check with Biostar what works with your motherboard. But if you cannot boot up with it... you may need to hot flash it. We have a guide here - Tech ARP - Hot Flashing Guide Rev. 2.0
I cant remember exactly where i read this but I was intrested in this MB too and was browsing for reviews as my 3.0E prescott is still fast enough to do what i need but I wanted a PCIe card. I read somewhere that this MB only works with video cards 8600 and lower.
I just found another forum where someone else was experiencing a similar problem as you. It can be found here. 333.tomshardware.com/forum/247676-33-8800-failing-pass-power-self-test-process [rename 333 to www] Its too bad, I dont think I'll be buying this MB afterall, ive only read good reviews on it too.
Hi there, The Biostar P4M900 is a value-based VIA chipset-based board, geared towards casual home net-surfers and office computers as electronic typewriters (I mean casual office work), or an extremely simple HTPC. Gaming and heavy work will not be fully optimized on that board because it has a lot of limitations - the electrical problem of PCI-E which causes it to be only 4x instead of 16x, and various bottlenecks because of outdated and old memory controllers and stuff like that. If I'm not mistaken, a VIA P4M900 chipset still uses some old technology, borrowed from the P4M8xx, except they add something new to it like the Gigabit LAN, PCI-E, or even newer processor support. The rest of them still have DDR1 (certain VIA-chipset based boards have Hybrid DDR1/2 and Hybrid AGP/PCIE16x) and AGP capabilities eventhough they have moved to DDR2 and PCIE already. Hope that helps. edit: Again, the MB could be a good choice for casual home net-surfers, and simplest office work. For gaming though, I could have recommended a dirt-cheap Intel 945 chipset boards which are now trying to be ended up into bargain bins. Hell, I can even do Matlab, or Multisim, or even compile C++ programs inside ANY of the value-based motherboards too!
my observation Hi, I have exactly the same setup as the author of the first post: a Prescott P4, Biostar P4M900-M4, Geforce 8800GT... I hit the same issue. After read all the posts, I swapped out the 8800 and put in a 7900GT. Walla, the system is running. And my BIOS setting for init display is "onboard". It doesn't matter which option I pick, 7900 works the charm. So I guess 8800GT is too much for P4M900 to handle. Thanks for everyone's post. 8gpu
