Installing ATI 6970 to HP Pavilion h8-1160t Need Help

[kela1993]

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen,

Background:
I am trying to upgrade the default graphic card of HP Pavilion h8-1160t to ATI 6970. There are two problems. First, the motherboard used in the HP is bad: ipisb ch2. It only works with something below ATI 6000 and Nvidia 600, and it is buggy with anything not default from HP. Second, I have to get a new PSU of 620w bronz from Seasonic to power the ATI 6970.

Problem:
I tried two ATI 6970 in a row with the following result: no signal to monitor. The motherboard does not beep, and I do not know whether the system POST. Here is what I did. I use the on board graphic to get into windows, and from there I plugged in the two 6 pin and 8 pin power cord to the ATI 6970. Windows recognized the 6970 right away, and I installed the driver. However, upon restart there is no signal to monitor again.

Thoughts:
The Seasonic PSU supports the system with an ATI 6570 in place of the ATI 6970 fine. Before I plugged in the two 6 pin and 8 pin power cord to the 6970, windows does not recognize anything in the PCIE slot. So, I think at least one of the 6 pin or 8 pin is working, so that the 6970 does draw power from the PSU. But, I do not have another card to be sure.

The chance of both 6970 dead on arrival is slim, and the computer does recognize the card in windows. So, I think the 6970 is also working. But, again I am not sure, since I do not have another system with enough power for the 6970.

I do not know what is the problem. Any suggestion is appreciated.

Thanks and Regards,
Xiang

 

[unknownofprob]

That HP tower has a locked BIOS, Many attempted upgrades won't work. You need a new motherboard. HP are known to do this and it is not the same story for every prebuilt desktop.

 

[kela1993]

I admit this is likely the case, and new motherboard might be the solution.

I know many people have problems in upgrading similar HP builds with the IPISB-CH2 motherboard. But, normally the problem is the PCIe slot on the board does not support PCIe 3.0 new cards. So, I selected a PCIe 2.1 6970, which uses the same interface as the default PCIe 2.1 6570.

There is not much information about the board anywhere. But, GPU-Z shows the PCIe slot is 2.0, which means the BIOS is updated to support PCIe 2.1 at some point. Again, I do not know how reliable are GPU-Z and 6970 manufacturer's claim. So, if the board does not support PCIe 2.1, will the card be recognized in Windows?

 

[unknownofprob]

PCI-E is backwards/forwards compatible so the generation of the slot shouldn't be an issue. I would not place any bets that the 6970 would work.