OEM PCs and AMD Graphic Cards

[clutchc]

Lately, I have been upgrading quite a few older OEM prebuilt PCs. Particularly, 775 socket machines. I've come to notice something peculiar about the PCs with these older proprietary motherboards... they don't seem to like the later AMD cards. Yet, they run all the newer Nvidia cards I've tried without a hitch.

Seems that quite a few OEM 775 socket builds won't even post with AMD cards for me. The one I'm working on now for instance, runs fine with AMD cards up to HD-3xxx, but an HD-5750, R7-370, and RX-470 is a no go. Won't post. Just get a series of beeps that don't match anything in the board's beep codes. Yet an 8800 GT, 8800 GTS, GTX 1060 and GTX 970 runs great in it.

I've seen this a lot. And the forum is full folks with similar issues. I assume it is a board/AMD card BIOS issue. But I'd like to hear if anyone else has experienced this. And if there are any remedies. And yes, the boards always have the latest available BIOS.

 

[COLGeek]

There have been multiple threads started by members with similar issues using some of the newer AMD GPUs in older OEM systems. Some of the incompatibility has been traced to PCIe slots not meeting the normal 75w standard. This is common in OEM systems.

A guess would be that the Nvidias are less picky about that. Just a guess.

Still, why a user would want to stuff a modern GPU into any socket 775 system is a question of some debate and merit.

Good observation.

 

[clutchc]

There have been multiple threads started by members with similar issues using some of the newer AMD GPUs in older OEM systems. Some of the incompatibility has been traced to PCIe slots not meeting the normal 75w standard. This is common in OEM systems.

A guess would be that the Nvidias are less picky about that. Just a guess.

Still, why a user would want to stuff a modern GPU into any socket 775 system is a question of some debate and merit.

Good observation.

Ahh. You're beginning to solidify my suspicions. I thought too that the slot might have had a sub-75W limitation. But nothing like that is printed on the board nor any disclaimers in the manual. Still, I suppose the OEM BIOS may have had the limitation hard coded in it if it monitored the PCIe slot.

As to the usefulness of the GTX 1060 (3GB) in the old system, it seems to perform quite well. Q9550 and 8GB RAM runs Doom (Vulkan) Ultra settings @ 1080p smooth as silk at over 100FPS. That was the only game I tested with it.