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DC_legacy

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Jan 27, 2008
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Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long post but i am desperate for some advice.

I have had a very bad experience this past week in regards to upgrading my machine. I brought a q9550 for my asus p5k-se mobo. I got worried about flashing the bios after reading so many horror stories on the internet and opted to take it into the store.

I got a call today after 5 days (i am a graphic designer and 5 days it a lifetime when clients are wanting work done) saying that apparently my 9800gx2 was “broken” and did i want him to order me a new gfx card. I went in to see him and he showed me how the computer would only start up (with the 9800gx2 installed) after restarting several times and being left alone for a long period of time.

He then put in another gfx card he owned and it started up fine (it was some old ati card with no external power supply and a super small fan). It seemed to me that it must be something to do with the bios flash as the card would sometimes post into windows but his words were “the bios update only makes things better not worse”

With my setup i was running 3 monitors so he took me to the display cabinet to show me gfx card alternatives that i could buy. Not one of them had x2 dvi ports and an hdmi as my 9800gx2 had. They all had either a vga port instead or no hdmi. I cannot justify buying a card that has worse output ports than my original card.

I had to buy a cheep 8400 card just so that i can do some work but would love to have my monitor setup back in working order with my gx2.

Has anyone had a similar problem or have any advice so that i can get my card up and running again?

Thank you in advance.
 
What CPU did you upgrade from and what is your PSU, it sounds like its possable the new Quad has taken the PSU to its max and so it cant power the GPU at start up.(start up takes more juice than when its running) This would explain why a non powered card would work instead.
It would be an amazing coincidence for your card to choose to die of its own accord at just the same time as the bios flash, but Bios updates as far as i know would only add features and not for example remove compatibility of older cards, i could be wrong though.

Without knowing this dealer personally its not my place to say really but i will say its not the first time we had a post like this where it seems as if the shop could be trying to invent some extra business.

Mactronix
 
@IH8U – good find! Still geez that card is expensive! I don’t use this pc for gaming anymore which is why getting a new card like that seems like such a huge waste of potential.

@ jaydeejohn - i could wait until those new ati cards come out. Do you know if there would be a cheaper version i.e. like the 8400 was when the 8800 was the flagship? It would be very awesome if they had the same tri monitor setup as the top end cards!

@mactronix - i have a 1000watt silverston, x2 500gb seagate barracuda 32meg cache and nothing extra sucking anymore power. The guy reconed he tryed it in another computer but i never saw it. He did show me that it wouldn’t post properly though? I hope he didn’t do anything to it.

Still i would much rather find out why my current 9800gx2 is not posting correctly? I wonder what could have happened to it while it was in the store? I have just shelled out for a q9550, another 4gb of ram and a new thermaltake cooler so buying another card unless a cheap alternative is a bit of a stretch atm sorry.
Thanks again for the quick replys!
 
Are u all mad?!?!?!?!? have you not questioned why it is broken as it wasnt before you took it to the store??!?!?! i would be demanding an explanation!!!
 
Well i did wonder that but then i assumed the op wasnt mad and there was some kind of disclaimer in place regarding the Bios flash which precluded claiming for breakages. Even so it is kinda hard to see how that would ever involve the hardware. Also did the shop test the rig first or just flash the bios ?
Personally i would be asking questions regarding how it comes to be broken.

Mactronix
 
^Agreed. Only reason the BIOS flash could have gone bad was if they used 3rd party tool that "saw" both the nVidia BIOS AND the motherboard BIOS and they accidently flashed the Motherboard BIOS to the graphics card. Or they flashed BIOS from Windows or killed it with ESD. Or completely failed @ flashing the BIOS.
 

Agreed!

@OP: You were talking about flashing the Motherboard BIOS correct? Also, the 6pin PCIe was connected to the GPU correct?
 
OK - take it back to the shop and get them to restore the old BIOS version - ASUS maintains a list of previous BIOS's on their web pages, it will probably be the oldest one. Then replace the Q9550 CPU with whatever you had in there before, when your 9800 still fails to work sue them for breaking it.
 
Hi everyone,

thank you for all of the replies!

Ok, so i went back to the store today and told them i was disappointed in the service i had received etc. I told them the fact that my gfx card was not working had absolutely nothing to do with me and that all i wanted was an updated bios for my mother board to run the new cpu i had purchased from them.

They basically said tough luck and that since i had signed a sheet saying that loss of data/damage to the computer would not be covered by them.

I said that i understand that the form is in place to cover them but surely they could investigate as to what happened to the card and come up with a fix since it still works on occasions just not consistently. Telling me to buy a new card with and old vga output is not a viable answer.

Both the manager and person who “fixed” my computer are both asian and find it hard to have a conversation due to there english ability. All i kept getting told was “sorry, not our fault”

so i am on google now investigating flashing my gfx card bios to see if that will do anything?

I have instructions from here . . .
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1633&page=3
and the driver file for my specific card here . . .
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,26/func,fileinfo/id,2543/

fingers crossed this will work, i hate messing around with stuff i know nothing about. If i take it back to the shop they will charge me more to continue working on it, its already cost me a quarter of the q9550's price for them to break it!

Cheers.
 


our he can get a 4850 x2 which has 4 dvi ports and costs 300 less then the 295.



Anyways this whole thing smells like crap. There is no way they didn't mess it up somehow, or else you have the worst timing of anyone I have ever seen. The chances it just 'died' out of the clear blue are slim to none without them having something to do with it.

Sounds very shady to me and I would not suggest you ever go back their for any kind of work to be done.
 
What specifically was the work you allowed/asked for?
If it was simply for your mobo, then theyre legally incompetent, and if thats the case, and you have any documentation leading to this, they and their "contract" dont have any grounds

They should take measures to deal with mobo only, as that was the request. The gfx card, do they still have it? Id check your part number on it as well, to make sure its the same one you originally purchased
 



Here is another think to take in to account. 5 days to replace a CPU? That takes less then 10-15 mins and why did it take so long for them to notice the VGA had gone out? It clearly wasn't like they just started it up day 1 and it was dead or else they would be calling a hell of a lot sooner.
 
You paid someone to(take 5 days to) flash your BIOS and they were absolved of all responsibility to any damage to the computer? What could possibly be the point of doing that? Flashing a bios is an automated procedure involving no special ability whatsoever that should take a few minutes. The only reason I can imagine hiring a professional to do it is if they are responsible if it goes awry somehow.
 
^+1. Agreed. A BIOS flash would take 20-30 minutes MAX (including DLing it from the web,etc). I'd know because I'v done it like 50+ times on both motherboards and GPUs.

@OP: Could you scan the so called "contract" and up load it here? May be we could find any holes in it. And looks like these people are less qualified than the BestBuy "Geek Squad" people (You need to have at least A+ cert to do major repair work ar BestBuy IIRC)
 
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