Gigabyte 4550 Bad Choice?

Just to chime in here...

I've put Gigabyte 512MB fanless HD4550 cards in two machines, and they worked fine in both. As with your situation there was no gaming involved, no extraordinary video needs, etc.

Both machines were older WinXP systems (but one was a "modern" ASUS P5Q3 board).

What was needed in the WinXP environment was an inexpensive PCIe video card that was silent, and the HD4550 hit the mark perfectly. Using Catalyst "clone-mode" worked fine, as it was in a Bridge Club where the Director sat at a desk with an old Samsung CRT monitor and there was a larger LCD on the wall for the players to look at simultaneously with the Director's scoring.

The ASUS P5Q3 setup has also been running WinXP flawlessly with the HD4550 for more than 2 years.

OK, lot of well appreciated information here, I'll look at everything.
But whats bugging me is the fact that I need to learn why this "Gigabyte 4550" will not work in the little Gateway E4300?
I installed this card in my Gateway GT 5676 this morning and it works fine (see specs in profile) I am missing something here on card selection vs machine, I'm no expert but I need to learn what it is I lack when choosing video cards!
Here are the specs on the "Gigabyte" card I purchased for the little Gateway E4300
Can anyone tell me where I went wrong Here? (E4300 specs on first post)
Chipset Radeon HD 4550
Core Clock 600 MHz
Shader Clock N/A
Memory Clock 1600 MHz
Process Technology 55 nm
Memory Size HyperMemory to 512MB (On board 128MB GDDR3)
Memory Bus 64 bit
Card Bus PCI-E 2.0
Memory Type GDDR3
DirectX 10.1
OpenGL 2.1
PCB Form Low Profile
Digital max resolution 2560 x 1600
Analog max resolution 2048 x 1536
Multi-view 2
I/O HDMI * 1
DVI-I * 1
D-sub * 1
Card size H=21mm, L=179 mm, W=126 mm
Power requirement 300 W
Thanks
N2

Yes, I have tried the old Sapphire 4350 that was in there to begin with and it works fine now.
At the start of this whole mess...I noticed after installing a new Arctic cooler PCU fan, my display was starting to show tiny green dots in one corner and thought the display card was going bad due to overheating in the small case. That was the reason for purchasing the Gigabyte card, after several attempts seating and unseating the gigabyte card, updating drivers, checking to see that the on board graphics was disabled and checking all adjustments, I gave up and put the Sapphire Radeon 4300 back in, and now it's working fine?
I added a 120mm fan to the case, above the graphics card to pull air out of the PC as well, And I don't understand if that helped, or If the thermal contact on the PCU just hadn't had enough time to break in. I'm really confused here!

But for future reference, I would still like to know everything I need to know to make a proper card selection for this machine, or for any machine!

As well, I still don't understand if the "Gigabyte HD 4550" is a compatible card for the Gateway E 4300! If it is, why does it work in my Gateway GT 5676, but not in the E4300?
Thanks
N2

I can't believe it's the power supply, although who could know for sure without a voltage test? but the stock Newton 225w PSU powered the Sapphire 4300/4500 series fine for about two years!


And the Athena 350w is presently powering the Sepphire 4300/4500 series with no problems!


Here's what the Gigabyte manual say's for "Minimum System Requirements"
Intel® Pentium® 4/core™2 or AMD Athlon™ / Phenom™ (I have only a pentium 4) *****


1 GB or more of system memory for best performance (I have 2GB)


Optical drive for software installation (got that)


A power supply that provides at least 400-watt is required. The power supplyshould be with a known brand and certified to conform to saftey regulations. (thier web site says min. PSU 300w)


And the manual says it will work with Windows XP Pro (SP2) (What I Have)


I guess in typing this I finally answered my own question, could it be the first requirement, A QUAD CORE processor? Reading between the "Registered" and "Trademark" symbols was confusing at the time of installation, but wouldn't you say, this could be my problem?



N2