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Need help with PCI video card upgrade on and old Dell 4500S
I've got a problem, and I'd like to get some help suggestions.
In the upgrade of an old Dell 4500S for a friend (whose monitor died, so we started from there) I upgraded the 256MB of memory with 2GB, and upgraded the 20GB hard drive with a 60GB version.
The old dead monitor was replaced by a Samsung S20B300B 20" 16x9 LCD whose native resolution is 1600x900.
However the old onboard Intel i845g GPU graphics chip in the 4500S (82845G) is supported by old drivers that do not have a 1600x900 resolution option. There is one pretty close rectangular resolution available, 1280x768 but it's a bit cartoonish.
Anyway, I decided to install an external discrete PCI graphics card (replacing the PCI FAX-modem card which is in the "spare" full-size PCI slot in the full-size PCI expansion cage. I discovered that my favorite "low-end upgrade" video cards (the 1GB fanless low-profile ATI HD5450) for friends also comes in a PCI version from HIS. So I bought one.
Well, it didn't work. No output from either VGA or DVI connectors nor from the onboard VGA connector. Remove the card, and normal VGA output returns to the onboard VGA connector.
I thought the card might have been DOA and requested a replacement which arrived today. But the replacement also does not work in the 4500S. I tried swapping it to the other PCI slot in the expansion cage, but it still doesn't work.
So I'm thinking maybe there is something incompatible with this fairly new video card and the old BIOS on the 4500S. Perhaps it's too fast, and there's a memory timing problem even though it theoretically runs on the PCI bus (as does the Intel i845g chip). I don't think that the 64bit memory interface on the card itself is at all relevant for the BIOS of the motherboard, but there's obviously something apparently unacceptable about using this card.
Which brings me to this thread, and my request for a suggestion about some other discrete video upgrade card for this 4500S which will almost certainly work successfully.
The criteria: (a) must be PCI, not PCI-e or AGP, (b) must preferably be fanless, (c) must have at least 512MB of memory and be faster than the i845g, and must support 1600x900 resolution.
I know there's no guarantee it will work in the 4500S, since I thought this PCI version HD5450 from HIS would work and it didn't. But I'm
Anybody have any suggestions for me to consider?
TIA.
NOTE: a bit more research has uncovered this Nvidia version of a similar PCI video card upgrade. Looks similar to the HD5450 except it's only got 256MB of memory and therefore has a 32-bit memory interface. This might really have been the problem with the 1GB HD5450 on the old Dell 4500S BIOS... too much video memory.
It's not ATI, but it looks good.
I'm going to RMA the HD5450 and order this one as a replacement.
If anybody has another suggestion, I'm still all ears.