G550 - No video BIOS screen at boot-up.

[rj28]

After spending a few days cursing my new setup (and Athlon XP 1900 based system w/ Abit NV7-133R mobo that I blamed almost entirely for no good reason), I finally realized why my system wouldn't boot - bad power supply (half-bad - worked, but the additional 4 pin Molex connector which makes up the ATX12V didn't work).

Of course - this was after swapping all sorts of components - one of which was my new G550 card. The system booted just fine with the rest of my config, and a friend's Asus GeForce3 card.

When I put the G550 back - I thought the system went dead again - no BIOS screen. Right before I was going to start cursing (ever since I started building machines, I've been a master with the profanity) - I realized that once the machine got past the video BIOS and into the system POST, it displayed the POST screen at the memory test.

In short - the card works - but doesn't display anything until you get to the system's BIOS (no video card information at boot) - and should you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to get a warm boot, you get a funny sounding beep (unlike the normal one - lower tone) - and an abnormal delay, before showing the BIOS screen again.

Anything I can do to fix this? Could I have a defective card, or do I need to update the G550's BIOS at all? Or does the NV7-133R (or any nForce based board w/o onboard video) not play nicely with the G550?

TIA for any help,
-rj

[Kruzin]

This is normal.
Matrox cards have not displayed any video BIOS since the days of the Millennium II

[rj28]

Thanks, Kruzin - if only I had known that a few days earlier, it would have saved me quite a bit of grief!

Just out of curiousity - just how long does it normally stand in this idle-no-boot state? It seems to me that the G550 takes longer than my other cards - then again, it could just be the placebo affect since I'm looking at a blank screen.