First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
I recently purchased more than one of these and I'm sad to say that I can't get them to output to DVI at all.
I have tried using single-link and dual-link DVI cables going to my old Dell 2001FP and I get no display at all when the DVI cable is connected. I also tried connecting it via a DVI to HDMI adapter to a newer 1080P monitor just for kicks and it also did nothing there.
I don't believe it is a defect because I have more than one card to test and they are all exhibiting the same problem. Also, VGA seems to work fine.
I have checked for physical damage related to the DVI section of the card, and it appears that the tiny ribbon cables are intact and inserted fully.
These particular cards (with DVI) seem to be pretty rare, so there isn't much information out there about them, but I have found some reports of people having issues with DVI on older cards like this... some are also other ELSA cards (like a Geforce 256). I know the card can't do dual output, but I am only trying to use one at a time.
Also, here is the datasheet for the Silicon Image SIL154CT64 chip.
It says that it only supports up to SXGA (1280x1024) and these monitors can do 1600x1200 and 1920x1080 natively, but it seems odd that it would just not work at all connected to anything that supports higher than that. Shouldn't it at least work in the BIOS and DOS when the system is asking for only the most basic output?
... also, what a crappy limitation for what was probably a way overpriced DVI card in April of 2000 (date on card label). I can run much older cards with at least 8MB of video memory at 1600x1200 on the desktop over VGA. DVI must have really been in its infancy back then.
EDIT: 🤯 Holy moly... I was just poking around in Windows with one of these installed and realized it detected as TNT2 Ultra... EDIT: Rivatuner and SIV32 report the core clock as 100Mhz for some reason, but they may be detecting it incorrectly due to being much newer programs meant for newer devices. TNTCLK reports the card correctly as having a 150Mhz core. TNTCLK and Rivatuner confirm that the memory is clocked at 183Mhz, which is Ultra speed and is actually correct for these SGRAM chips. I figured it was just misidentified by the driver, but I peeked under one of the heatsinks and sure enough... these are factory-labeled TNT2 Ultra cores. 😮
... did not expect that. The heatsink is on the small side for an Ultra and has no fan... but ELSA seemingly knew what they were doing when the built the card, right?
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.