Sorry no clue. Never played with one. Read online that driver v8.09.04 driver worked for someone else, when the other did not....

Dell did use custom hardware and drivers back in the day and I have vague memories of situations where you couldn't get some add-in cards to function outside of the Dell units, due to BIOS/software traps that were required to get them working and vice-versa. I serviced a lot of Dell business and consumer units in the early 2000's that had issues along those lines.

I doubt that AGEIA had any bios or firmware and there's seemingly no EEPROM chip on the card. This is not a device which is supposed to work without some sort of driver at all, similar to how Voodoo 1/2 operates. So probably bad caps or VRM.

Does it work in any later games or demos? Like Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-09-25, 03:16:

I doubt that AGEIA had any bios or firmware and there's seemingly no EEPROM chip on the card. This is not a device which is supposed to work without some sort of driver at all, similar to how Voodoo 1/2 operates. So probably bad caps or VRM.

Does it work in any later games or demos? Like Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Haven't tried Arkham Asylum. I tried one of the CellFactor games, which I think I downloaded from vogonsdrivers and Infernal, which I have a boxed copy of. I think I might have Arkham Asylum as well as a couple other PPU Physx games sitting around somewhere, but I'd have to find them. I don't expect different results, though. I'm using this game list as a reference, though I don't know for sure how accurate or complete it is.

If it's a hardware failure, it's probably beyond my ability to fix. I didn't notice anything obviously wrong with the card physically, but of course there could be other issues. I guess I'll keep my eye out for an old XPS system in case it's a Dell compatibility problem like RetroGamer4Ever mentioned. Either way, I'm still going to play around with whatever drivers I can find to see if one magically works, though I'm not holding my breath.

Arkham Asylum has a free demo.

I found and tried my disc copy of AA (and patched to 1.1), but no dice. Actually, even with more modern drivers installed, the game claims that I don't have any Physx hardware. Not sure if it says that even when GPU Physx is available, which it should support according to the game list I'm using. I think the 8800GTS should support GPU Physx, based on what various drivers have been telling me.

"He's dead, Jim"

Or well, you could try clean Windows 7 and see if anything will change.

I would say last screenshot suggests driver compatibility problem with particular software. Its one thing to crash, its another to report no physx acceleration while card drivers are installed.
As for crashing maybe replacing those caps as a last resort might be worth it, card is from 2006 - thats still up there in bad caps timeframe.

I appreciate the input. If I come up with anything definitive, I'll try to remember to follow up with a post.

I did some noodling around elsewhere and it seems like you have to install the oldest Ageia drivers and then update them to the newest ones to get the things to work properly and the card won't work if you simply install the newer drivers. It doesn't make much sense, but that's what people are saying.