Video card and monitor trouble?

Question

i have a pentium 4 motherboard i got and i have a KDS monitor and i went to plug the monitor into the onboard graphic card and it had the same connection on both the monitor and the onboard card (in other words both have pins...so that wont work.). so im wondering what i should do...should i just junk the MB or buy a graphic card to put it in it? what gets me is that i have like 4 video cards and only 2 of them fit into the video card slot but yet they dont power up.

thanx for your help!!

Answer 1

You confused the onboard com port with the vga port.

The com port has extruding pins while the onboard graphics should have holes.

So most probably you do not have onboard graphics on your board or you need to find the right port. Most of the time, the VGA port on the motherboard is blue.

Just because your graphics card fits in your computer, does not necessarily mean it will work on your computer. There are different ports used for graphic cards. PCIx, PCI and AGP.

AGP Cards usually have a short row of connections to the port and a small plastic hook at the end of the lower part.

It might even fit into a pci port (would have to try it) but definitely would not work (it could also damage the card).

PCIx Cards also use an additional power connection from your power supply or they will not power up.

So make sure you look into the motherboards manual and figure out which graphic cards are supported and check the the graphic card has the right connection.

If you post the type of the motherboard, we might be able to tell you what card you can use.