How to: Video Card Testing

Author: Con Validas
Date: March 2004, Updated 22nd February, 2006 by Peter and Jason

Supporting Resources: Video card tester unit, AIDA floppy disk, permanent marker, and cards to test.
Video card Specifications: Keep PCI video cards with 4 MB of memory or more and keep AGP video cards with 8 MB of memory or more.

Process

1. Locate the video card tester unit (usually in the hardware section), an AIDA floppy disk, and the box of video cards to test.
2. Place the AIDA disk into floppy drive.
3. Plug in the PCI or AGP video card into the computer while the computer is turned off.
4. Turn on the video card tester unit, and wait for AIDA to load up.
5. Page Down to page 14 Video Adapter and take note of Video Adapter type and Video Memory size.
6. Power off the system.
7. Take the video card out of the system and label it with details found from step 5. Write the MB capacity and video driver name on side of card. Refer to Video Driver Listing below for driver name.
   
   For PCI video cards 4 MB or greater and AGP video cards 8 MB or greater place in cupboard. Discard all other video cards.
   
   
8. Repeat steps 3 to 7 for testing more cards.

Video Driver Listing

Video Adapter Type                              Video Driver

ATI                                                         ati

Intel Corp i810 and i815                           i810

S3 Trio 64 and most other S3 cards           vesa

S3 Savage                                               savage

NVIDIA                                                    nv

Matrox                                                     mga

Cirrus Logic                                              cirrus

Trident                                                     trident

Rendition                                                 rendition

SiS                                                          sis