Graphics Card Install Question for Vostro 470

I should mention I cant even get to the BIOS with my graphics card. Nothing shows. I have to plug in to motherboard to show. Is there someplace that I have to switch what GPU to use in BIOS?

I also turned secure boot off and am using Legacy bootup with windows 7 64 bit

Just starting with the basics;

Is there an excessive amount of dust in the PCI-E slot? Poor contacts will affect performance.

Do you have the latest version of the BIOS installed? Found here:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=GVGPD

The GTX 460 requires two separate power connections from your Power Supply. Do you have two 6-pin power cables connected to the Graphics Card? Some configurations use a molex adapter for one cable to feed two 6-pin plugs and this doesn't work on the GTX 460.

If these do not correct the issue and you still cannot access your BIOS to force it to use the PCI slot as your graphics option, you may wish to try this;

http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html

This will remove all of your graphics drivers and prep your Motherboard for a new card from scratch. Please not this is a more technical approach and you can run into problems if you don't follow the instructions properly.

Thanks my dude, I'll list what I've done so far.

-PSU it has the correct power and it is being powered by a 750 watt
-Checked GPU on another motherboard same PSU, works fine
-BIOS is A12
-As far as drivers, I removed windows 7 and did a UEFI version with GPT partition of Windows 10 64 bit. I have secure boot off. It won't even show POST, long before windows drivers would be of any use.
-At your suggestion I went and cleaned the PCI slot, still nothing.

I confirmed the 460 is compatible as the motherboard's slot is PCI-e ver 2.0 and my card is the EVGA GTX 460  specs are Base Clock: 763 MHZ. Memory Clock: 3800 MHz Effective. CUDA Cores: 336. Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0.

Thanks for your help man, anything else you could think of? It doesn't even show post on this motherboard.. I don't have another GPU to test on it, is there somewhere I have to manually switch from integrated to pci?

The default for the A12 BIOS should be to use the PCI when it is active, you shouldn't need to manually designate it but we may come to that.

I'd like you to hard reset the BIOS to their factory settings by removing the CMOS battery for a minute or two.

Then use the link in my comment above to reinstall the A12 BIOS. Sometimes a reflash can correct a corruption. 

This will default all of your settings and will make sure we can rule out damaged BIOS being the issue.

As for power supply, because this is 98% of the time a card causes a failure to post, I want to be sure you specifically have two independent 6pin connectors plugged directly into the back of the card with no adapters. I know you have a very strong PSU, I just want to be sure we can move past that fix too.

If neither of these work there's been a few solutions that worked for various people on EVGA forums, all BIOS related;

PEG Force X1 to Enabled

Change PnP/PCI Express Maximum Payload Size from 128 to 4096

Setting PCI-E Frequency either to 100, 103, 105, or 110

Setting PCI-E Slot wattage to 50, 75 or the highest you can go. If you're blessed enough to have this setting, you're in luck! A lot of people say this solves their issue!

Setting your PCI-E slot to run at 8x, 4x or 2x instead of 16x. There's usually not BIOS setting for this, it's all automatic. 

Bear in mind these are some very one-off solutions, most fixes for this card (as I'm researching it seems this card is notorious for arguing with Windows 7) are found by wiping any drivers and booting with the card installed after.

Let me know how it turns out!

Thanks Joe!

I'll reseat that CMOS. It wasnt working on A10 so I flashed to A12 and it still doesn't work. I'll reset the BIOS and try again.

As far as power, its correct - in fact I tested the PSU with that GPU on another motherboard, has no issues. Unfortunately the test motherboard is an LGA 775 socket lol So cant use it permanently.

Unfortunately I've gone through my entire BIOS, I don't have any options to edit PCI settings anywhere. In fact this is about as barebones of a BIOS as I have ever seen.