Read This if you are getting a new graphics card

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Rik

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Ive seen loads of people having problems with newly installed graphics cards so here is some advice.

Before you go out and purchace your new graphics card its worth finding out what your motherboard will take. PCI graphics cards are all easy to figure out, but if you have an AGP (accelerated graphics port) then you need to know what apature speed your motherboard will support. To find this out, first look in the book that came with your motherboard, it will tell you if you require agp x2/x4 or agp x4/x8. Second, contact your motherboard manufacutrer and ask them. Thirdly, if you know how to do it then go in to your bios and look at "agp apature". Fourthly, there are some programs that will help you to identify your agp speed, i dont have any links for them but im sure someone on here will post some.


Once you have purchased your new graphics card and BEFORE you fit it, remove the driver and any applications that were for your old card. This is very important as a lot of problems arise from XP getting confused by mulitple drivers. XP supports multiple graphics cards (i know this for sure as ive had 2 cards running as an experiment) so it wont automatically remove the old driver for you.

For your own sake, be careful of static electricity when you handle your new graphics card, it wont damage it right away but it will reduce the life span of the components on it. I work in the electronics trade and ive seen what static electricity can do to components and it can be expensive to fix. A good idea is to grab hold of a bare, unpainted part of the chassis of your case for a few seconds which will discharge any static you may have built up.

Once your new card is fitted, install the newest drivers you can find for it and your motherboard chipset from their manufactures web site.


This is obviously general advice so if you are still not sure about your specific graphics card RTFM (it means read the manual, i will leave you to figure out what the F stands for).

Finally, happy game playing with your new graphics card. Rik.
 
Good one RIk, it is wonder no one has posted something similar to this before. :)

perhaps a few addition on how to choose the right card,

like how to fix the budget for the card and how to fix on the card for that budget. :angel:
 
kol_indian said:
Good one RIk, it is wonder no one has posted something similar to this before. :)

perhaps a few addition on how to choose the right card,

like how to fix the budget for the card and how to fix on the card for that budget. :angel:


Feel free to add to it yourself, my mobo only supports agp x2/x4 and im running an ATI 7000 series 64mb so i havent looked at any of the new cards.
 
but what if the old card's not working?

RIK,

Thanks for the advice... I'm in a situation where I need to get a new card because the old one's not sending my monitor the signal anymore, after 2 years of successful computing. So I can't see the settings to remove the drivers. Bought my computer at Best Buy with an Nvidia card. I don't have the specs with me... It is for my home computer and I'm now at the office.

Mike
 
mmundy said:
RIK,

Thanks for the advice... I'm in a situation where I need to get a new card because the old one's not sending my monitor the signal anymore, after 2 years of successful computing. So I can't see the settings to remove the drivers. Bought my computer at Best Buy with an Nvidia card. I don't have the specs with me... It is for my home computer and I'm now at the office.

Mike


Before you go and buy a new graphics ard, check the pins in the monitor plug to see if any are bent or broken.

When you get your new card and hopefully get your system working, boot in safe mode (press F8 when windows first starts) then remove the old drivers. That should stop any driver conflict before it can start.
 
rik said:
Before you go and buy a new graphics ard, check the pins in the monitor plug to see if any are bent or broken.

When you get your new card and hopefully get your system working, boot in safe mode (press F8 when windows first starts) then remove the old drivers. That should stop any driver conflict before it can start.


To add to that, physically pull the power plug from the back of the monitor for about 20 seconds and plug it back in. I can't tell you how many times I've done this at work to multiple pc's and gotten them to come up again. Afterwards, I get into the bios to disable any and all power management settings.
 
kol_indian said:
Good one RIk, it is wonder no one has posted something similar to this before. :)

perhaps a few addition on how to choose the right card,

like how to fix the budget for the card and how to fix on the card for that budget. :angel:

The problem is that such info get's outdated very soon...

One could possibly say something about the different price-ranges and what kind of performance you can expect to get out of them, but even that would only be true for the latest generation, and only for a limited time...

But the idea isn't too bad... Maybe it could be added as part of the Buyers guide on this site.
 
Thats sounds really interesteing so we can start a new section called buyers guide or something like that

what say you??
 
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