Joe2005
New Member
If you want the short version skip to the blue part.
Ok, so yesterday I got myself a brand new Sapphire 3850 from Newegg and I couldn't get the blooming thing to work. I have two motherboards on two different computers, both will turn on and run without the graphics card but neither one would accept the GPU. Because of this I came to the conclusion that the thing was DOA and I RMA'd it.
But now my mind is playing tricks on me and maybe it was good I just didn't install it right? So this is what I did, did I do it right?
Brand spanking new computer, didn't even have the OS installed, no drivers whatsoever. Before I even turned it on I put the GPU in the PCI-e slot thinking it would work (just like the on board gpu works without the drivers) but nothing. So I plugged my monitor into the on board gpu and started it up.
After it booted up and I installed the motherboard drivers, I went about trying to install the GPU driver, I just put the cd in and clicked install, after a couple minutes the things said complete or install successful and to reboot, which I did. I then tried to plug the monitor into the GPU again and guess what (the very fact that I'm writing this should give you a clue).
Back to the on board gpu to make absolute 100% sure that the bios is set to display to the GPU, it is. Went into the device manager and I couldn't even find a display adapter from ati (on board is nvidia), I looked for it, Microsoft looked for it but nothing. (Which is why I determined it was DOA).
So If you managed to read through that, or even if you didn't, My question is:
Will a GPU work* on a brand new computer without the drivers installed?
*by work I mean display the post screen and such.
And if you did read through that and understood it, did I install it correctly?
Edit: This is the first computer I have ever used that is supposed to have a dedicated video card, so I basically know nothing about them
Ok, so yesterday I got myself a brand new Sapphire 3850 from Newegg and I couldn't get the blooming thing to work. I have two motherboards on two different computers, both will turn on and run without the graphics card but neither one would accept the GPU. Because of this I came to the conclusion that the thing was DOA and I RMA'd it.
But now my mind is playing tricks on me and maybe it was good I just didn't install it right? So this is what I did, did I do it right?
Brand spanking new computer, didn't even have the OS installed, no drivers whatsoever. Before I even turned it on I put the GPU in the PCI-e slot thinking it would work (just like the on board gpu works without the drivers) but nothing. So I plugged my monitor into the on board gpu and started it up.
After it booted up and I installed the motherboard drivers, I went about trying to install the GPU driver, I just put the cd in and clicked install, after a couple minutes the things said complete or install successful and to reboot, which I did. I then tried to plug the monitor into the GPU again and guess what (the very fact that I'm writing this should give you a clue).
Back to the on board gpu to make absolute 100% sure that the bios is set to display to the GPU, it is. Went into the device manager and I couldn't even find a display adapter from ati (on board is nvidia), I looked for it, Microsoft looked for it but nothing. (Which is why I determined it was DOA).
So If you managed to read through that, or even if you didn't, My question is:
Will a GPU work* on a brand new computer without the drivers installed?
*by work I mean display the post screen and such.
And if you did read through that and understood it, did I install it correctly?
Edit: This is the first computer I have ever used that is supposed to have a dedicated video card, so I basically know nothing about them
Last edited: