Installing a 4870 into an already working system

Stildawn

Stildawn

New Member
Hi all

Just got my cosair 650w, and my 4870 1gb. Im about to do the swap in my system below.

Just a few questions as Ive never swapped cards out before (done heaps of new builds though)

1. Do I have to uninstall/change anything?

2. Will windows etc etc detect the change or do I have to formatt and reinstall vista (64)?

3. Are there any other problems I dont know about?

Cheers
 
Or you could just go into device manager and right click your current video card, then "uninstall". Shut down, install the new card and drivers.
 
Or you could just go into device manager and right click your current video card, then "uninstall". Shut down, install the new card and drivers.
Click to expand...

that doesnt get rid of crap like nview/catalyst control centre though
 
Dont just click uninstall in the device manager that just removes the card from your device manager list, the drivers are still there. Dont even have to fool with the device manager. Go to Add & Remove and uninstall any Nvidia drivers or programs for your old card. Swap the cards out and install the ATI drivers
 
Ok.

So the plan is to do this tomorrow, when I have the time haha.

Im going to uninstall all the drivers from add/remove programs, then uninstall the card from device manager. And that should be all good.

Cheers

Side note. How much better is a 4870 1gb to a 4870 512mb?
 
Uninstall the drivers in device manager. Download driver cleaner, and run it for ATi. Install the nvidia card. Boot into safe mode, install the nvidia drivers. Restart normally.

The 1gb version has a larger memory bandwidth, usefull for bigger resolutions.
 
Anyway lol.

Ok im planning to do this tonight some time. Ive got my Cosair tx650 in at the moment. Now I know this has two 6pin power points (whatever its called) for the graphics card, but opening up my 4870 box it has these two convertors from standard 4 pin power (like the ones you plus into old (non sata) HDD and Roms) that converts to 6pin for the graphics card.

So my question is, is there any difference between the ones that come direct from my PSU to the converted normal 4 pin ones???

Cheers.
 
Haha mean, means I can get another one down the track with the same PSU... I was shocked cause I thought that I didnt get the right PSU (im working towards a crossfire build)
 
StrangleHold said:
Dont just click uninstall in the device manager that just removes the card from your device manager list, the drivers are still there. Dont even have to fool with the device manager. Go to Add & Remove and uninstall any Nvidia drivers or programs for your old card. Swap the cards out and install the ATI drivers
Click to expand...

you're right, though driver cleaner is always a good idea too. But I have never noticed any gain from it..
 
This is the process you need to use to do it properly. I have seen hundreds of examples where driver conflicts have caused subtle but performance sapping/annoying problems (especially when you are going from green to red).

  1. Uninstall the drivers in device manager.
  2. Download driver cleaner, and run it for nVidia and ATi. http://downloads.guru3d.com/downloadget.php?id=745&file=7&evp=54e6f91e495111338e2171476965c5ed
  3. Shutdown and install the ATi (4870) card.
  4. Boot into safe mode, install the ATi drivers (tap F8 on start)
  5. Restart normally.

Of course you can do it the lazy way as posted by others, but if in a few weeks you notice freezes during games, reboots, or generally poor performance, you will know why. Booting into safe mode is very quick, so i would also suggest doing this with all subsequent driver updates.

On your other point, the TX650 has 2 x 8 pin PCIe power connectors that can be also be used as 6 pin connectors. The molex to PCIe power converter you refer to Stildawn is for people with PSU's that predate PCIe cards requiring additional power.

Mr. Johanssen said:
... as they're probably on a separate +12v rail (better power stability)
Click to expand...

The TX650 has a single 52A rail. Even if it was what you would call a multi-rail PSU, it is not a true multi rail PSU as it shares the same 12V rail. No stability improvements are gained by this. Multi rail PSU's are a marketing con. This is why you will see almost all top-notch PSU manufacturers returning to single rail design. There are technical reasons why this is so as well, which i could, but won’t go into now unless someone is interested.
 
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Hi All.

Im now on the 4870 lol. Tried the safe mode thing, but the driver installer wouldn run the "detection program" but its seemed to work fine when I did it in normal vista.

Now im about to do the manual fan fix. One question though, when I set the fan speed to 40 or whatever, does that means that it wont go fastest under load???

Cheers
 
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