Advice for Installing 7970

[Stickman]

What's the best procedure for installing a new Graphics card?

I usually just power down, switch out the old card for the new one, and power up, and hope windows does the trick of telling me about drivers and such, but since I'm swapping a £20 5450 for a £480 7970 I thought this time I'd better do it with all due reverence.

Do people recommend uninstalling the old graphics drivers first (says catalyst version 11.12) or will my "plug and pray" method work just as well?

 

[andy_mk3]

Just plug it in. Since you already have and ATI card drivers will not be an issue. Just make sure the latest ATI drivers are installed and away you go.

 

[PESolution]

I'm swapping a £20 5450 for a £480 7970

you should notice at least 10% performance increase

 

[xsistor]

I'm swapping a £20 5450 for a £480 7970

Prepare to be blown away, then.

 

[555BUK]

*Download latest AMD drivers
*Unistall existing AMD drivers from Control Panel
*Shutdown PC
*Insert Graphics card
*Power On
*Install downloaded drivers.
*Reboot
*Enjoy

 

[Stickman]

OK, just posting my progress and the hurdles I had to overcome in case it is of help to anyone else in the same boat today with a new 7970. Mine's the Powercolor one btw.

Found an insert in the bottom of the box which warns to uninstall the old drivers first so did that, but the driver cd that came with it kept crashing saying "setting has detected an incomplete build and will now exit."

Luckilly I found this post over at guru3d which links to the correct amd drivers, and it's now up and running with a 7.9 windows experience index score.

 

[dave_beast]

As a rule, never use the driver CD and always downloaded the latest.

Uninstall all AMD/ATI software, remove drivers from device manager, some even go into the registry and delete amd/ati keys.

Restart and install from desktop

 

[panyan]

As a rule, never use the driver CD and always downloaded the latest.

generally yes, this is the best method, but the amd drivers are not up on their site yet i dont think :/

 

[Deception]

So, what you testing it on or was the WEI the test?

 

[almostgfx]

Just uninstall the current drivers and power down and swap the card out, plug in all the cables needed and then boot up and get new drivers. Simples

 

[Deception]

Just uninstall the current drivers and power down and swap the card out, plug in all the cables needed and then boot up and get new drivers. Simples

He already found the latest ones. Just waiting on benchies now!

 

[MDPlatts]

remember to remove power cable - powering off is not enough - there are still voltages flying around on a powered down pc - not sure about on the PCI-e but AGP used to still be live.

 

[Stickman]

Thanks.

So, what you testing it on or was the WEI the test?

Going to use it for games with pretty graphics... Battlefield 3 / Crysis / Metro 2033 etc.

I ordered them but they haven't arrived yet, so all I have to test it with at the mo is GTA IV, which obviously isn't a suitable test of this hardware.