Switching from Nvidia to ATI

[therhodeo]

Not to start a war about which is better, but I'm upgrading my brother's pc from an NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 512mb to an XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 XXX 1024MB and was wondering what the procedure is considering drivers etc when switching from one to the other.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Popov]

Short of installing Windows from scratch just fire up drivecleaner pro in safemode and nuke anything that has the word Nvidia in it.

 

[Ben M]

I have never heard of that card. Googling has come up with some confusing results.

It's very old is the jist of what I came up with. It also seems to be a built in chip, rather than a standalone graphics card?

Does his system have a pci-express slot?

What's the rest of the system? There's no point in putting a cutting edge graphics card in a really old system, as it won't be able to keep up. Also he will need a power supply unit which is powerful enough for the card.

As far as the drivers go, the standard method is to run drivecleaner, then install new drivers, it's pretty easy.

 

[Weazle]

Short of installing Windows from scratch just fire up drivecleaner pro in safemode and nuke anything that has the word Nvidia in it.

LOL I wouldn't nuke everything Nvidia as you've got an nForce board.

One alternative is to first download the whole catalyst driver package and put that into a drivers directory. Then boot the pc into safe mode, uninstall the Nvidia card from the device listing, shutdown the machine, pop the new card in, boot your pc and load the catalyst drivers.

 

[therhodeo]

The computer isn't actually that old, was bought at christmas. It's a HP Compaq dx2450 microtower.

This is the hardware according to a freeware system analyser I downloaded;
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200B [Socket AM2 (940)]
Motherboard: OEM 2A72h
Memory: Micron Technology 4GB DDR2
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 512mb
Hard Drive: Samsung HD5021J 500GB

I realise there will be a bottleneck but I think the processor is pretty good (i'm by no means an expert though so you may correct me on that!). I knew there'd be a power issue so I bought the OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Modular Power Supply as well. In the end, he asked for a GPU for his birthday so that's what he got! I think he's got a view in the longer term to upgrading his mb, processor and ram as well so hopefully the bottleneck won't last that long.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Tute]

It should be alright, those Athlons aren't THAT slow.

The procedure I normally go with:

a) Go into Control Panel, to your installed programs. Run the uninstaller for your drivers, but be careful that it only removes graphics card drivers, and NOT your nForce chipset drivers, otherwise you'll need to reinstall those too.

b) Download a program called Driversweeper and run it. Set the filters to "nVidia - Graphics" and clean the drivers.

c) Reboot.

d) Install new drivers.

I've never had a problem doing it this way.

 

[kevpuk]

6150 is integrated graphics, is it not - not actually a discrete card, methinks

...oh, and (per Ben M ^^) check their definitely is a PCI-e full-length slot available, such OEM PCs are naughtily notorious for leaving them off mothreboards (boo ! shame on them !)

.....and oh again, if this is a 'micro-tower', will it accept a full height card ? Some of these fella's will only accept low-profile cards, which will limit your gfx card choice....

 

[Phatzy]

6150 is integrated graphics, is it not - not actually a discrete card, methinks

indeed it is, to the OP make sure you disable onboard display in bios before installing new graphic card

 

[AMG]

and don't nuke it

 

[therhodeo]

Thanks for all the help guys, worked a treat and the difference is unbelievable. Left4Dead and Oblivion both work on highest settings so the kid is pretty chuffed. No real problems apart from fitting it in the case; the OCZ was much bigger than the standard supply. The card fitted fine though.