Shopping for a video cardFollow

Just pull the trigger already and buy it dude. i know you want to.

If you are going to get a GTX 460, get the 1gb version.

I wouldn't bother getting any of the "superclocked" editions. You can just overclock it yourself.


Also, were I you, I would only buy reference design cards.

Reference cards are cards that are built to ati and nvidias exact design. Non-reference cards are when companies (evga,asus,pny,gigabyte,etc) make changes to it, like the housing, cooling, etc.

And example using 5870s:

Reference:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150456&cm_re=xfx_5870-_-14-150-456-_-Product&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3754110&SID=skim1132X509988

Non-reference:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150476&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3754110&SID=skim1132X509988

Note the differences in the case and cooling design.

Edited, Aug 5th 2010 12:48am by Fetter

should be pretty straight forward assuming it will physically fit in the case.

LOL, I got rated down for disagreeing with Kaolian?

W/e, I'll stay out of this section and stick with pro boards to talk about computer builds etc.

My PSU is a 500W. It's a few years old but as far as I can tell still works just fine. And I do have a 6 pin connector.

Hmm.

So, I uninstalled my old drivers, used driversweeper, installed the new video card (I only had 1 6 pin connector as it turns out, but the card came with an adapter to plug the other into 2 4 pin connectors), and went to install my new drivers (from the CD), and my computer froze about a third of the way into installing the drivers. So I manually shut the computer down, and let it rest overnight. When I booted it up this morning, my desktop resolution was back to where it normally is... but I still get messages saying I need to install drivers for my new hardware (in fact, it's always 4 separate messages for some reason). Trying to reinstall drivers produces the same freezing, be it from the CD or from a driver installer from the Nvidia website. Should I try uninstalling the drivers before reinstalling, or do I need to try something else? :(

When I initially went to the device manager after the problem first happened, the only thing that showed up under video adapters was my new card. Do I need to look at the specific driver files associated with that, or is there somewhere else I should look to make sure there's nothing left over?

Yea, I'm hoping the subsequent problems were just because I never uninstalled whatever got installed on the initial attempt. I still don't know why that initial install would have caused the computer to freeze though...

Yea, I should have done that initially. I'll be trying this again when I get home in a couple of hours, and will update then. :)