installing a new card?

[Sumedh]

Hi,

I just got a new Radeon 9600, and as a newbie, I was wondering what
exactly are the steps to take to install the card.

- Do I un-install the old driver through the Add/Remove programs? Does
that suffice? Some tips suggest going through the BIOS. How exactly do
I do that?

- What is "Flashing" the BIOS? What does it do?

- Are the Catylyst 3.4 the de-facto standard for the new cards?

Thanks a lot,
Sumedh

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Using add/remove on the old card's drivers ought to be adequate. (I have
seen utilities for removing all traces of old drivers, but I haven't used
them. I went from an nVidia GF4 4200 to an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro a few months
ago - after the 9700 dropped in price - with no difficulty.)

I don't understand what BIOS settings would have to do with it.

The BIOS is the Basic Input/Output System. It contains the code needed to
start up and run the PC. "Flashing" the BIOS is updating the code, which
resides on an EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read only memory)
chip. You flash the BIOS to fix errors in it, add new features, support new
processors, etc. The main reason to *not* casually upgrade the BIOS is that
if something goes wrong with the flash, the machine my not be usable until
new EEPROM chip is installed with a working BIOS. (Most PCs use a socketed
BIOS chip, so it can be done without soldering. I've never had to do it,
though.) Some PCs have BIOS recovery features built-in, but I haven't used
mine.

The Catalyst 3.4 drivers are the latest unified driver release for the
Radeon cards. (They're equivalent to the nVidia "Detonator" drivers,
although ATI strongly discourages the distribution of leaked beta versions.
I sort of miss that.) Rumor has it that the Catalyst 3.5 drivers will be
released on Monday, 26 June.

HTH.

Bob Knowlden

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