Am picking up my ATI 9800 Pro today - how best to prepare my system?

[jakobkraft]

Given that I'm one of the unfortunate many who's experienced a host of driver issues with these cards (from Polygons showing in the skies of Q3 and Q3-based games to weird lighting rectangles in older favs like Undying...but that was awhile ago and am willing to give it another shot (especially since I'm getting the card at a friend's employee discount from CompUSA.)

But what do I need to do to have this thing running smooth right out of the box? I currently have my good old Ti200 and am using the 61.77 drivers. When I uninstall drivers, I usually go in afterward and manually delete the NVIDIA folder on my HD as well as going into the registry and deleting the NVIDIA folders there that show up under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE.
So I think I'm pretty thorough when it comes to uninstalling drivers but is there anything else I should do? I really just want to enjoy this card and not have any headaches, otherwise I will hate ATI forever and ever.

Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated, thanks...!

 

[jpeyton]

Driver Cleaner 3. Google it.

Download and install it. Uninstall your Nvidia Display Drivers from control panel-->add/remove programs and uninstall the video card from device manager.

Then reboot into safe mode, and run Driver Cleaner 3. Uninstall all Nvidia display drivers using it; then run Cab Cleaner (from the Driver Cleaner menu) and uninstall any nvidia drivers from all your cab files.

Then turn off the system, remove your old video card. Insert new one. Start up system. Install drivers.

 

[Gurck]

^ Yep

I just switched from an nVidia card to an ATi card, which can be very problematic, with no problems using DC 2.7 (didn't know 3 was out, I'll d/l it momentarily)

 

[Farm]

Or you could just do what I did:

Turn off computer
Pull out old video card.
Insert new video card.
Turn on computer.
Install drivers from CD.
Update deiver via ATI
Done

 

[usernamemax20charact]

But he wants to have this running smoothly out of the box. Therefore, he should uninstall the nVidia drivers first and then install the 9800 Pro card.

Also, download the latest ATi drivers from their site instead of using the ones on the CD. I believe they're at 4.8 right now.

Just do what jpeyton said and you'll be fine.

 

[Farm]

Originally posted by: usernamemax20charact
But he wants to have this running smoothly out of the box. Therefore, he should uninstall the nVidia drivers first and then install the 9800 Pro card.

Also, download the latest ATi drivers from their site instead of using the ones on the CD. I believe they're at 4.8 right now.

Just do what jpeyton said and you'll be fine.

I understand that and don't have a problem with it, but mine is running smoothly OC'd to XT speeds and I uninstalled nothing.