Going from one ATI to another

[jgbishop]

I'm having problems with my 9700 Pro, and want to go to a 9800 Pro here in the next few weeks. I plan on doing a fresh install of Windows XP sometime soon as well, so I need to know one thing: Should I wait until I get my new video card to do the install of XP, or can I do an install of XP with my 9700 Pro, then swap out the cards later on?

They will both be using the same drivers, so no problems there. I also don't plan on overclocking either card. Suggestions?

 

[PrayForDeath]

My advice would be to wait for the 9800 Pro to arrive, then install a fresh WinXP.
But what kind of problems are you having with your 9700 Pro?

 

[jgbishop]

I'm having some sort of conflict with my motherboard (Asus P4P800). Every so often, I have a cold boot problem with my 9700 Pro, where the screen has weird looking blocks all over it. I'm hoping that there won't be a conflict with a 9800 Pro (since they were built later), but I don't know.

My motherboard manual has a note in it stating that the revision number of the board should be 30 or later, but mine is a 00 (the last few numbers of the board's Serial Number). Any idea as to whether or not a 9800 Pro would solve the problem? I may be barking up the wrong tree on this one...

 

[Cheetah8799]

I've never had any problem when going from one ati card to another on the same install of XP and same cat drivers. If you want to save time, I think it'd be ok to install using your current 9700, then stick in the 9800 when you get it. If you don't mind waiting though, it wouldn't hurt.

 

[McMadman]

I did a video card swap for testing purposes (4.2 ati cats on the xp machine and the last omega drivers on the 98 machine)

on the xp machine I went from a 9600xt > 9700pro > 9600xt > 9800pro (the xt had mb compatibility issues)

on the 98 machine I went from a 9700pro > 9600xt > 9700pro (obviously the same two cards were used in both systems)

The only side effects of the swaps, was a few entries in device manager (safe mode) from the hardware that was no longer there (the 9600 had vivo)

Just install the latest cat's and you'll be fine.

(unrelated) I would assume that cards based on nvidia's chipsets would also be fairly interchangable as well.