The Conservative Cave
Interests => Around the House & In the Garage => Product & Merchant Reviews => Topic started by: Thor on May 14, 2011, 08:07:03 AM
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I recently ordered an Nvidia video card with 1 GB DDR3 RAM and a 700 MHz processor. It was under $50. I received the three days after it shipped, which is pretty good, but I had ordered it early Friday morning. Newegg has consistently had things to me within three business days of my order. They created the shipping label on Friday, so one would have imagined that it would have shipped that day. But, NOooooooooo, it didn't ship until the following Monday. This didn't happen before with any of my orders or other people's orders, but Newegg is running this thing to get people to sign up with called, "Shoprunner"
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So, for $79/yr, I get free two day shipping?? I think NOT!! Newegg's shipping policies have definitely changed and for the worse. I'm pretty sure that it's all tied to this shop runner bullshit they're pimping.
Now, to the video card......
Before in installed the video card, I was running the onboard ATI video and it was tied to the TV, along with the audio, when selected. The audio was also tied to my stereo, which worked quite well. (I did have to make a switch if I wanted audio to go to the TV via the control panel.) It's an EVGA GT520. I've always been a fan of NVidia video cards because they were an easy install, usually less expensive and usually better than ATI, IMO. Fairly simple to install. Windows 7 didn't find any drivers for it, as I expected. Silly me used the CD instead of going out to the manufacturer's site and grabbing the latest & greatest. I boot up the PC before I installed the drivers and I didn't get ANY video on my VGA monitor. I got this nice desktop with no icons. So, I switch the TV to the HDMI input and there are all of my icons!!! So I fiddle with the screen selection and best I could get was to clone the TV screen. (This was the EXACT opposite if the NVidia card in my other PC) I start testing things out and the HDMI Audio no longer works. I call their tech support and they said to get the newest drivers. OK. Not a problem. Well, to uninstall the video drivers from the CD required a couple of reboots. I couldn't just uninstall all of the crap NVidia installed on my machine at one time. Two reboots later, I'm ready to install the latest and greatest drivers from NVidia. Another reboot. :maddernhell: After I did that, the HDMI audio worked nicely on my TV, BUT the damned drivers killed the rest of my onboard audio drivers!! Now, my stereo output didn't work!! :banghead: :banghead: I called them again and spoke with another tech. He seemed somewhat at a loss as to why it killed my other audio drivers. I asked him would it hurt to reinstalled the motherboard audio drivers and he suggested that it wouldn't. I went back to the Gigabyte site and grabbed the audio drivers and reinstalled them. That fixed that problem.
Back to the monitor problem. The software or the BIOS doesn't allow for me to select which device the video is sent to. It only allows me to select which video is selected to boot up to. I can't even disable the onboard video in the BIOS. I toyed with the PC a bit and discovered if I disconnect the HDMI cable, the video gets sent to the VGA monitor. I contacted them again, this time via email, asking if there was any easy remedy for this problem. I don't like having to pull out the HDMI cable to get into the BIOS or see the boot up screen. What I get told is, "just remove the HDMI cable". :banghead: :banghead: That means that if I want to get into the POST sequence, I have to pull out my computer, unplug the HDMI cable, boot up and I can see the POST screen on boot up. That's not exactly easy to do because of where my PC is located. Otherwise, it's on the TV until it actually gets into Windows. The problem with that is that I have to move the entertainment center and tweak my neck to almost 180° to see anything on the POST. I suppose if I had a wireless keyboard & mouse that reached out to 10 meters, this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but mine is only good to six feet, IF that. With all of the problems that I've had with just the install, I'm reconsidering my fondness of NVidia video cards.
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That whole thing is odd. I've never had any issues with Nvidia, even using "CD" drivers. I just go to the site and update, no un-install.
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I've NEVER had a problem with Nvidia's video cards, EVER!! This was the first one to give me grief and even then, it wasn't video related. It must have something to do with the AMD surround sound drivers or something.
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I just bought a Galaxy with the 220 GPU..................no issues. Win 7 found the drivers.
(got mine at Frys for 54 bucks)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162040
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I've NEVER had a problem with Nvidia's video cards, EVER!! This was the first one to give me grief and even then, it wasn't video related. It must have something to do with the AMD surround sound drivers or something.
The ATI HDMI driver might be lurking somewhere after uninstall of the ATI drivers. Whenever I do clean-installs of my video drivers, CCleaner always finds a few ATI files and registry entries missed by Driver Sweeper.
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The ATI HDMI driver might be lurking somewhere after uninstall of the ATI drivers. Whenever I do clean-installs of my video drivers, CCleaner always finds a few ATI files and registry entries missed by Driver Sweeper.
No, I had to install the Nvidia drivers and they wiped out the onboard ATI drivers. After reinstalling the ATI drivers, everything's back to normal, as it was and should be. Foe some stupid reason, the NVidia drivers wanted to take over the HDMI audio out. When they did that, it totally wiped out my onboard sound.