Need help! Upgrading Nvidia GT430 to Radeon HD6670 -> is breaking my FXA-UD5

[angelotrinidad]

Hi guys! First time in the forum. I'm hoping for any advice.

Working on a little upgrade on the graphics end of my build. I have a 990FXA-UD5 with a GT430 video card on the PCI-E slot 1. Trying to replace that with a Radeon HD6670. I power down the PC, switch cards. As soon as I power on, the PC "posts" BUT there are multiple signs of trouble like characters (letters and numbers) floating on the screen that tells me I've done something wrong.

(and yes, I believe it BROKE my board and had to purchase a new FXA-UD5)

Please help. Appreciate any feedback. My thoughts...
1. incompatibility between board and Radeon
2. power supply issues, although I'm using a 600W right now...
3. BIOS issues or drivers issues
4. may be I'm just missing a simple step here...

Thanks in advance.

[autotech]

Download and install driver sweeper. Uninstall any grapgics drivers thru control center.
Restart into safe mode and click on driver sweeper anylize and see if there are any nvidia and or amd display drivers and clean them with driver sweeper.
Restart and install amd drivers from their site.

[Vezina]

BUT there are multiple signs of trouble like characters (letters and numbers) floating on the screen that tells me I've done something wrong.

Can you tell us more about this ,what characters are you seeing exactly ?! Can we have a picture ?!
Strange characters show video card issues ,as in need of RMA it.

[TFisher]

You have to uninstall your video card and drivers BEFORE you switch cards.
If you just switch cards you will have issues,as you have found out.

I answered on your post on another thread.

[angelotrinidad]

TFisher, Vezina, autotech... Thanks for all the replies.

I did exactly as mentioned. The common thing among your posts is that I should've uninstalled Nvidia drivers first. So I did that. Grabbed the sweeper and rebooted in Safe-m too to clean the extra files not covered by the Control Panel uninstall method.

Powered down. Unseated the GT430 and plugged the Radeon 6670 (again on the same PCI-E 16x slot). Upon reboot, I saw ... some issues but not like before (no floating characters this time). only flickering. I stopped system right away scared that it might break the 990FXA-UD5 a second time.

Anyway, half leery about the experience. I think Im just going to return this Radeon.

I did however notice 1 thing that might be related.. on the BIOS, it said something that PCI-E freq is 100Mhz and any higher could result in unstable operation. I haven't tried raising that value any higher to see if it helps BUT again I'm too scared at this point.

Lol, may be I'll just grab a local technician and pay for upgrading my video. Rather pay $60 than another $200 for a Motherboard.

[Vezina]

Get a different 5670/6670 with DDR 5 if the one you have doesn t work.
Sapphire or HIS have them work properly usually.
You will see that the AMD card has a better image quality
And this card also runs Crysis 1 
It should work with no problems whatsoever.The 6xxx cards are already mature and no bug should come up inserting them in any actual mobo.
Just a defective part and bad luck.

[DarkFoss]

Have you tried loading the optimized defaults in the bios before powering down and switching the vid cards with the power supply unplugged. Then after you switch them take out the battery and clear the cmos ? Then power up and reload the optimized defaults if it looks good afterwards you can enter any
settings you had tweeked.

If the screens still garbled either the new card is bad or incompatible.

[rebbae]

After every altering with GPU-s, not only do you have to delete the drivers, you need to delete the REG info that it got into Windows.
And in Control Panel, if it shows that a new device is installed or has a ! to it, delete it and reboot.
I'd advise you to get any freeware or well-we all do it- grab something like CCleaner, or Ashampoo Uninstaller. You need your Registry Cleaned out.
Then remove the card, put in the new one in and be sure to get to BIOS first:
and just for the fun of it, change from PCI to PEG or whatever your bios has to offer. REBOOT. Start with bios again and put it on PEG. Reboot, see if the graphics set in, and then freshly install you're new one to be. Windows should find a new hardware, which you should have, before all this advices 'delete' in the System Manager, in Control Panel. Hope it works.

Seems my problems are so outdated since Gigabyte has so unlucky, sorry to say - idiotic problems on their 'new' hardware. A big shame, since I more than appreciated every Gigabyte HW I had my hands on.

Hope it yelps.

[angelotrinidad]

To all responders,

Thanks again for all the help! proves how great this forum site is.

Vezina (and all), yes was indeed, as it turns out a BAD VIDEO CARD. I've now returned the darn thing and got a GT640 instead.

Again, I stuck with y'all suggestion on uninstalling the existing drivers and then booting in safe mode, using driver sweeper and then replacing the old with the new card into the PCI-E.

So far so great with the new one. I'm very much ready to check out the difference in performance. Again, could've not done so without your help.

If you guys need me in the future, as thanks, just let me know. Ping me at my email angelotrinidad@gmail.com. Kudos!

[Vezina]

Too bad the conversion to ATI/AMD wasn t smooth for you
Enjoy your new video card though !
If in trouble we are here.