System spec:
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MB: GA-H57M-USB3 rev 1.0 Bios F4
CPU: Intel i3-530, 2.93GHz, Dual Core, on-chip GPU
Memory: G.Skill 4GB (2x2GG) DDR3 1600 GSK F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
Graphics card: MSI 9600GT-MD1G, 1GB, PCI Express x16 2.0
RAID0 Hard drive array: 2ea. Western Digital RE3 320GB 7200rpm SATA 3.0GB/s WD3202ABYS
PSU: ANTEC BP430 430W
OS: Window 7 pro 64-bit on 60GB partition
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Hello everyone,
Orignially I had put this system together without a graphic card, using only the on-board GPU. This worked great. However, lately we've been playing more games on this machine and the on-board graphics performance could be improved. So I had this MSI 9600GT graphics card and gave it a try.
After installing the card, I managed to install the NVIDIA drivers okay. However with the NVIDIA drivers loaded, the machine cannot get past the "Windows Starting" screen. I have to boot in safe mode to do anything. I tried several drivers from both MSI and NVIDIA:
NVIDIA_190.62_Win7_Vista64
NVIDIA_258.96_Win7_Vista64
NVIDIA_191.07_Win7_Vista64
260.99_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit_english_whql
All of these drivers had the same result... hang up at the "Windows Starting" screen.
Here are some other things I tried.....
* Made sure the Intel VGA driver set was uninstalled. I also downloaded the latest set of drivers for the mother board and installed them.
* Verified the BIOS was set to use the GPU card instead of on-board GPU (see pg 49 of MB manual):
Init Display First: PEG
Onboard VGA: "Enable if no Ext PEG"
Note that I did NOT flash the BIOS since as far as I could tell, none of the later versions had any fixes related to my problem.
I did some searching around on the internet, I discovered at the NVIDIA forums that other people were having similar problems. These people were blaming the NVIDIA driver files for what its worth.
THe machine is now back to its former self configured with the on-board GPU and the MSI card removed. Everything works fine again (except for game graphics...).
So now my question... What graphics card should I try next in this machine. I think I want to stay away from NVIDIA. Has anyone else put a GPU card in a machine similar to mine?
Thanks