Help! Sapphire HD3450 + Asus V7v880

[hornsby23]

Hello all, new to this board and new to W7, but I've got a problem I'm hoping someone can help me solve.

I've got a rather old system that I installed W7 on, and I only realized after the fact that my current graphics card-nvidia mx400 is wholly inadequate to run W7. I purchased the Sapphire HD 3450 to upgrade, but when I install it, I get nothing, my monitor stays blank with the amber signal. I tried unistalling the current drivers and the other intial steps, but at this point I'm stumped.

Am I doing something wrong, or is it that my system is too old/incompatible with the new card? I've read as many of the tutorials and threads as I can't figure it out. Any help is appreciated! TIA.

 

[theog]

Check your BIOS settings, Graphic card is enabled or disabled.

 

[stormy13]

hornsby23, welocme to the forums.

First thing that comes to mind is, did you remember to connect a molex connector (from the power supply) to the card?

 

[hornsby23]

Thank you both for your replies. I got it working, at first I had the BSOD, but after some tweaking it's running. For whatever reason, however, the driver won't install and I get a hanging black screen w/cursor upon start up or when I switch users.

Any ideas on why this is happenning?

Thanks!

 

[stormy13]

Have a good idea. It is probably due to the AGP/GART driver (part of the chipset), and going from a Nvidia card to an ATI one. Usually that driver needs to be re-installed when changing video cards, and done before installing the video card driver. One small problem, Via doesn't have a Windows 7 driver for your board (KT880 chipset). They do have a Vista one that should work,

VIA Drivers Download - VIA Technologies, Inc.

Work your way through the drop down menus and select the Hyperion 4 in 1 driver package. Make sure to uninstall the ATI driver before installing, then once the 4 in 1 is installed (it should install), then install the driver for the video card.

 

[hornsby23]

Thanks stormy, but it was a no go on that one. It still does not want to take the driver.

 

[stormy13]

You using the regular Catalyst Suite or the AGP Hotfix driver?
With an ATI AGP card from the HD 2xxx series and up you need to use this the hotfix driver,

Catalyst AGP Hotfix - Radeon HD 4000 Radeon HD 3000 and Radeon HD 2000 Series AGP products

as there is no support for the AGP versions of the cards in the regular driver package.

 

[hornsby23]

SOLVED: Help! Sapphire HD3450 + Asus V7v880 Reply to Thread

Just wated to say thanks for feedback and help. I got it to taken care of last night. I do have a little tweaking to do, like eliminating the 1" border around the desktop on my acer 213h (understand this has something to do with the desktops & displays configuration under the catalyst control center).

Again, thanks much!!