updating my graphics card (I think!)

WOOF! That's a lot of dough for a soon to be 2 generation old card, but if you're stuck with AGP, there isn't a lot of choices and they do seem to be charging a premium. Before I upgraded my mobo, I was considering an ATI x1950Pro (actually bought one, but I had artifacting issues, and returned it). They seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth though.

Just got a nice MSI GeForce 8800GT (factory OC'd to 660 Mhz) for $200, but that's a PCI-E card (and, of course, I had to upgrade the mobo, processor and memory to go from AGP to PCI-E).

The interesting thing about the 7950GT card I bought is that 8800 series is faster and only by 10% for most applications. 7950GT is faster than the 8600 series and runs Direct X 9. No mother board modifications necessary. The stated price included tax and shipping. The GPU cost is $275.99. I paid premium because AGP cards are getting harder to find. 7950GT is a highest end nVidia card that I could find for my old computer. This is enough improvement for me because this card is twice as fast as the 6800LE it replaces.

Damn the polys full details ahead.:hehe:
 
I was also told that the 7950 is one of the top choices for AGP. I'm not seeing any Nvidia's in the 8000's for AGP.
 
when you have restarted the computer, it will open the 'found new hardware wizard'.
XP2FoundNewHardwareNo.jpg


Click on cancel. If it will not cancel, then just install the new driver anyway. When you restart after installing the driver, this should go away.
 
For NVidia cards, there is a very useful and free download utility called "Rivatuner", found at Guru3D.com.

It tells you much about your drivers.

Maybe it works on ATI cards, too I dunno.
 
dxdiag gives you driver information as well.

To run it, go to start -> run and type in dxdiag, exactly as written. Then go to the display tab, and once it has collected info, you should see the driver version in the box on the right. The newest version of the driver for your card is 6.14.0011.6921(english).
 
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