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+--- Thread: Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? (/thread-246.html)
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - DeeBye - 12-25-2009
Every time I've swapped out videocards for something cross-vendor I always do it wrong. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me when it comes to switching them. Nvidia to Nvidia or Ati to Ati is pretty simple, but going from one to the other always makes me do something stupid and I end up smashing flowerpots and re-installing Windows to make the damn thing work.
I am going from a Nvidia 9600GT to a Ati 4890. Make this simple for me please.
Oh, and Merry Christmas!
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Taem - 12-25-2009
First thing I'd do is:
0) Update windows and set a Restore Point
note: You might want to backup your important files also incase of problems
1) Uninstall your old video card driver(s)
note: I know you can do this from Device Manager for sure, but I'm not 100% sure about from Add/Remove Programs
2) Remove your old video card
3) Install your new video card
4) Install drivers and set as default
5) Update video drivers
6) Update BIOS incase of conflicts
As far as I know, that should do the trick. If you already follow those steps and still have difficulty, I don't know what to tell you. Good luck and Merry Xmas.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - LavCat - 12-25-2009
Quote:I am going from a Nvidia 9600GT to a Ati 4890. Make this simple for me please.I use Drive Sweeper:
http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/
I wish someone could tell me why "Insert Link" does not work for me on this site, while it does work everywhere else I've tried it. Unfortunately flower pots are under a foot of snow and I expect I'd hurt my foot.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Lissa - 12-26-2009
Quote:Every time I've swapped out videocards for something cross-vendor I always do it wrong. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me when it comes to switching them. Nvidia to Nvidia or Ati to Ati is pretty simple, but going from one to the other always makes me do something stupid and I end up smashing flowerpots and re-installing Windows to make the damn thing work.
I am going from a Nvidia 9600GT to a Ati 4890. Make this simple for me please.
Oh, and Merry Christmas!
There are some tools out ther that will totally remove the drivers of a video card. You should be able to do a search from one of the serach engines and find them.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - LavCat - 12-27-2009
Quote:There are some tools out ther that will totally remove the drivers of a video card. You should be able to do a search from one of the serach engines and find them.That's what Drive Sweeper does.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - DeeBye - 12-27-2009
Thanks!
I have another question. I am currently running Windows XP 32-bit. I know that it can only address up to 4GB of total memory, and the 4890 I bought has 1GB RAM. I have 4GB of system RAM. Is it possible that I might be losing performance by adding this card? Would a 64-bit OS net me a noticeable performance boost?
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Lissa - 12-27-2009
Quote:Thanks!
I have another question. I am currently running Windows XP 32-bit. I know that it can only address up to 4GB of total memory, and the 4890 I bought has 1GB RAM. I have 4GB of system RAM. Is it possible that I might be losing performance by adding this card? Would a 64-bit OS net me a noticeable performance boost?
Video Memroy != System Memory. Two different animals and the OS does nothing with the Memory on a video card, that is the video card's perview.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - LavCat - 12-28-2009
Quote:Video Memroy != System Memory. Two different animals and the OS does nothing with the Memory on a video card, that is the video card's perview.All or a large part of that video memory is mapped into the system memory address space however. That's how PCI/PCIe devices communicate.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid&id=929605
"For example, if you have a video card that has 256 MB of onboard memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system."
On my 32-bit XP only a little more than half a gig of video card memory is mapped into the system address space. Why it all isn't I don't know. But half a gig is half a gig. A 64-bit OS would result in more available system memory, but whether that would result in "a noticeable performance boost" is another question.
I'm wondering if a 64-bit OS would map all of the video card memory into the system address space, and thereby potentially give more video performance? Maybe someone running 64-bit Windows could report? I have my Windows 7 disc, and I plan on installing 64-bit Windows 7. But I'm still waiting till I can afford a hard drive to put it on.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - DeeBye - 12-28-2009
Quote:On my 32-bit XP only a little more than half a gig of video card memory is mapped into the system address space. Why it all isn't I don't know. But half a gig is half a gig. A 64-bit OS would result in more available system memory, but whether that would result in "a noticeable performance boost" is another question.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I have 4GB RAM, but the 512MB RAM on my old 9600GT brings it down to 3.5GB of addressable RAM with a 32-bit OS. The new 7890 has 1GB of RAM, so it would potentially bring it down to 3GB. That slashes my RAM by 25%.
I don't think my RAM usage has ever climbed anywhere near 3GB, so I doubt I'll notice it.
I guess I'll update when the new card comes in.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Lissa - 12-29-2009
Quote:Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I have 4GB RAM, but the 512MB RAM on my old 9600GT brings it down to 3.5GB of addressable RAM with a 32-bit OS. The new 7890 has 1GB of RAM, so it would potentially bring it down to 3GB. That slashes my RAM by 25%.
I don't think my RAM usage has ever climbed anywhere near 3GB, so I doubt I'll notice it.
I guess I'll update when the new card comes in.
The mapping is being done by the BIOS. You can set the BIOS to not use the video memory as system memory, thus the reasoning behind Video Memory != System Memory. The AGP apeture (yes, I know it's PCI, but they didn't change the name of it) can be set to 0 which means the OS doesn't see the video memory, just the system memory while the video will still happily use it's own memory as needed.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - LavCat - 12-30-2009
Quote:The mapping is being done by the BIOS. You can set the BIOS to not use the video memory as system memory, thus the reasoning behind Video Memory != System Memory. The AGP apeture (yes, I know it's PCI, but they didn't change the name of it) can be set to 0 which means the OS doesn't see the video memory, just the system memory while the video will still happily use it's own memory as needed.The BIOS of my Asus M4A79T Deluxe has no such option, nor any other option that I can find for graphics card memory mapping. Everything I can find on the web (including a Datth blue Blizzard post, so we know it must be true) indicates the setting does not exist for PCIe. What motherboard are you using?
I don't claim to know a lot about AGP or PCIe but in another life I did design, program, and manufacture PCI cards for computer cameras.
(Datth has solved an intractable video problem for me, so in spite of my humor, I think he/she is probably correct.)
Also, at boot time I am almost certain the video card will look like a good old IBM standard Video Graphics [quote], so the BIOS does not need to know anything else about it.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Lissa - 12-30-2009
Quote:The BIOS of my Asus M4A79T Deluxe has no such option, nor any other option that I can find for graphics card memory mapping. Everything I can find on the web (including a Datth blue Blizzard post, so we know it must be true) indicates the setting does not exist for PCIe. What motherboard are you using?
I don't claim to know a lot about AGP or PCIe but in another life I did design, program, and manufacture PCI cards for computer cameras.
(Datth has solved an intractable video problem for me, so in spite of my humor, I think he/she is probably correct.)
Also, at boot time I am almost certain the video card will look like a good old IBM standard Video Graphics [quote], so the BIOS does not need to know anything else about it.
I have a N750 chipset motherboard from a few years back and it has a lot of tweaks and such that can be done.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - DeeBye - 12-31-2009
Quote:On my 32-bit XP only a little more than half a gig of video card memory is mapped into the system address space. Why it all isn't I don't know.
Well I just installed the new card and it shows the same thing.
![[Image: 63789615.png]](http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/6861/63789615.png)
I have 4GB of system RAM and the videocard has 1GB, but Windows shows 3.5GB. It is a mystery.
As a humorous sidenote, my 7 year old son saw me unpackage the HD4890 and said "Wow that is big! It's bigger than my foot! Not your foot though, because you have big feet."
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Kevin - 12-31-2009
Quote:Well I just installed the new card and it shows the same thing.
I have 4GB of system RAM and the videocard has 1GB, but Windows shows 3.5GB. It is a mystery.
As a humorous sidenote, my 7 year old son saw me unpackage the HD4890 and said "Wow that is big! It's bigger than my foot! Not your foot though, because you have big feet."
That's because that is all XP 32 bit can address if you had 8 gigs in there it would show 3.5
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Taem - 12-31-2009
Quote:Well I just installed the new card and it shows the same thing.
I have 4GB of system RAM and the videocard has 1GB, but Windows shows 3.5GB. It is a mystery.
As a humorous sidenote, my 7 year old son saw me unpackage the HD4890 and said "Wow that is big! It's bigger than my foot! Not your foot though, because you have big feet."
I'm pretty sure that's because Windows uses up 1-gig for itself and its paging file. Mine does that also and I have four gigs. Even with SLI and two PCI-video cards at 512 each, or one video card at 512, 1-gig is always in use by Windows. I'm pretty sure if I had no video card but the standard on the motherboard, Windows would still consume 1-gig of it.
Makes me wonder how computer with less than a gig of memory get by. I don't know enough about this myself to comment about that.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - Kevin - 12-31-2009
Quote:That's because that is all XP 32 bit can address if you had 8 gigs in there it would show 3.5
I need to clarify this a 32 bit OS can only address 4 GB of RAM because that's the biggest number you can fit in a 32 bit variable. There are of course ways to extend this, and modern AMD and Intel 32 bit processors let you do this, but since MS wants this OS to run on everything there was no good way to really allow it to work and keep all the applications from all the vendors and all the hardware from all the vendors working nicely.
The reason you only see 3.5 GB of memory even if you have 4+ GB installed is because of the 32 bit address space some of the bits are reserved for system functions like protected mode execution. So the ability to address more memory is lost. It was not video BIOS or video memory (unless you had onboard video that shares the physical memory) that was eating up that .5 GB, that was simply because you never see more than 3.5 GB in a 32-bit OS without fancy tricks.
Even macs and most distro's of linux would do this because of the CPU architecture and the fact that designing any other way adds a lot of complexity.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - LavCat - 01-01-2010
Quote:The reason you only see 3.5 GB of memory even if you have 4+ GB installed is because of the 32 bit address space some of the bits are reserved for system functions like protected mode execution.
Sounds fishy to me. Another wall of text please.
Upgrading a Nvidia card to a Ati card? - DeeBye - 01-01-2010
Quote:That's because that is all XP 32 bit can address if you had 8 gigs in there it would show 3.5
I know that 32-bit can only address 4GB. What I am wondering is why 32-bit XP sees my system RAM as 3.50GB when I have 1GB on the videocard. I was fully expecting it to only see 3GB.
When I had a 128MB videocard it saw my RAM as 3.87GB
When I had a 256MB videocard it saw my RAM as 3.75GB
When I had a 512MB videocard it saw my RAM as 3.50GB
With my 1GB videocard it sees my RAM as 3.50GB
None of this is a huge deal, because my computer is getting along quite swimmingly with my new videocard and gaming looks sweeter with better FPS. I am just curious, and I cannot find an answer.