I installed the new nVidea GeForce 7600GT video card into my three and a half year old Dell XPS desktop without any significant problems.
If anyone reading this has installed cards into computers you know that there is always something that bites you during the process. For me, I had two minor issues. The first one had to do with pulling the four pin molex power connector out of the old ATI Radeon 9800 video card. It took me twenty minutes to get the damn thing out. I could not get it to budge using my fingers and could not move it with a pair of needle nose pliers. I finally resorted to a pair of full size pliers. This is something I would not have normally attempted but I was running out of patience.
The second issue had to do with seating the new card. When I looked at the new card before pulling the old card I noticed that there is an L shaped tab on the bottom of the card. I assumed, yea I know, that the shape of this tab meant that I needed to seat the card on the L shaped tab first then rock the card forward until the pins seated.
Using this knowledge, I removed the old card in reverse fashion. I rocked the card, and then pulled the card out like I was sliding the L shaped tab out of it's position. The card came out with no problems. When I began to put the new card in I could not get it to go in for the life of me. I ended up removing the neighboring SoundBlaster sound card and examined the alignment of the pins on the new card and the AGP slot using a flashlight. Surprisingly, it appeared that the card slipped into the slot just like any other card. So, I was just making a mountain out of a mole hill. I aligned the card, pressed down, and it went in like a champ.
If you read yesterday's entry, you will be wondering what happened with the AGP 4X or 8X controversy . It appears that my original ATI card was an ATI 4X AGP card and the new is in fact an 8X AGP card. Luckily, the AGP slot in my Dell accepted the card and it runs fine.
I have not performed any speed tests nor do I plan on doing any. I was never intending to run any games on this machine. (OK, I lied, I have Railroad Tycoon and Half-Life loaded on the machine, but I spend most of my time gaming on the XBox 360.) The two primary reasons I upgraded my video card was to be able to run two 24" wide screen monitors at 1920 x 1200 and to be able to watch 1080p HD video. I can do both with ease.
Now that I have a 3840 x 1200 desktop, I will need to setup my primary applications to take advantage of the new real estate. That means Outlook, Firefox, iTunes, and Remote Desktop running 1280 x 1024 on another machine. At this point I have upgraded the drivers to the latest drivers available from the nVidea web site and set up the multiple monitor setup so that I have individual desktop backgrounds on each monitor. I also only have the task bar showing on the left most monitor.
I will try and get some pictures loaded for all to see in the future.