Conflicting Video Cards?

[artushka24]

Hey guys, my friend bought a refurbished comp from Fry's Electronics. It's pretty nice except the video card. It has a Pentium D Dual core 3.0Ghz, 1GB Ram, 300GB Hard Drive, and an ATI 300x 128mb vid card. He found a cheap Nvidia GeForce 7300GT 512MB PCI-E 16X. The thing is ATI and Nvidia drivers don't mix. So if he installs the new card he doesn't want any problems. What I told him to do was uninstall Catalyst control center and ATI drivers, restart, and use Driver cleaner pro to remove hidden drivers, restart, then install the new card and dirivers. Any other suggestions or is that correct? Thanks

[Panama Red]

Sounds right to me. On the restart, just make sure not to let it reinstall the drivers for the ATI. Might even be best to boot to Safe mode to run Driver Cleaner.

[glc]

A 7300GT won't be much better than that X300. Tell him to save some more money and make the upgrade worthwhile.

[Kiwi]

Something that newbies have a hard time learning, and end up paying too much as a result, is that adding onboard RAM to a video card doesn't necessarily mean it's a better card than the same card with less RAM. Really.

A 7300, any 7300, is too slow for more than 256 MB onboard. An X1600 is too slow for it. The first time it makes sense is at the speed of an X850 XT-PE, or a GF 7800 GT. The "300" tells you it's a slow card, not exactly how slow, because an X1300 Pro is faster. Overall, if your friend has any interest in doing some gaming, any card with "300" in its name, until the new X1300 XT arrives, is too slow.

He wants a card with a 600 in its name for occasional game play, an 800 for regular gaming, and a 900 for a PC used for nothing but games.