Below is a somewhat convoluted sequence of events; please let me know if any of you have any ideas or if you need any clarification:
Last Christmas I bought an HP desktop with an i7 processor and 8GB of RAM, running Windows 8. The system included an unbranded ATI Radeon HD 7670 graphics card, which should be more than enough for my limited gaming needs, but it doesn't have a fan control unit (somehow) and will overheat and shut down my system when taxed even the tiniest bit.
I'm now trying to swap this card out for the HIS Radeon HD 6670, which I had in my old machine. Unfortunately, I'm getting some weird issues. First I tried to do a plain-Jane swap, without touching any existing drivers. When I did that and powered on, my monitor was reporting no input through the HDMI cable. In a panic, I decided to try connecting my DVI cable as well (same monitor), and for some reason, that allowed me to see a black screen. When I switched back to HDMI the black screen was suddenly available there as well. I could move a mouse cursor around the black screen, and it would disappear after a couple seconds if I stopped. Unfortunately, that was all that I could do. No Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Alt+Tab or Esc or F10 could save me.
I power-cycled a couple of times and kept getting the same black screen with a movable mouse cursor. There was no Windows startup sequence. Still no Ctrl+Alt+Delete. I couldn't get the BIOS menu to come up and the recovery DVD wasn't working. Heartbroken, I pulled the 6670 and threw the 7670 back in.
On the first startup with the 7670 reinstalled, the HP/Windows loading screen froze. I power-cycled, horrified that something had gone horribly wrong. Thankfully, the second startup went flawlessly, and I booted into Windows without a scratch. This time I decided I'd need to kill the drivers, especially since they were for a similar card and they were contaminated with HP's strange proprietary fingers. I created a Restore Point and rebooted in Safe Mode with Base Graphics, then used Driver Fusion to fully eradicate all the 7670 driver files it could find. I then restarted once more with the same card to make sure that everything was going okay. I re-checked the drivers and found that the Catalyst Manager and some other non-dll, which I had deleted the first time around, had magically re-appeared. I wasn't too worried about those things, so I re-deleted them and shut my computer down.
I swapped the 6670 back in, hoping for some magic. My monitor didn't detect any input from HDMI again, so I plugged in DVI. Still no luck. I power-cycled and got the same response. No input. Not even a lousy black screen.
I pulled the 6670 and threw it back into my old computer to see if it was still working. I flipped the switch and... here I am, on CNet. My old rig is running just as well (and slowly) as it was before, with zero issues on the 6670, with Vista giving it a 5.7 Windows Experience rating on gaming performance.
Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. What can I do to make my 6670 work in my new machine? I'm worried that there might be conflicts because HP has forced me to use their own drivers for the 7670 that came with it, instead of drivers directly from AMD. But I'm not sure if it could be something else, or what I could do.
Last Christmas I bought an HP desktop with an i7 processor and 8GB of RAM, running Windows 8. The system included an unbranded ATI Radeon HD 7670 graphics card, which should be more than enough for my limited gaming needs, but it doesn't have a fan control unit (somehow) and will overheat and shut down my system when taxed even the tiniest bit.
I'm now trying to swap this card out for the HIS Radeon HD 6670, which I had in my old machine. Unfortunately, I'm getting some weird issues. First I tried to do a plain-Jane swap, without touching any existing drivers. When I did that and powered on, my monitor was reporting no input through the HDMI cable. In a panic, I decided to try connecting my DVI cable as well (same monitor), and for some reason, that allowed me to see a black screen. When I switched back to HDMI the black screen was suddenly available there as well. I could move a mouse cursor around the black screen, and it would disappear after a couple seconds if I stopped. Unfortunately, that was all that I could do. No Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Alt+Tab or Esc or F10 could save me.
I power-cycled a couple of times and kept getting the same black screen with a movable mouse cursor. There was no Windows startup sequence. Still no Ctrl+Alt+Delete. I couldn't get the BIOS menu to come up and the recovery DVD wasn't working. Heartbroken, I pulled the 6670 and threw the 7670 back in.
On the first startup with the 7670 reinstalled, the HP/Windows loading screen froze. I power-cycled, horrified that something had gone horribly wrong. Thankfully, the second startup went flawlessly, and I booted into Windows without a scratch. This time I decided I'd need to kill the drivers, especially since they were for a similar card and they were contaminated with HP's strange proprietary fingers. I created a Restore Point and rebooted in Safe Mode with Base Graphics, then used Driver Fusion to fully eradicate all the 7670 driver files it could find. I then restarted once more with the same card to make sure that everything was going okay. I re-checked the drivers and found that the Catalyst Manager and some other non-dll, which I had deleted the first time around, had magically re-appeared. I wasn't too worried about those things, so I re-deleted them and shut my computer down.
I swapped the 6670 back in, hoping for some magic. My monitor didn't detect any input from HDMI again, so I plugged in DVI. Still no luck. I power-cycled and got the same response. No input. Not even a lousy black screen.
I pulled the 6670 and threw it back into my old computer to see if it was still working. I flipped the switch and... here I am, on CNet. My old rig is running just as well (and slowly) as it was before, with zero issues on the 6670, with Vista giving it a 5.7 Windows Experience rating on gaming performance.
Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. What can I do to make my 6670 work in my new machine? I'm worried that there might be conflicts because HP has forced me to use their own drivers for the 7670 that came with it, instead of drivers directly from AMD. But I'm not sure if it could be something else, or what I could do.
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