Can't install Radeon HD7790 drivers

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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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So I just bought a Gigabyte AMD Radeon HD7790 GV-R779OC-2GD and installed it in my computer but I can't get the driver to install properly. My computer games (Sims 3 primarily) have very low FPS.

This is what I did:
I took out the old graphics card (ATI Radeon HD3650), installed the new card and drivers and the Sims 3 started to lag. I then realized I was supposed to uninstall the old drivers first so I put the old card back in, uninstalled the old drivers, shutdown, put the new card back in, reinstalled the new drivers but still didn't work.

During the new drivers installation I have received two different errors that say something like:
unhandled system thread exception atihdw86.sys and atihdwb6.sys and then the computer restarts. My understanding is these are audio drivers? So the graphics should still be fine? But if the install isn't finishing correctly because of this maybe this is causing the problem?

This is what I've tried:
Fresh install of Windows 8.1, still no luck.
Fresh install of Windows 7, still not working.
Tried the drivers from the Gigabyte website and the AMD website. I have tried many different versions of the drivers including the betas but still hasn't worked.
Uninstalling the old drivers repeatedly.
Uninstalling the old drivers in Safe Mode.

Every time I uninstall the old driver it appears in Device Manager again as 'Microsoft Basic Display Adapter' or 'Radeon HD 3200 series.' At various stages I have seen the 7790 in Device Manager, sometimes without the yellow question mark as if it's installed correctly and sometimes with the yellow question mark. It seems to me there is a conflict between drivers but I've done a fresh install of Windows three times. Pretty confused.

I have an Acer Aspire M5200 PC with the following specs:
Acer RS780HVF motherboard
AMD Phenom 9550 CPU
4GB DDR2 RAM
600W Thermaltake PSU

Thanks in advance.
 
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todd1780

todd1780

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Dec 29, 2012
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When you say fresh install, did you actually reformat your hard drive or did you reinstall the OS on top of your old install?
The first thing I do when installing a new video card is actually deleting all references to the video card in Device Manager. Then I uninstall the old drivers. That's when I pull the card out and replace it with the new one.
I'm curious to see if you done all of those things yet.
 
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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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I used my USB drive with Windows 8.1 on it to reinstall Windows. Should I format the partition instead and see if that works? I did try uninstalling and deleting the old graphics from the device manager before pulling the old card and inserting the new card but no luck.
 
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todd1780

todd1780

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Dec 29, 2012
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If you simply install the OS over the old installation it might retain the same problems you had before the reinstall. I would delete the partition then do a fresh format and reinstall. I never like recommending that to fix a problem, but it sounds like you have tried just about everything else.
 
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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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I deleted the partition and did a completely fresh install. I opened up device manager and the display adapters were the Radeon HD3200 and the Microsoft basic display adapter. I uninstalled both, installed the drivers from the Gigabyte CD but still no good. Installed the up-to-date drivers from the Gigabyte website, checked device manager again but still has the same two display adapters I listed above. For both installations of the Gigabyte HD7790 drivers there was the same BSOD and system thread exception not handled atihdw86.sys error. Now I'm convinced that this failure is causing the drivers to not be installed, just no idea how to stop this error from happening.

This guy had the same problem. How would I go about installing the graphics driver and not the problem audio one, the atihdw86.sys?
 
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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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Nope, I had the HD7790 in. This PC was shop bought, I didn't build it myself so is it possible that the motherboard is automatically configured to use HD3200 as default graphics driver? Because I have no idea how, when I do a fresh install with the HD7790 in, the drivers I find in device manager are the HD3200 ones. Why would it default to that?

The original driver for the 7790 allowed you to install just the graphic driver but they changed that a few months later and and the audio driver became mandatory.
Click to expand...

I managed to do a custom install and leaving out the HDMI audio driver let the installation run with no errors. Still didn't fix the problem though.
 
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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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So, bit of a breakthrough. I have realized that the motherboard has integrated graphics (yes I do feel like an idiot for not noticing this). I didn't realize as the computer also came with a PCI graphics card installed in it.

Anyway, I went into the BIOS and rearranged the priority for using video cards to have the PCI-E card at the top (there is no option to disable the integrated graphics, only lower its priority) so now I think the HD7790 is being used. I disabled the HD3200 integrated graphics, installed the newest drivers (again, without installing the HDMI audio driver) for the HD7790 from the Gigabyte website. Now the computer seems to be using the HD7790 but the screen is a green colour so not sure how to fix this. Must be something to do with the driver installation?
 
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PeterJRM

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Dec 28, 2013
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Annnnd it finally works! So the problem was as stated above, the integrated graphics was prioritized over the PCI-E slot so I rearranged that in the BIOS and it started to use the HD7790. The green colour of the screen was from. . . the VGA cable was loose at the back of the tower! Why is it always the simplest things? Anyway, thanks a lot for your help and input guys, much appreciated!!
 
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