"Upgrading" to a HD 7730. I need some help.

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gear999

gear999

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So, I found a Radeon HD 7730 for $60 and I am thinking of negotiating the price and getting it for my current, 7 year old Dell PC. As a temporary upgrade, of course. Anyway, I have some questions.

1. I have a GeForce 9500GT installed. Now, I obviously have Nvidia drivers installed. How is the driver uninstallation process supposed to go? Do I just uninstall it from the control panel? Is there a special type of software that safely wipes drivers?

2. Let's say I successfully uninstalled the Nvidia drivers. After that, without restarting my PC, do I go to AMD's website and get new drivers from there, install them, shut off my PC, take the 9500GT out, install the 7730 and then turn it back on? Or do I do it another way?

3. My PSU... is a no name 300W PSU made in China. It somehow still didn't fail on me, even under load. I have no clue what the 12V rails and corresponding amps of it are (don't even know if the rails are 12V). Will it run the 7730? Both cards don't require any power connectors so their TDPs must be low. Anyway, would my PSU run the 7730?

4. I see that the 7730 that I'm probably going to get is the 1 GB GDDR5 version. Would my crappy G33 mobo support it? It's still running DDR2 667MHz RAM.

5. Finally, I don't know if the 7730 is a PCI-e 2 or 3.0 card. My mobo probably has a 2.0 slot. In case the 7730 is a 3.0 card, would that change matters?

Sorry for the long read and thanks in advance :)
 
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caqde

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1. You shouldn't need anything special to uninstall the drivers. Some people seem to go to extremes to do this using a driver uninstaller but it shouldn't be necessary unless you run into some issues which is unlikely.

2. You could do that to get the drivers but install them after you install the new GPU.

3. The TDP of the AMD card is a bit lower than that of the 9500GT so they should be using about the same amount of power. Although I would recommend upgrading your PSU to a better tier for safety reasons. Cheap PSU's are more prone to being fire hazards when they go bad.

4. Your system memory has no effect on your GPU's personal memory.

5. Actually you have a 1.1 slot on your G33 based motherboard. It does matter but not by much. PCI-E 3.0 cards are backwards compatible and the speed difference is usually very small even between 1.0 and 3.0.
 
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gear999

gear999

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Sorry for the late reply.
Your answer was very helpful, but, I have one more question about the drivers. If I did what you told me to, would the 7730 work without drivers? Then would I download them, then restart?
 
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CrispyChips

CrispyChips

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Download the drivers before removing anything and save them on your desktop for easy access.
Remove the old Nvidia drivers through control panel and shut the PC down,take the old card out,install the new one and plug the monitor up to it then start the PC.

Now your resolution is going to be way low,something like 800x600. This is why you saved the new drivers on your desktop. Just start the installer process and let it go. Once done you'll have to restart again and that should be all there is to it.

EDIT: Lots of people,myself included, like to add another step.

Uninstall nvidia drivers through Control panel,restart to safe mode and run Display Driver Uninstaller to remove all the remnants of the old drivers. There's even an option in DDU to "Remove drivers and shut down(for installing new Graphics Cards)"

After that shuts the PC down,replace the old card and install the AMD drivers like explained above.
 
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gear999

gear999

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Ok, sounds reasonable to me but, do I really need third party software to remove everything?
Also, unfortunately, I have another question (oh, how little I know). The card is a used 7730 and I don't know if it's in working condition or not. I have yet to contact the seller. He says it has little game time on it and works well. Don't know if I can trust him at all. It's the internet after all. There are good people (like you guys) and some scammers. Can I trust the guy or not? Here's the link to the ad listing: http://www.kijiji.ca/v-computer-components/moncton/amd-radion-hd-7730-slim-1gb-graphics-card/603975210?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true

(Yes, it is to my knowledge that he spelled Radeon incorrectly, one of the reasons that I can't trust him as much)
 
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CrispyChips

CrispyChips

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You dont have to use the program to uninstall drivers,back in the day you did!

But if you have performance/stability problems,using DDU to clean up the left over bits will be one of the first things suggested.

As for the seller..i cant really tell.
The card looks lightly used(Clean edges on the fans from what i can tell) and It's a good price for the 7730,i cant find stronger on newegg for cheaper(even including rebates).
 
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