First time installing graphic card! Need help!!

[_kaos_]

Hi Guys!!
I will be (hopefully) getting my Sapphire hd 7750 today!
So I figured I should prep my system beforehand...
I thought about downloading the latest drivers from the internet (no other choice since my DVD drive is not working anyway :lol
My question being where should I download them from?
This will be my first graphic card so I'm confused!
Should I get them from Sapphire's website or should I get them from AMD's?
I did a quick search on both the websites and found that Sapphire's website has many individual downloads compared to AMD's
So which driver package should I get?
Will installing the catalyst software suite from AMD be enough?
What about the Media codec package available on Sapphire's website?
It's not available on AMD's driver download page!
So does that mean it is not needed?
Should I get the beta drivers for better performance? Are they stable enough?


Also my current system has 3 gigs of RAM and has Windows Ultimate 32-bit installed.
And the graphic card will have 1 GB GDDR5 RAM.
So will win7 32 bit OS be able to use 3+1 GB of RAM? What about 32 bit system RAM limit?
Do I need to install 64 bit Win7?
Or will windows 32 bit be able to utilise all the RAM?

Are there any other things I need to be careful while installing the card?

 

[bryonhowley]

I would get the latest stable drivers from AMD's website as they are usually more current that drivers from manufactures websites. You should be fine but if it were me I would upgrade to Windows 7 x64 and upgrade your ram to 8gig anyway. With the prices of ram now it is a good time to upgrade although it is not necessary.

 

[Spaniard United]

Also my current system has 3 gigs of RAM and has Windows Ultimate 32-bit installed.
And the graphic card will have 1 GB GDDR5 RAM.
So will win7 32 bit OS be able to use 3+1 GB of RAM? What about 32 bit system RAM limit?
Do I need to install 64 bit Win7?
Or will windows 32 bit be able to utilise all the RAM?

Are there any other things I need to be careful while installing the card?

You have 3 gigs of RAM and will only have 3 gigs, not 3+1. Video card RAM is not the same as system RAM. You won't have to worry about having more RAM than your system can utilize. Also unless you're using a starter edition, Windows can utilize up to 4 gigs of RAM in its 32 bit OS, so you could still stand to add another stick.

All that being said, I would agree with bryonhowley to upgrade your system further to 64 bit and 8 gigs of ram, if you can afford to do so.

 

[Sunius]

Don't install drivers before the card is sitting firmly inside your PC.

 

[_kaos_]

You have 3 gigs of RAM and will only have 3 gigs, not 3+1. Video card RAM is not the same as system RAM. You won't have to worry about having more RAM than your system can utilize. Also unless you're using a starter edition, Windows can utilize up to 4 gigs of RAM in its 32 bit OS, so you could still stand to add another stick.

All that being said, I would agree with bryonhowley to upgrade your system further to 64 bit and 8 gigs of ram, if you can afford to do so.

I did consider adding some more RAM, but decided against it.

Actually my motherboard D945GCNL officially supports only 2 GB!
But for some reason I can use 2+ GB of RAM!! 1*2GB + 1* 1GB DDR2 stick!
I have no idea if it can handle anymore RAM!
Anyway I will be upgrading the entire system in a few months...
I was on a tight budget so only bought the HD 7750 + Seasonic 520W psu so that I could at least play some decent games for the time being...

I received my graphic card this evening(already got the PSU yesterday). Installed it, updated the drivers!!
It's working fine!!
But even after having it's own 1GB dedicated GDDR5 RAM for some reason it's sharing the system memory up to 1GB!! I thought I would disable this shared memory so that I could have more memory for programs, but there is no such option in CCC. Even the DVMT setting in the BIOS seems to have mysteriously disappeared after I installed the card!!
Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?

 

[_kaos_]

Best answer selected by _kaos_.