gufus said:
Hello, Paul!
I'm new to this, plug it in were? Btw, It only comes with a CD (drivers)
The black thing with the metal band, on the right hand end of the 7600GT
picture, is a Molex 1x4 disk drive power connector. You take a power
cable from the PC power supply, and plug it into the Molex 1x4.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7039/7600gt.gif
There are at least three power connector options on video cards. Some
used a floppy 1x4 power connector (which is slightly smaller in size).
Your AGP choice uses a Molex 1x4, which can handle a fair amount of
current without burning up. On newer cards, there are various PCI
Express power connectors, which carry +12V at respectable current levels,
to higher end video cards. Depending on how goofy the video card manufacturer
is, there is nothing stopping them from using a PCI Express power
connector, on one of their AGP cards. But for that point in time
(when a 7600GT AGP would be introduced), the Molex was a more popular
choice.
The installation steps for a new video card (minus a few details):
1) Uninstall old video card driver from Add/Remove.
Make sure you have the new driver package staged in a place that is
easy to find.
2) Do a shut down of Windows.
3) Turn off all power to the PC. To be absolutely sure, I unplug the
computer.
4) Remove faceplate screw. Install the card. There may be a "clip" that grabs
the "heel" of the card. The card may have a place where a "button" on the
clip can slide into place. The purpose of the clip, is to prevent the
non-faceplate end of the card from popping out of the slot.
Make sure you understand, how that clip holds the card in place. There
is nothing worse, than reaching down six months from now, squeezing
the clip, and not being able to get the video card out again. A
few minutes spent understanding how the clip holds the card, will
pay off later.
When the card is fully seated, make sure there is no "gold" showing on the contacts.
As proof the card is fully seated in the slot. The card should seat into
the socket, so that only a tiny bit of the contacts can be seen.
Install the faceplate screw. (On some computers, they have a fancy
screwless fastener to hold the card in place.)
Now, find a spare power cable on the ATX power supply, find a 1x4 disk
drive power connector, and plug it into the black 1x4 connector on the
end of the card. This power cable can supply more current, than some
of the contacts in the AGP slot, and is necessary for higher power cards.
Without the connector, a typical older video card might draw 30-35W through
the slot connector. For the 7600GT, it might use 48W, and the +12V rail might
be used as a source of power on the Molex. The +12V would be converted to
say 1.0V or so, for GPU core power or some other voltage for the memory chips.
5) You can power up the computer and try and set the BIOS to "AGP first" when
it comes to card priority. That might result in the BIOS screen appearing
on the 7600GT. Otherwise, the BIOS might still appear on the VGA connector
on the motherboard. You can try sorting this ahead of time (i.e. as step zero)
but maybe it won't allow you to do that until the AGP card is in place.
You can check the manual now, to see if there is a video card priority setting.
6) Boot into Windows. Windows will use a built-in VESA driver, if nothing else.
That is how Windows can draw on the screen, when "no" driver is installed.
Some of the more recent Windows OSes, may actually have an ATI or Nvidia driver
in place. Resolution at this point could be 640x480 or 800x600. Higher
resolutions become available, as the driver situation improves.
7) Install the new driver. If you use the CD that came with the video card,
it might automatically also install .NET, DirectX 9 or other auxiliary
packages. If you don't have the CD, you can generally figure out what's
missing, based on bogus error messages
8) I like to run some version of 3DMark, to prove the card is really installed
properly. If the benchmark errors out, then you can drop back and ask
some questions. The version I like (because it is a small download) is this one.
If the fan on the card is set to speed up when gaming, you might hear
the fan speed change. (I actually neutered this feature on my Nvidia
video card, because I hate when the fan runs at 100% - too loud.)
http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html
You can watch the video card temperature, with a program like GPUZ.
It keeps a chart of measurements, which you can examine when the benchmark is
finished. If the card reaches "boiling water" temperature, that's way too hot
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/
During this step, it also pays to watch the card, with the side off,
to make sure the fan is spinning. Sometimes, the fan "melts" because it
got stuck, and the GPU got so hot it melted the plastic. Before installing
the card, you can take a finger and verify the fan still turns.
If all goes well, you'll be able to use the Display control panel to set
the monitor to the native resolution of the monitor. For example, my
monitor is 1280x1024 pixels, and that is the resolution setting I use.
I could set the resolution to 1024x768, but lettering on the screen would
be slightly distorted. That's why I stay at native resolution. If you
have a high res monitor, you can again use the Display control panel,
to scale the size of fonts used. Mine is set to "Large Size 120DPI",
which makes lettering a bit bigger on the screen. Windows may ask for
the Windows installer CD, when you do that.
HTH,
Paul
