Video Card Upgrade Install Guide
Video Card Reference Drivers
Reference video card drivers. This is optional since any retail boxed video card will come with drivers on a CD-ROM that should work just fine. But it's widely practiced to use the reference drivers and that's what I do.
The latest ATI reference drivers (referred to as CATALYST drivers) can be downloaded from directly from ATI. Once there, find the right drivers by first clicking on "Download Drivers". Then select your operating system in the first selection window ("Windows 98" in my case), then select "Graphic Driver" in the second selection windows, and then select "RADEON Family" in the third selection window. Since I have the "All In Wonder" version of the card, I'll include WDM Capture in my download as well as the Display Driver and the Control Panel.
The latest NVIDIA reference drivers can be downloaded directly from NVIDIA. Once there, find the right drivers by first clicking on "Download Drivers". Then select "Graphics Driver" in the first selection window, "GeForce and TNT2" in the second selection window, and your operating system in the third selection window.
It's fine to retrieve additional, prior versions of the reference drivers in case the first one does not work out, meaning it won't install without errors or it doesn't pass muster when the tests are run. It's also true that some people enjoy trying different versions of the reference video drivers and comparing how well each one does against the Futuremark benchmark programs.
The CATALYST driver I retrieved is CATALYST 3.9. It consists of three files totaling over 25MB in size. The files are the WDM capture driver, the video card driver and the Control Panel. Again, make sure you retrieve the drivers corresponding to your operating system. For now, the three files can just be saved onto the computer. They will be used later during the installation process..
Driver Uninstaller. This utility ensures that the driver for the existing video card is completely removed. If the video card being removed from the computer is NVIDIA based then use Driver Cleaner. If the video card being removed from the computer is ATI based then user CATALYST Uninstaller. Download the file containing the appropriate utility, but do not execute it at this time. It will be executed later. The download for DriverCleaner is a "zip" file. If the video card being removed from the computer is NVIDIA based then double-click on it now to decompress the contents and extract the files within, one of which is named "Readme.txt". This file contains the step-by-step instructions for using DriverCleaner. These steps will be done later.
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