Share mmmmna's profile
mmmmna
mmmmna's stats
- Review count1
- Helpfulness votes6
- First reviewJanuary 5, 2011
- Last reviewJanuary 5, 2011
- Featured reviews0
- Average rating3
Reviews comments
- Review comment count0
- Helpfulness votes0
- First review commentNone
- Last review commentNone
- Featured review comments0
Questions
- Question count0
- Helpfulness votes0
- First questionNone
- Last questionNone
- Featured questions0
- Answer count3
- Helpfulness votes0
- First answerJanuary 5, 2011
- Last answerJanuary 5, 2011
- Featured answers0
- Best answers0
mmmmna's Reviews
Power your gaming with this blazing-fast graphics card that features 1GB of DDR2 memory for amazing performance.How do you plan to accelerate your life? Get help to choose the right ATI graphics card.
Customer Rating
3
Software installation partly failed under W7HP64
on January 5, 2011
Posted by: mmmmna
Build or modify your own PC:Yes
Level of Expertise:Average
Primary reason for building/modifying PC:Gaming
Why this card?
I purchased this to replace a card which had a cooling fan that failed on a low end gaming box, as of today (eMachines T5246).
I purchased this to replace a card which had a cooling fan that failed on a low end gaming box, as of today (eMachines T5246).
Now, about this card...
Mechanically, the installation was quite routine.
Mechanically, the installation was quite routine.
Software installation on W7HP64, not so good.
As an administrator, I inserted the driver CD, it autoran, I selected to install.
The CD spun up to warp 9, and all looked ok, so I walked off. CD ran for about a minute.
After the CD halted, I returned to the PC to see an error message on the screen, something that looked like a W7 error dialog asking me to report a problem installing the software, did it install correctly. This step is not presented in the installation manual. I selected installed properly, but this was a guess since I had not seen the installation process.
After clearing dialogs and restarting, I checked the W7 device manager, it seems as though the necessary driver is installed properly and working correctly, so I began assuming all was fine.
The CD spun up to warp 9, and all looked ok, so I walked off. CD ran for about a minute.
After the CD halted, I returned to the PC to see an error message on the screen, something that looked like a W7 error dialog asking me to report a problem installing the software, did it install correctly. This step is not presented in the installation manual. I selected installed properly, but this was a guess since I had not seen the installation process.
After clearing dialogs and restarting, I checked the W7 device manager, it seems as though the necessary driver is installed properly and working correctly, so I began assuming all was fine.
Oh wait. Hold on... Being that this is an ATI card, I had expected the Catalyst Control Center to be installed along with the driver, but this is not the case for my install - Catalyst Control Center is not found as installed software on the W7 system and appears to be missing from the autorun options on the CD.
After searching the CD, the August 2009 version 9.8 of Catalyst Control Center installer IS included on the CD, so the autorun installation process failed to install it (if the autorun was ever supposed to install it).
Wondering why, I searched the CD for installation details. After reading the Catalyst 9.8 PDF manual which I found on the CD, I see that Microsoft .Net Framework v2.0 is required to be installed for Catalyst to launch; this software requirement is not spelled out on the product box, nor is this requirement listed in the paper install brochures included in the box.
Therefore, the software installation process leaves a bit to be desired.
Is it difficult to get these items installed? No, not when you can get online after troubleshooting this yourself as I did, but when XFX doesn't mention the .NET requirements in the printed installation documents, many users will get tripped up.
Without the Catalyst Control Center, many features of the card are not activated, so you get minimal functionality when the missing .NET framework causes the Catalyst Control Center to not be installed.
What's great about it: No cooling fan motor bearings to ever fail, transferable lifetime warranty if registered properly.
What's not so great: Software rqmts not fully stated on box, mandates a 300W power supply but no power connections on card.
I would recommend this to a friend!
Other Best Buy Products I Recommend
Thermaltake - TR2 430W ATX 12V V2.2 Power Supply - Black
(485)Features
4
Share this review:
+6points
6of 6voted this as helpful.
mmmmna's Review Comments
mmmmna has not submitted comments on any reviews.
mmmmna's Questions
mmmmna has not submitted any questions.
mmmmna's Answers
Any idea when, or if, BB will cary the new AMD 68xx series cards?
Header says it all. I'd like to get one, or at least have the option to get it locally. However, all I see are new NV products, some of them so antiquated that they aren't even in production any more.
Today.
Products from my answer
Visiontek - Radeon 6870 Graphic Card - 1 GB GDDR5 SDRAM - PCI Express x16
15 years, 5 months ago
by
mmmmna
Upgrade card on an Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5015?
Need to upgrade to a more powerful video card any suggestions?
Most laptops cannot be upgraded, is this laptop upgradeable?
15 years, 5 months ago
by
mmmmna
whats compatibility to a 16mb diamond viper 550 tnt agp video card
That card is quite old, so any AGP card out there COULD be a candidate since todays cards will be 128 megs or more. Beware - a problem could arise when any replacement card needs a certain OS version or a certain CPU or system RAM, and so forth. I've included a BB selection, but you provided no hardware details - the details about compatibility are yours to research.
Products from my answer
EVGA - GeForce 6200 Graphic Card - 300 MHz Core - 512 MB GDDR2 SDRAM - AGP 8x
15 years, 5 months ago
by
mmmmna