Will BFG 8800 GT OC work on Vista??

[ddemott]

I've been reading over the forums and I see some people have the same card I do... however I've tried to install it w/Vista and Vista says it isn't compatible. Is there something I'm missing? If it isn't compatible, do you know if BFG or NVidia will make it compatible. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks

[ScuzziOne]

Whoa... who or what is telling you it's not compatible?

I'm running BFG 8800 GT OC2s in a couple of Vista Ultimate machines without any problems. Can't believe it would be any different for the OC version since it's surely the same card simply running slightly lower clock frequencies.

Would think that all you need is the latest driver update from the nVidia website and you should be good to go...

[ddemott]

Actually no one told me it. I experienced it. I ended up buying all my parts thinking that all would be good. Last night I ended up loading up the operating system and it basically told me that the graphics card wasn't compatible w/Vista. That blew my mind. I was very surprised. If anyone out there could shed some light on this and help me get it going, it would be great. XP loaded up great so I know it works. I'm running a BFG 8800 GT OC on a ASUS Striker Extreme. Any ideas would be good to in how to resolve this problem.

Originally Posted by ScuzziOne

Whoa... who or what is telling you it's not compatible?

I'm running BFG 8800 GT OC2s in a couple of Vista Ultimate machines without any problems. Can't believe it would be any different for the OC version since it's surely the same card simply running slightly lower clock frequencies.

Would think that all you need is the latest driver update from the nVidia website and you should be good to go...

[SRTDodge05]

Did it say that before or after you installed the nvidia drivers?

[ddemott]

Actually this is a clean install off of an empty drive. So as I put in my DVD, it then spun up and started to install the OS. Keep in mind that the video card is already IN the system. One of my friends is suggesting that its probably failing due to the fact that the OS is NOT installed yet. Meaning this... the Vista DVD does not have any drivers for the BFG 8800 GT OC. ... and the scripts that are doing the installs are failing because it has nothing to install for the video card. He suggested that I get a more common card, do the OS install... get THAT in and then switch the video card and THEN install the new drivers.

Your thoughts?? Sound viable?

Originally Posted by SRTDodge05

Did it say that before or after you installed the nvidia drivers?

[ScuzziOne]

Gotta say: this is an odd sounding problem.

Both XP and Vista should default to using standard video modes which are generally natively supported by all video cards via some common programming interface that has been in place for quite some time. Thus, the standard VGA drivers that are included with both XP and Vista should be able to operate the board until such time as you get around to installing the nVidia based drivers.

Given your experience so far, I'm not sure what will happen if you install with another card and then try inserting the 8800GT. Perhaps if you install with another nVidia card and install a unified nVidia driver that also supports the 8800GT prior to the video swap, then at least the necessary driver will already be loaded for the system to find; however, my concern is that the OS will typically revert back to the standard VGA drivers on reboot with a newly installed video card until you log in... at which time the new hardware is detected and the driver configured. It's probably worth a try though.

What version of Windows Vista are you trying to install?

If it's an upgrade version, then you could also simply try doing an upgrade from your properly configured and running Windows XP install.

All in all, the behavior you are seeing is certainly strange... are you certain this is not simply a warning that can be ignored somehow to continue on with the installation? If the card is working properly, then I'd really think you shouldn't be having this problem.

Only thing that makes sense to me is that XP must be using a more common standard VGA mode such as VGA 640x480 while Vista might be using one of the newer standard VESA modes such as 800x600. It might then be possible to install under XP, but not Vista if the standard video mode required by vista is not supported. Problem is that the board you have should support the necessary modes. Perhaps you need a firmware upgrade from your board manufacturer to enable the necessary video mode on your particular card. This would be a problem on the manufacturers end, but they should be able to provide you with corrected firmware if this is the case. You could then use your XP install to upgrade the video cards firmware before moving on the a Vista install.

Would have to do some digging to figure out what video mode Vista is trying to use, but I really thought it would have been the same VGA mode as that used by Windows; however, if Vista is trying to use a different resolution, then perhaps there's a way to force it to use VGA? Anyone out there know more about this? I never had to worry about it since my BFG 8800GT OC2s installed in Vista without a problem. Again, perhaps the best thing to do is to present the problem to your video card manufacturer's tech support and see if there is a firmware update available to correct this problem.

[ddemott]

All good suggestions. I'll contact BFG to see 1) if this is common and 2) what to do to resolve the issue. It completely baffled me as well.

Originally Posted by ScuzziOne

Gotta say: this is an odd sounding problem.

Both XP and Vista should default to using standard video modes which are generally natively supported by all video cards via some common programming interface that has been in place for quite some time. Thus, the standard VGA drivers that are included with both XP and Vista should be able to operate the board until such time as you get around to installing the nVidia based drivers.

Given your experience so far, I'm not sure what will happen if you install with another card and then try inserting the 8800GT. Perhaps if you install with another nVidia card and install a unified nVidia driver that also supports the 8800GT prior to the video swap, then at least the necessary driver will already be loaded for the system to find; however, my concern is that the OS will typically revert back to the standard VGA drivers on reboot with a newly installed video card until you log in... at which time the new hardware is detected and the driver configured. It's probably worth a try though.

What version of Windows Vista are you trying to install?

If it's an upgrade version, then you could also simply try doing an upgrade from your properly configured and running Windows XP install.

All in all, the behavior you are seeing is certainly strange... are you certain this is not simply a warning that can be ignored somehow to continue on with the installation? If the card is working properly, then I'd really think you shouldn't be having this problem.

Only thing that makes sense to me is that XP must be using a more common standard VGA mode such as VGA 640x480 while Vista might be using one of the newer standard VESA modes such as 800x600. It might then be possible to install under XP, but not Vista if the standard video mode required by vista is not supported. Problem is that the board you have should support the necessary modes. Perhaps you need a firmware upgrade from your board manufacturer to enable the necessary video mode on your particular card. This would be a problem on the manufacturers end, but they should be able to provide you with corrected firmware if this is the case. You could then use your XP install to upgrade the video cards firmware before moving on the a Vista install.

Would have to do some digging to figure out what video mode Vista is trying to use, but I really thought it would have been the same VGA mode as that used by Windows; however, if Vista is trying to use a different resolution, then perhaps there's a way to force it to use VGA? Anyone out there know more about this? I never had to worry about it since my BFG 8800GT OC2s installed in Vista without a problem. Again, perhaps the best thing to do is to present the problem to your video card manufacturer's tech support and see if there is a firmware update available to correct this problem.

[ScuzziOne]

A couple other quick thoughts...

If your motherboard has on-board graphics, make sure you've got that disabled through jumpers and/or BIOS as necessary.

Either way, you could also try making sure that the motherboard BIOS is set to initialize PCI-E graphics adapters first and see if that makes any difference.

[ddemott]

FOUND IT! OMG! Thanks for the replies guys. You MAY want to write this one down. Apparently it wasn't my video card. What was going on was this... I guess the Vista installer didn't like the fact that I had 4 Gigs of RAM in my system. I found this purely by accident and then a friend of mine confirmed it. I first pulled out the video card and put a friend of mines card it. That was NOT it. Then I started playing w/the RAM configs. I have 4 slots so I was putting it in there, switching it to be here..etc. Reboot.. try.. reboot.. try.. etc. One time I rebooted and it worked! Never really dawned on me THAT time I only had 2 gigs in there. Then I came to work and one of the guys on the hardware team said.. oh yeah.. Vista's installer has an issue w/4 gigs. After I got it installed I put the other 2 gigs in and all is good. SO FYI!