I changed my video card... GT 710 inside... (long story)

[LePresident]

Hi everybody !

Yesterday, I played ET and after that, I played Age of Empires III.
I was playing for about 3 hours when a smell appeared, a burning smell
I quitted the game, the GeForce 8500 GT was at 74 °C.
I forced the fan to full speed, and 30 seconds later, the temp of the GPU was 64 °C, and no more burning smell.
I definitively don't want to play with a video card that could fire, literaly !
So today, I bought a new video card : exit 8500 GT, welcome GT 710.

But the install was a pain in the ass...
I tried to boot on HDMI, but... no boot, black screen, nothing, the HDD doesn't start, the BIOS doesn't even display anything !
OK, let's try the good old VGA style... but... wait... VGA ?
It's not supposed to have VGA : on the box, it's written D-Sub, not VGA ! Oh, anyway...
Ah, VGA was the good option, now I can boot
And I can boot in a... 800x600 resolution
So now, we need to change the resolution, and... 1280x1024 is the max ???

OK, seems pretty clear it's time to install a driver, right ?
Oh crap ! The box says 300 Mb available on the HDD...
But the install software says something about 3.7 Gb !!!

Good, now the install process is launched, and...
Oh my god ! it tooks 20 minutes to install it ! and the MSI install software is so slow, so heavy, even Windows is lagging
And now I need to reboot !
But the driver is installed, right ? or almost... So let's try another HDMI-style boot.

Naaah, it works : HDMI boot, full HD resolution, everything is fine...
But of course, an update is available and needed...
Ok, so download and install... 32 minutes ! Come on !
And after that, another reboot is needed ! COME ON !!!

Woah, that was really painful, but finally, it works !
It took almost one hour to install the driver and update it.
Now it's time to test it...
I tried the UserBenchmark software, the GT 710 is something like 4 times faster than the 8500 GT

And of course, I tried with ET...
Too bad I didn't checked the FPS with the old card...
But here is what I've got now :

MSI nVidia GeForce GT 710
RAM 2 Gb DDR3
--------------------------------
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory
--------------------------------
Minimum 60 FPS
Maximum 125 FPS
Average 100 FPS

A 100 FPS AVERAGE ???
NOW WE'RE TALKING !!!
I think I will re-install the 8500 one of these days, just to check the FPS with ET...

Well, this GT 710 is a 42 € video card, and even if it was a hard-time struggle-install, it was worth to change !
It's a new world, really ! It provide a smooth, fluid gaming experience, just perfect.

OK Folks, that's it for today, daytime story over