What to do when switching between NVIDIA and AMD?

[Kain]

Sometimes, I get monitor distortion. I've noticed it only happens when the monitor wakes from a sleep or when the monitor "gets a new signal." By that I mean when the monitor goes from the Windows boot-up logo to the first screen in Windows. Turning off the monitor and then turning it back on fixes the issue. If the monitor is distorted upon waking up from a sleep (just the monitor not the computer), if I launch a game, the monitor will be fine with no distortion in the game and as well as when I quit the game. I guess this is because it is equivalent to turning the monitor off and then back on as it gets a fresh signal or something. However, just to see what would happen, I ran the monitor from the second DVI port on my graphics card for a while. This resulted in a different distortion (just rainbow colored dots on the screen versus like running 16 colors on DVI port 1) but the circumstances where the same (i.e. only when the monitor wakes from a sleep).

Due to this, I want to see if it is the monitor or the graphics card. I am currently running a NVIDIA graphics card and want to use my brother's AMD graphics card to test. Do I simply uninstall the NVIDIA drivers and install the AMD ones? Nothing else to do?

[dukenukemz]

just plug your monitor into a laptop or your brothers computer instead of switching GPU's to narrow out a monitor. If you do choose to do the GPU way. Uninstall the drivers via control panel > programs and features then navigate to C:\Nvidia\drivers\ and delete the 285.62 folder or whatever version it is.

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by dukenukemz

just plug your monitor into a laptop or your brothers computer instead of switching GPU's to narrow out a monitor. If you do choose to do the GPU way. Uninstall the drivers via control panel > programs and features then navigate to C:\Nvidia\drivers\ and delete the 285.62 folder or whatever version it is.

+1

I have switched between Nvidia and ATI before (see 560 review in signature below, I switched back and forth between the 470 and 5870). Just uninstall the drivers as you normally would (via control panel) then install the ATI drivers after you install the card.

[Kain]

Ok, thanks guys.

Just one quick question. Since I can play games for hours and everything is fine as long as the monitor stays on, I guess the graphics card is fine? Would you say so? But then how come I got a different style of distortion when I changed the DVI ports on the graphics card?

[Kain]

Originally Posted by Kain

Ok, thanks guys.

Just one quick question. Since I can play games for hours and everything is fine as long as the monitor stays on, I guess the graphics card is fine? Would you say so? But then how come I got a different style of distortion when I changed the DVI ports on the graphics card?

Any guesses on this?