when did mb start supporting only ati or nvidia cards

[bujeezus]

i've been a diehard nvidia fan for years until recently. i picked up a 3870 because it was the fastest supported card on my old 4core dual sataII board an have been impressed with the bang for buck. after transitioning to my new board however, holy hell broke out an now my system will not install the ati drivers. locks up at the ati splash screen whether i try an install from the cd, hdd or even ati's website. the board features a pci-e 2.0 slot, but my documentation shows no nvidia support. any reason why that is? i tho't a pci-e slot was a pci-e slot. after all the headaches i've had with this new mb an my 3870, i'm ready to jump ship back to nvidia, but do i have that option? i suppose the best solution would be to figure out what the deal is with the ati card, but i never had issues like this with nvidia. i've always had success in the past with plug an pray when upgrading to new motherboards, but maybe a os reinstall is in order this time around?

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: bujeezus
i've been a diehard nvidia fan for years until recently. i picked up a 3870 because it was the fastest supported card on my old 4core dual sataII board an have been impressed with the bang for buck. after transitioning to my new board however, holy hell broke out an now my system will not install the ati drivers. locks up at the ati splash screen whether i try an install from the cd, hdd or even ati's website. the board features a pci-e 2.0 slot, but my documentation shows no nvidia support. any reason why that is? i tho't a pci-e slot was a pci-e slot. after all the headaches i've had with this new mb an my 3870, i'm ready to jump ship back to nvidia, but do i have that option? i suppose the best solution would be to figure out what the deal is with the ati card, but i never had issues like this with nvidia. i've always had success in the past with plug an pray when upgrading to new motherboards, but maybe a os reinstall is in order this time around?

The manual is making reference to supporting Crossfire, and not SLI. You can use a single Nvidia card just fine.

Try different drivers with your 3870.

 

[bujeezus]

turns out my os hdd shit the bed. dropped in a different hdd an reinstalled an it's purrin, actually it's whinin. it's a 10 year old wd caviar. got a new wd comin in to replace it.