Help! Can't install Gigabyte RX 550 on Win 8.1

[mrj_442]

I purchased a Gigablytre Radeon RX550 Gaming OC 2G card for my son's computer. It is a Lenovo H60-55, with the onboard AMD graphics. I purchased this because it looked like it would be a good upgrade to what he has. It has 12 gig of ram, and plays most of his games (Overwatch, League of Legends, etc.) pretty well. I ran into a problem installing it yesterday. I found out that apparently AMD does not support these cards on Win 8.1 (no, I will not go to Windows 10).
I tried the card, and sure enough, I got error messages saying that it could not install the software due to compatibility issues. I tried the newest drivers, and tried 17.4.4, but it would not recognize the card. I read through a lot of posts, including one that basically broke the install down to INF files, etc. I was having no luck. The device does not show up in device manager.
I tried setting the BIOS setting to PEG, and the system froze, so I went back to Auto, and tried to install 17.4.3. This time, I got a different error, one that tells me it is trying to detect the card, but it does not have the right driver:

"Your graphics card is not compatible with the current graphics driver. It is recommended that you continue using your existing driver as updating it can lead to unexpected errors. If you choose to update the driver, you must uninstall all incompatible graphics cards first."

I cancelled the setup. Got the same thing with the 17.4.4 driver. At least now if does recognize that there is a card in there. The only other graphics installed is the onboard setup. I can't stay with the card like it is, because the frames are really low. I currently am running the onboard graphcs with the card still in the slot, but no output.

My big question is, if this driver is not compatible, what driver would be? I had not installed the 17.4.3 driver yet, as it was still early in the process, so was it talking about what is already installed in the machine? Or is it talking about the new driver?

I would appreciate any help you can give on this, as I have worked on this for the last two evenings, and am getting pretty tired of fighting with it. I really don't want to send it back. I had originally posted in the Gigabyte forum, but got no response there.

Please help.

UPDATE: I have tried several other drivers and ways of installing this, with no luck. I know the card is working, because I hear it spool up. Back on onboard graphics. Getting really frustrated.

 

[mrj_442]

After several days of trying different solutions, posting questions on other forums, etc., my son suggested that we switch cards. I took him up on it. Unfortunately, I still was not able to get his machine fixed. The following is the answer I gave in the AMD forum, which I re-posted here due to the length.

"We found a solution, but it was not what we wanted. My son suggested that we switch cards, so that he would have one. I took the RX550 and put it in my machine, which has an AMD FX Black Edition processor, on an Asus M99 Evo board, and gave him my MSI GTX 650. I got the new card running in mine, although I am still working with some graphics settings, but ran into a problem when I tried to install it in his, the machine wouldn't boot. I had removed the drivers, then tried to boot up the machine with the card installed. No luck. I then switched the HDMI output to the onboard card, still nothing. I pulled the card out of the slot and got it to boot. I tried to boot it up again with a different nVidia card, a GT 520, but no luck there either. I pulled it and went back to the onboard settings. Either the machine did not like the nVidia cards (which I know at least one works, and the fans were spinning on both), or there is something wrong with the PDIe slot. (I did have a power connector hooked to the GTX 650). Looking at the device manager, I now only see one device listed, the Radeon HD card. It did have two, and at one point, when the AMD card was installed, it said there was a problem with this device...I thought it was just because it wasn't reading it. Now we are down to one.


If there is an idea as to why this would not boot, please let me know. I have heard of problems like this, but it may just be the slot. I can't move any further on this until I either find a solution or replace the board in the future."

It's pretty frustrating to go through all that, and find out that the board may be bad. If there are any suggestions as to what else I could check, it would be greatly appreciated.