Gainward GeForce Series Instruction manual

Manual-v82-GW-Eng
GeForce Series
Quick Start Manual
Version 8.2a - April/2013
Copyrights and Liabilities
The information contained in this manual has been validated at the time of publication. The manufacturer reserves the right to
make any changes and improvements to the products described in this manual at any time and without prior notice. Consequently,
the manufacturer assumes no liability for damages incurred directly or indirectly from errors, omissions or discrepancies between
the product and the manual.
All registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction of this document in any form is permitted without the prior written
authorization from the manufacturer.
Trademark
All products and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
M-GW18

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THE QUICK START MANUAL
3
About The Gainward Utility DISC
3
An Important Installation Note
3
If Your Product Needs Service
3
INSTALLING YOUR NEW GAINWARD DISPLAY ADAPTER
4
Step 1: Install the New Graphics Hardware
4
Step 2: Connecting Display Devices
8
Step 3: Software Installation
10
ABOUT DirectX
11
USING EXPERTool™
12
TROUBLESHOOTING
24
TECHNICAL REFERENCE
25
Graphics Modes and Refresh Rates
25
Connector Description
26
PRODUCT CERTIFICATION STATEMENTS
28
FCC Notice
28
CSA Notice
28
CE Notice
28

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ABOUT THE QUICK START MANUAL
This manual is designed to assist a computer novice as well as an experienced computer user through an easy
and uncomplicated installation of a Gainward graphics product.
Should you need a manual in a language other than English, soft copies are available in different languages in
PDF file format on your Gainward UTILITY DISC.
To do this, insert the Gainward UTILITY DISC, click on “Browse this CD”, select the “MANUAL” folder, then the
“VGA” folder and click on the file of your language, i.e. “ENGLISH”. This will open your Acrobat Reader and
display the manual.
About The Gainward UTILITY DISC
All Gainward products ship with a CD-ROM, which contains the latest drivers for your particular product. For
updated information about a specific product that may not be included in this manual, please see the
README.TXT file in the root directory on your Gainward UTILITY DISC.
An Important Installation Note
Your new Gainward display adapter is designed to work in a PCI Express bus slot in a computer with any Intel
Pentium or compatible processor (AMD, Cyrix, VIA, etc.). It will NOT operate in a PowerPC, Macintosh system or
in a PCI bus slot.
If Your Product Needs Service
If your Gainward product is defective, please contact your reseller.
Please visit www.gainward.com for more information

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INSTALLING YOUR NEW GAINWARD DISPLAY ADAPTER
If you are installing a Gainward display adapter with an extra power connector, please make
sure that your PC meets the following hardware requirements:
Your PC must have a power supply unit (PSU) of at least 400 W (please reference the
information on the packaging material of your products for more detail).
A PCI Express compliant motherboard is required.
A vacant slot adjacent to the PCI Express x16 slot may be required. This product series may
occupy two slots in your PC. Phantom series need 3 slots space.
One or two 6-pin PCI Express power connectors (or one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI Express power
connectors) are required. Some Gainward products may include a complementary power cable
to connect the display adapter card with your PC’s power supply.
We went to great lengths to ensure the installation process for any Gainward graphics adapter is as easy as
possible. There are three major tasks you need to complete so that you can fully enjoy your new Gainward display
adapter: prepare your system, install the new display adapter, and install the display drivers and utilities. These
three steps will be discussed in full detail below:
Step 1: Install the New Graphics Hardware
1.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN INSTALLING ANY
HARDWARE DISCONNECT YOUR AC POWER
CORD FROM YOUR PC! WE HIGHLY
RECOMMEND THAT YOU ALSO DISCONNECT
OTHER PERIPHERALS (i.e. printers, Monitor, etc)
FROM YOUR PC
Remove the necessary screws from the PC’s case,
and remove its cover. Consult your PCs manual to
help you do this.

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2.
Touch the metal case of your PC’s power supply to
ground yourself. This will discharge all static
electricity. It is very important to do this, because
electronic components such as those inside your
computer are very sensitive, and can be destroyed
by an electric discharge.
3.
Remove the screw on the mounting bracket of your
old VGA display adapter card.
4.
Remove your old VGA display adapter card by
pulling it gently, in a straight, upward manner.

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5.
Remove your new Gainward display adapter from
the anti static bag. If your Gainward card has a fan,
please make sure not to touch it!
Touch the metal case of your PC’s power supply
again to ground yourself. This will discharge all static
electricity.
Insert the new Gainward card in the appropriate PCI
Express x16 slot, making sure that it is firmly seated.
Be gentle when pushing it straight into the slot. Do
not use brute force! Do not bend or flex the card.
6.
Re-attach the screw on the mounting bracket of your
Gainward card. This is very important, as when the
monitor cable is attached later, the display adapter
card may work loose, and your computer will not
operate correctly.
Skip to step 8 if the Gainward display adapter
has no extra power connector!
7.
Connect the female connector of 6-pin (or 8-pin)
PCI Express power cable from your computer’s
power supply to the power connector on the back
of the graphics card. (Or, connect the female
connector of the supplementary power cable to
the power connector on the back of the graphics
card. Then, attach those two male connectors on
the cable to matching connectors from your
computer’s power supply.) The display adapters
will not operate without the additional power
source.

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8.
Replace the cover on your PC, and tighten its
screws.
Connect the monitor cable to your new Gainward
display adapter card. Reconnect the AC power cord
to your PC.
The hardware installation is now complete.
for 4-pin HDD power(from PSU)*2 to 6-pin
or
for 6-pin(from PSU)*2 to 8-pin
(Supplementary power cable)

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Step 2: Connecting display devices
Your new Gainward display adapter supports several display devices. The following figures show the connectors
for all display devices you can connect to:
VGA connector
Connecting CRT monitor or LCD monitor with VGA connector
DVI connector
Connecting LCD monitor (DFP) with a digital connector
HDMI connector
Connecting HDMI display device
DVI-VGA converter
Converting DVI-I to support VGA connector
HDMI
DVI-I
VGA

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Your new Gainward display adapter provides dual display functionality. The following table lists the different ways
you can connect displays to your card.
Display configurations
Connector
Note
Single CRT monitor or LCD monitor with
VGA connector
VGA connector
Single CRT monitor or LCD monitor with
VGA connector
DVI-I connector with DVI-VGA converter
Single LCD monitor (DVI port)
DVI-I connector
CRT monitor + LCD monitor (DVI port)
VGA connector + DVI-I connector
HDMI display device + LCD monitor (DVI
port)
HDMI connector + DVI-I connector
Note #1
HDMI display device + LCD monitor with
VGA connector
HDMI connector + VGA connector
Note #1
Note #1
To proper use the HDMI display device you just connect the HDMI cable (it will come with your HDMI display
device) to the HDMI connector of the Gainward HDMI display adapter.

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Step 3: Software Installation
Note:
To make sure the system reliability we strongly recommend you to remove the old display driver that system had
installed for the old display adapter.
1. Turn your computer and monitor on and boot the operating system. The operating system (Windows
7/Vista/XP) will attempt to detect your new Gainward display adapter, and then try to install the drivers that it
can find. Since these drivers are usually much older, and very generic, you will not be able to benefit from
many of the adapter’s advanced features and enhanced performance.
2. Insert the Gainward DRIVER & UTILITY DISC. This CD-ROM has an auto-start feature. The installation
software will detect the version of your operating system and it will then install all necessary drivers and utility
programs. Just sit back and relax as the software installation may take a few moments.

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3. During the process of installation, you will be asked if you would like to install utilities such as EXPERTool™
and DirectX. It is highly recommended to install both. This will allow you to take full advantage of all advanced
features that come with your new Gainward display adapter
4. When the installation process is completed, you will be asked to reboot your computer.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed your Gainward display adapter!
ABOUT DirectX
The Gainward DRIVER & UTILITY DISC includes Microsoft's DirectX. This is a set of APIs that make games and
multimedia applications run faster on Windows based computers. DirectX is a thin software layer that provides
direct access to hardware services. This technology takes full advantage of available hardware accelerators and
emulates accelerator services when accelerators are not present. DirectX components include: DirectDraw
(provides 2-D graphics services), Direct3D (provides 3-D graphics services), DirectSound (provides
sound-mixing and playback services), DirectPlay (provides multiplayer game connectivity over the Internet), and
DirectInput (provides services for joysticks and other input devices).
Gainward has included the most recent version of DirectX on the Gainward DRIVER & UTILITY DISC. You may
choose to install DirectX automatically during initial display driver installation (recommended), or at any later time.
From time to time, Microsoft will update DirectX and other software components. Choose “Windows Update” from
the “Start” menu. This will connect you directly with Microsoft’s update web site on the Internet and make all
necessary updates available to you, by analyzing which software is already installed on your system.

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USING EXPERTool™
What is EXPERTool™?
EXPERTool™ is an utility program for the graphics card under Windows, and provides you to boost performance
of the graphics card and to monitor the GPU information, which will only function correctly in conjunction with your
new Gainward display adapter.
Most likely, you chose to install EXPERTool™ during our initial display driver installation process. In this case the
EXPERTool™ icon is located in the “System Tray” of your Windows’ task bar (in the lower right-hand corner of
your Windows desktop).
If you have not yet installed EXPERTool™, you can do so now by running our Gainward DRIVER &
UTILITY DISC
To launch EXPERTool™, simply click on the small ‘X” – icon in the System Tray, and a pop-up menu (UI) will
appear on your screen.

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EXPERTool UI shows the important information such as GPU clock speed, memory clock speed, fan duty cycle
and GPU temperature. And, a lot more features to provide advanced user more detail information for
over-clocking. The newer version is easier to understand and easier to use, everything you need is on one single,
well organized page!

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Main functions:
FAN DUTY Adjustment to adjust cooling fan speed
OVER-CLOCKING to adjust GPU core clock and memory clock
USER MODE for user to store the favorite mode for different application
BIOS Loading to store the BIOS of the graphics card
SETTING to change from the EXPERTool’s original setting by their requirement
STATUS to shows the current value of the graphics card
INFO (INFORMATION) to show the information of your graphics card
RESTORE to reset all the setting or adjustment to original setting
OTHERS

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FAN DUTY Adjustment
Users can adjust the fan’s speed of the graphics card by push the “ADJUST”button. If you try to lower the
temperature of the GPU while playing games, please draw the slider bar to higher “FAN DUTY”to increase fan
speed. Or, if you want to lower the fan speed to keep lower acoustic level, set fan to lower “FAN DUTY”to
decrease the fan speed.
For normal operation, please set back to “AUTO”fan control mode that will automatically adjust the fan’s speed to
keep the GPU temperature under safe level.
The GPU temperature is shown in C(Celsius). Or, you can change it to show in F(Fahrenheit).
For any operation condition, please keep the GPU temperature under 90 degree C.

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OVER-CLOCKING
To adjust the core speed or memory speed of the
card, you need to push the “G”button and go into
over-clocking page.
In order to adjust the “Graphics clock”, Memory
clock”, “Core Voltage”, “Power Limit”and “Frame
Rate Target”, please draw the slider bars to
over-clocking the board.
You can change both the core clock and/or the
memory clock settings independently. The higher
the clock settings, the faster your graphics card will
work. For the GTX 600 series, increase “Power
Limit”may increase the performance as well.
For GTX 700 series (and above), the “Power
Target”and “GPU Temperature Target”can be
adjusted separately by de-activate the “Linked”
button. Change the GPU Temperature Target to
higher value to allow GPU to be over-clocked easier.
Activate the “Prioritize”to allow GPU run slower to
keep the temperature not going too high in order to
get lower noise level.
Push “Overvoltage”button to allow manually
increase GPU’s voltage. Increasing the voltage, the GPU can be over-clocked easier and the temperature will go
higher as well.
Please note that increasing GPU voltage may damage the GPU and impact long term reliability!
Please note that not every board can be over-clocked too much, there will be different limitation to over-clocking.
You also can control “Frame Rate Target”. For example, set FPS target at 90 FPS (other than MAX) that the
graphics will not run top speed to save some power consumption and still have very good gaming quality.

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Notice: Do take care while doing over-clocking
Change the speed in small increments only, i.e. in increments of 5~10 MHz. Then check if your games are still
running correctly. If you start seeing abnormal frames on your screen, or your 3D graphics appear in a “broken”
fashion, you have exceeded the board’s capabilities, and you must revert to your previous setting.
USER MODE
“USER MODE”is used for user to preset up to 5 different modes for different operation condition. After carefully
adjusting the fan’s duty, core speed and memory speed, press “SAVE”button and then press one of those five
buttons to save one of your favorite modes.
To select the user mode, you just press the number of the mode you save. Save your favorite user mode.
Step-1 Adjust the settings
Step-2 Click "SAVE" button
Step-3 Choose user mode number (1~5) to save
BIOS LOADING
This function is for users to load the VGA bios and
save in the system for future usage.
Just press “BIOS”button to start:

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Then, system will ask you the file name to
save BIOS file.
You just enter the file name then system
start copying the BIOS to the file.
Please wait…
It will take within one minute to copy the BIOS file.

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SETTING
Users can make some change from the
EXPERTool’s original setting by their
requirement.
-Display the “current clock speed”
on the UI or “GPU base clock”(or
3D clock for 500 series)
-Load Expertool while Windows
startup or not
-Enable ToolTips

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STATUS
It shows the current value such as core clock
speed, memory clock speed, fan speed (duty
cycle), core voltage and others. Users can check
those values any time while running application
software.