Retrosmith

Just finished removing the old card. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. Maybe I still have some old ATI stuff lingering on the system and need a clean wipe? I'd rather not, but sometimes you have no choice.

Sorry for getting back so late. I had to be away for awhile. Luckily I was able to do a bit more troubleshooting in the process. I have not removed the ATI card yet, mainly because I haven't wanted to invest the 2 and a half hours it took me last time. But if I can't find any other solutions I'll definitely be doing that. As it is now, every reboot I have to reset the resolution and had to force, in the bios, to use the 680M, rather then the internal Video at one point as while it would recognize it was in, it didn't want to make it primary. I did have to reinstall the video drivers a second time, in order to get the pair of monitors to work at different resolution, and for awhile I thought the drivers weren't sticking after a reboot, but checking the version number let me confirm that they were in fact being used after either the 2nd or 3rd install of them. So just taking out the video card/heatsink would be fine heatwise? I wasn't sure if having the void there would be an issue. Thanks for the help and insight!

Thanks to the excellent guides all around and the teardown video, I recently (today) replaced my dual 6990 with a single 680M. I just got fed up with the stutter in older games (Skyrim) and the horrible driver support. Tonight I noticed that when I plug into my VGA monitor while it does detect it, I cannot actually use it. I choose extend desktop, as it's available, but when I do, after applying changes, it still says show on only monitor 1 (the attached display). The 680M has the latest drivers, modified of course, and the unlocked A05 BIOS. One of my ATIs is still in the right position, as I felt it would be better to leave the fan and heatsink there for now, even if it's not being used. Is the fact that the ATI is still in there the reason that it won't put up the second display? Is it trying to use it and failing for some reason? Edit: Using the Nvidia Control panel I can enable the second monitor, however it will only mirror, and only at the lesser resolution of the monitor (1680x1050) instead of 1920x1080. When I turn on only the external monitor (#2) it will run fine, as long as the attached display is not working. The external does have a max of 1680 for a resolution, so I can see why it's limiting when mirrored, but it didn't do this before I changed the video card. Thanks!