Something I've often wondered is does 60hz look as good on a 120/144hz display as it does on an actual 60hz display? or will you get tearing/other issues? I have a 980 and there are very few modern games that I can drive at +100fps. 

it looks the same as on a native 60hz. The issue is that 60hz doesn't feel smooth any more once you get used to 144! 

 

On a static image anyway. But I'm not too bothered between the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, in most games there's waaaaay too much stuff going on to notice. 

from time to time 60fps or 60hz seems laggy for me

i have to wait a few minutes to stop noticing that

now i want one 144hz monitor. but it's too expensive for me right now. it costs around a monthly average income here. fucking country.

i can see that i am the kind of person that will notice the difference right away. 

i have an old CRT 19" that does 1600x1024 at 75hz, and 1024x768 at 120hz, i can tell the diff going from that to a lcd at 60hz even with maxfps at 150, it still choppy, so i use motion blur to hide that. 

in my old computer.

Two options, neither are all that great.

Build a new computer that will (hopefully) work with the new video card.

Attempt to flash the BIOS in the old computer which may or may not allow it to use the new video card.

Considering the computer works as it is, I'm more inclined to build something new, but I need it to run Windows 7. 

a bios flash is usually pretty simple, what's the mobo? 

I take it is fits in the slot right...PCI-E x16 2.0/3.0? You have the correct power connections on it? 

I had to flash a bios once before and it bricked the board. That was long time ago, maybe things are better now.

The board is a GA-Z77X-UD3H. The processor is an i5-3570K. I think this is still pretty good for everyday use and even gaming, though it's close to 5 years old, but I didn't put the greatest video card in it when it was new and a GTX 550 Ti just won't cut it for newer games.

With the new card in, a GTX 1050 Ti, it hangs during boot. Pretty badly too. I had to reboot using the onboard Intel graphics before I could get it to work with the old card again.

I was looking at new parts and wow, DDR4 memory is expensive. I'm not sure at this point how new I can go without having problems installing Windows 7. 

that's a good board and flashing should be straightforward. There is a chance, of course, of bricking the board if you interrupt the flashing process. Gigabyte probably provides a flashing utility along with the bios, might find it here. There's been a number of compatibility updates for this board, what version are you running now?

I'm assuming mobo/card drivers are up to date, the card is properly seated in the first slot and the mobo is properly configured? Have you tested the card in another system? It's not super uncommon to have a faulty card...

Anyway, I'm sure the issue can be solved with minimal grief. However, building another system is always fun too :P 

I'm not sure it's actually possible to "brick" this board. It has dual BIOS, so I think recovery is always possible, but their documentation is lacking and actually getting it to work is kind of hit and miss.

There were a couple of occasions when I was having trouble booting from a certain SSD that it proclaimed the main BIOS was "corrupt" and restored it from the back up BIOS, but knowing that I never even went in to the BIOS to change anything I'm at a loss as to how it magically became "corrupt".

At the moment it's running fine with the old video card and I don't really have a viable fall back machine for playing games so I'm reluctant to mess with it anymore.

I guess now I'll try and dig my way through all the FUD and see if I can figure out just how modern of a machine I can assemble and still have no problems installing Windows 7 on it. 

I'm reluctant to mess with it anymore.

I understand that. upon further research I think a bios update should do the trick. however, I get you don't feel comfortable doing it.

see if I can figure out just how modern of a machine I can assemble and still have no problems installing Windows 7 on it.

Even the latest enthusiast mobos will have win7 support, general mobos might even have vista/xp support. It should be listed in the specs. If you shop from newegg, for example, the supported operating systems are usually found at the bottom of the spec page. If you don't see anything listed for a particular mobo you can always go to the manufacturer's website and see what drivers are available for that board.

good luck! 

knowing that I never even went in to the BIOS to change anything

well, that could certainly be an issue. most of the time you will have to configure at least some things in the bios for proper performance. 

That 1050 Ti happen to be a Zotac card? 

I put it together, installed Windows, installed the drivers, and it all worked. Maybe I could have tweaked stuff and it would have been a few percent faster, but I never really felt it was necessary.

Other than the one SSD issue and now this video card, it's been working fine for almost 5 years. I guess I've turned into one of those "if it ain't broke" types. 

That 1050 Ti happen to be a Zotac card?

EVGA

I don't think it's the video card, it's the motherboard. The BIOS is just old. The Gigabyte splash screen shows up just fine, it just locks up at that point. 

Gotcha.

I recently upgraded my video card(to a (gtx 1060) in a PC older than yours. The card had issues seating in the slot. It took a few times of reinserting it before PC was bootable.

I thought maybe you had that issue as well.

Good luck for a fix. 

For what it's worth, I also have a gigabyte motherboard and you can update the bios using the windows utility from their website and it will automatically find, download and update the correct bios for you. It's completely painless. 

Yeah, I'm probably going to have to break down and try the BIOS update. It's currently using version F11 and the latest available non-beta is F18. I don't really see anything in their descriptions that indicate fixes for video problems though.

I poked around a bit in the BIOS settings but everything is set to the default and nothing much looked like it would affect an add in video card.

After an hour or so at Newegg it looks like I can build something new for about $600. I guess the worst thing about that is the GTX 1050 TI was intended as a cheap upgrade for an old computer, it's not really what I'd want to put in something new.

And there's the added hassle of making a Win 7 install disc with USB 3.0 drivers included. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/5b0w6j/gtx_1050ti_sc_wont_let_my_computer_boot

That's someone with a different Gigabyte motherboard, but also a 1050 Ti, and a bios update solved a case of "not booting" for them, so I'm guessing a bios update will fix it? 

there's no guarantee a new system won't need a bios update or some other tlc :D

no need to buy a new car when you just need an oil change... 

Okay, the BIOS is successfully updated to version F18, which is the most recent non-beta version (still dates from 2012 though).

There were apparently 8 BIOS updates during the board's first year, then nothing until some kind of audio fix in 2014.

I guess I'll use it for a day or so to make sure there's no problems. I'm not really looking forward to digging it out to replace the video card - again. It's the living room entertainment machine and it's hooked up to tons of stuff, so there's a lot of cables to plug and unplug. 

Upgrade to Win10, see if that helps? 

There may come a day when a game I really want to play will only work on Windows 10, but until then it is far more trouble than it's worth.