re: Looking to upgrade processor - advice sought

Over the weekend I picked up a nice 480GB SSD and an EVGA GTX 750ti (there was a 950 begging for me to buy it for just $100 more instead but I've been bitching at the wife about spending money so I had to leave it there :( ).

Tried swapping the vid cards out first. With just the 750 in, the computer would BSOD the moment Windows tried to load (error code was all 0's).

-Uninstalled the 250 drivers (750 drivers wouldn't install without the card present). Same issue.

-Booted up with both cards seated, video works for the 250 but the system doesn't even recognize that the 750 exists (tried swapping power cables between cards, no change).

-Maybe it's Windows issue? Went back to the 250 then swapped out the HDD for the SSD, spent a stupid amount of time looking for my Windows key, best I could find was an Upgrade key as well as my full version of Vista.

-Skipped the key and installed Windows. Running smooth as silk. Running smooth as silk. Tried putting the 750 in, same issue comes back.

-Called EVGA, they suggested updating my BIOS. Odd choice but okay. BIOS was v3, current version is v11... maybe this will work after all... Nope! On reboot the computer won't even POST!



Went to Gigabyte's site, the info from the manual on the board did not work for resetting the BIOS (it has a reset and clear CMOS buttons). The wife and I were scheduled to take her father and grandmother to dinner and a movie so the project was put on hold (and anyone that works on computers knows how aggravating it is to drop everything when you are "in the zone").

-Got back, tried removing the CMOS battery, left it out while I watched GoT. Same issue. Long series of VERY rapid beeps.

-Time for bed. @#*&_@*(&@

-Working on it today, found a ridiculously easy work-around to force Gigabyte's Dual BIOS if jumpers of the buttons on the board do not work: hold the power button on the tower in until the system boots then shuts down. Power it on again and it forces the original BIOS from ROM to overwrite the flashable BIOS. Reboot again and voila!! *whew!*

So here I am now, waiting for my thumb drive to finish formatting (I used Gigabyte's Windows flashing program the last time, going to use Q-Flash this time but the drive the file is on has to be FAT, not NTFS) so I can try once again to flash my BIOS up to the latest version in the hopes it will bring my mobo and video card together in harmony.

While waiting, anyone have any thoughts on what else it could be other than:

ID-10-T error
A short between the keyboard and the chair
BIOS
The video card being bad right out of the box.

Other info:
-MOBO is Gigabyte P55M-UD4 (rev 1)
-500w power supply
-12GB DDR3 RAM
-Only things plugged in during these tests were keyboard and mouse (both wireless) and the monitor (VGA for the old card, DVI through a VGA adapter for the new card).