I had an old ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 graphics card from 2011, with DirectX 11 support. I did a major upgrade to my computer, except for the graphics card, and installed Windows 11.
However, according to Microsoft, installing Windows 11 requires a graphics card that supports DirectX 12. And since my processor does not have integrated graphics and I had frequent restarts with blue screens, I bought the ASRock ARC A380 6GB GDDR6 Low Profile to complete the upgrade.
The installation was difficult for me. I removed the old card, installed the new one, and when I connected the computer to the monitor via HDMI, I realized that I had no image. Just a black screen. After several attempts of inserting and removing the card, the image finally appeared, but I lost sound on the speakers.
I read that if you don't uninstall the drivers of the old card and connect the new one, various problems can occur due to driver conflicts. And since I couldn't do it myself, I took the computer unit to a specialist and they did it for me. From then on, everything was fine, with both sound and image.
Then I downloaded and installed Intel Arc Control. However, every time I turned on the computer, Arc Control displayed a brief message at the bottom right of the screen that would disappear and say, "The variable size bar is supported by your motherboard, but it is not enabled. Go to settings to enable it." I have no idea what that is, but another message that appeared in the Arc Control icon said that it increases the performance of the graphics card.
In the end, I managed to activate it with the help of my daughter. She watched a video on YouTube showing how to enable it through the BIOS on a motherboard of the same brand but a different model. We struggled for quite a while because the BIOS on my motherboard is different from what we saw in the video. After the activation, the message disappeared.
As for performance, I don't play games. But my daughter does. I'm waiting for an SSD that I ordered so she can install her games on it instead of the operating system's SSD. When she tests the graphics card with her games, then I will complete the evaluation.
However, the graphics card runs 8K resolution videos on YouTube smoothly without any lag. Of course, this doesn't make sense on a Full HD resolution screen.