You may want to have a chat with whoever swapped out your video card and discuss what or why your machine sees it as a mobile version of the card. From the outside looking in, the game worked previously, then you had a video card replaced, your machine mis-identifies it and now the game doesn't run anywhere near what it should or doesn't run at all. While a bunch can change in a computer, such as drivers, OS updates, installed programs...the issue is your video card basically dropping out of service when trying to play the game, and the only thing major changed since the last time it worked....your video card.
If you are comfortable opening the box, you may want to see if you can swap your video card to another PCI slot and see if your system identifies it correctly. If you aren't then I would talk to whoever worked last on your PC. IF the system truly sees your video card as a mobile as it lists and it isn't then it could cause some weird issues with any program that access the video card...not just DAI, which just happens to be the first most likely. It MAY not make a difference, but anytime my computer doesn't see the correct hardware makes me very nervous because that usually means I have a bunch of PIB work coming up to fix stuff about to go real wrong...
Now for stupid question of the day....your cable going to your monitor, it is plugged INTO the video card and not plugged into the motherboard in some way, thereby using an onboard video card of the MOBO?? Yeah, yeah, I know stupid question, but I have to ask, cause yup, I have seen it....
It's not a stupid question, it's exactly the kind of question I'd have asked while doing tech support forever ago. Always check the basics first.
I'm rusty as hell though, and Windows 10 is a different beast.
To answer your question, as far as I recall, the motherboard doesn't offer a monitor plug position out to the back of the machine. Without the card in, I *can't* plug in a monitor. And we put the new card right where the old card had been. But next time I'm home, I will double check to make sure I haven't done anything truly stupid.
I'm very comfortable opening the machine. I'm not particularly comfortable lugging it off the desk, though. So I'll need to recruit a minion before I dig into the machine again.
We (my partner and I) replaced the card ourselves, which we are reasonably qualified to do, both having built machines from parts in the past.
I don't have total confidence in the place we got the card from, however. It was hard to find the right kind, and the one place we found one for a decent price it was the only card they had - very obviously a stray item in a small shop online that otherwise sells other stuff.
Regardless, I'm pretty sure IF there's a problem with the card, it's with the card *itself*, not with how we installed it. It's not possible we got the wrong kind of card - it wouldn't go in the slot if it was the wrong kind of card. But we theorize that it somehow has the wrong version of the chip on it, if that's possible (I'd have to do deeper research to determine if that's even possible - the two kinds of chips may not be shaped the same).
That said, I've looked it up and in this case there's very little difference between the two versions of this generation of card in terms of capacity. They have the same scores, etc. Everything has worked just fine except DA:I, and the error I'm getting is one lots of people have gotten without having the card issues since Windows upgraded past 7 and DirectX 10. So while I can't rule it out - and am still interested in sorting it out - I'm not convinced it's conclusively the card that's the problem.
I have an alternate card I can try that a friend gave me. I'm not sure if it's a suitable replacement - I think it's weaker - but it's also the right kind of slot, so it at least hypothetically could work if it's supported on the software level.
Alas, AMD's site *does* say the generation of card I have and that my machine originally came with is NOT supported for Win 10, but of course, Win 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft, and I can't afford a whole new machine right now. But it was AMD's optimization software that allowed me to play again, so at least their ambient support works pretty well.
*sigh*
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