bdary,
 
This morning I have done the following: placed the 780 card in another PCi e slot to see if that would make a difference in the problem (it didn't), then removed the 780 and replaced it with the old MCI Radeon 6870 Twin Frozer II card.  The computer immediately recognized the MCI card and Windows installed the drivers for it as well as for high definition audio.  What this means to me is that the 780 must be "dead" since the computer does not know it is there but does find other cards.  Is this thinking on track or am I just deluding myself?  I am thinking since Windows finds the MCI card that there is nothing wrong with Windows and I am just about to contact EVGA to discuss a replacement for my new card.  Do you think this is a prudent path to follow?
 
Thanks,
 
Tom

outhouse,
 
Thanks for your reply.  Here are my PC specs:
 
Motherboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe
Processor: Intel i7 980 3.33 GHz with Noctua NH-D 14 cooler
Memory: 48 GB G.Skill DDR-3-1333
Hard drives: 4 internal, 1 eSATA, and 1 USB.  All 7200
Sound card: M-Audio 1010LT
Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 1000P2 (new)
Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Classified (new but not working now - have installed old MCI Radeon 6880 Twin Frozer II until 780 card is replaced)
Thermaltake Armor full tower case
 
I hope this information will be helpful in arriving at a decision about how to proceed.
 
Thanks,
 
Tom
  

Sounds like you had ATI drivers installed while you were trying to run your 780?  That won't work well.  May not be your issue, but if you wanted to try one more thing before RMA'ing, remove the ATI graphics drivers, then try your 780.  If that don't work.  RMA.

bdary,
 
I had all of the ATI drivers removed before I originally installed the 780 card.  Also, there was no problem installing the nVidia drivers for the 780 card using the DVD supplied by EVGA.  It was only after deleting this first nVidia driver that the problems began.  I have contacted EVGA and they have issued an RMA for card, so hopefully, the new one will work as expected.  I do have a question about the installation of the new card and drivers.  Can the latest nVidia drivers for the card be installed even without the card in the computer or does the computer have to recognize the presence of the card for the drivers to be installed?
 
Have a great weekend everyone,
 
Thanks,
 
Tom   

Thanks,
 
Tom

bdary
You're welcome!  Looking forward to hearing positive results with your new card...

+1

prosthotoothist
Earnest,
 
I have checked the device manager numerous times and the only thing that shows up is the standard VGA adapter. 
 
My replacement card arrived late yesterday and I installed it this morning.  All hopes were dashed when it was just like the original one.  Windows does not see it.  So after this second go at this problem, I still have a big question in my mind: why does Windows recognize my old MSI Radeon 6870 card and not the GTX 780 cards.  What makes this even more of a puzzle is that originally when I installed the first GTX 780 card it worked.  I installed the drivers from the EVGA DVD that came with it and everything worked great!  It was only AFTER removing the original drivers to do an update that Windows quit recognizing that the card was present.  I have used the latest version of the Display Driver Removal program to get rid of any left over drivers.  I have removed both AMD and nVidia files using this program.  I don't know what else I can do other than a clean install of Windows 7 and who knows if that would solve the problem.  The Win 7 install is on a partition of a 1TB drive divided into 3 partitions.  There are a great number of programs, program folders, etc., on that partition which makes formatting and reinstalling Windows 7 a monumental task that I absolutely want to avoid.  Partition 2 of this drive has 190 GB of space and 60 GB of it are free. 
 
Now a question: would Windows let me install another iteration of Win 7 on that second partition?  If not, then I am assuming that it would let me do an install of Win 8.1 if I decided to buy it.  Any suggestions about these possible options?
 
I guess one thing that I should ask as long as I am begging for help is does anyone have experience with the EVGA GTX 780 Classified card using Windows 8.1 64 bit?  I know many people seem to indicate in forums that Win 8 has had some compatibility problems with some programs.  I would assume that by now with the 8.1 version out there should not be any real functional issues that would make it not a good choice in my situation.
 
Any thoughts that you have will be greatly appreciated.
 
Regards,
 
Tom    

Sorry to hear you still have the same issue.
 
You mentioned that everything was running good until you uninstalled the drivers.  How did you uninstall them?  When you boot with the 780, do you get the generic driver in Windows so you can move around on the desktop?
 
If you can get into Windows and if you haven't already, try running the Windows update to see if Windows tries to install a graphics driver.  If it does, let it install and the reboot when done whether it asks you to or not.  If you were able to have Windows install a graphics driver, once you're back into Windows, go to Nvidia's site and D/L to your desktop the driver of your choice.
 
Run the installer by doing a custom install.  Select only the graphics & PhysX components.  Uncheck everything else.  Put a checkmark in the "Clean" install box.
 
Make sure you don't have  PrecX, MSI AB, ASUS tweak, etc. running, and that it's set to not run at start up.

Good morning bdary and Earnest,
 
It really is a good morning since I am now back in business!!!!  After doing everything that anyone suggested to correct the problem (all unsuccessful), I finally resorted to a repair install of Windows 7 Sp 1.  On line, I searched for information about a repair installation and found reference to a file from Microsoft (an iso file that I burned to disk) and after hours and hours of computer activity, I finally have a "legal" version of Windows installed and working.  Even though I have a product key, I got the sign after installation that this might not be a legal Windows install.  I tried activating the install online, but was unsuccessful.  When I called the number listed, I finally got the install validated, so now all is activated and legal with Windows.
 
Once Windows was working, I checked the device manager to see if it had recognized the GTX 780 card.  It had not!  My first thought was that I had gone through the very lengthly reinstall process for nothing.  I paused and decided to try to install the 331.82 nVidia driver that I had downloaded and saved on the desktop.  To my great relief, it began installing and went all the way to completion and all 3 monitors are now back on line!
 
Now I have a FINAL question.  Should I even consider updating the 331.82 driver to the latest version?  I never play any games on this computer, so is it necessary, or would it even improve performance, such as hardware rendering in 3ds max, to update?  My common sense says if it's working, don't mess with it.  What do you think?  By the way, thanks again for all of the time both of you spent trying to help get my problem solved.
 
Regards,
 
Tom     

bdary,
 
Thanks for your reply.  But let me tell you about another thing that has just now  happened.  Since the Windows repair, I had to redo my desktop configuration of icons, resolution, etc.  I have a considerable number of icons on the desk top as well as folders for other things.  Over time, the desktop has become overloaded, so I started moving ones that I don't use frequently into a folder on the desktop called "Infrequently used icons" or I removed the icons from the desktop altogether.  In doing this I came across the icon for Benchmark Valley and decided to run it to see how the card would perform.  There are a number of different settings available and I tried a couple of them.  It is good to remember what my monitor setup was like before I did this foolish thing.  I have 2 X 19" regular monitors and a 27" HD monitor.  The 27" was #2 and the others were #1 and #3.  I had things set up so that #2 was the main monitor and the screen was extended across the others.  This was in place when I ran the Benchmark Valley program.  When I decided to exit the "Valley", my monitor setup was GONE!  Monitor #1 has disappeared and monitor #2 was divided into a 1/3 screen.  The 1920 X 1080 resolution of the 27" (#2) was not even an option to choose.  Also, I had worked in PhotoShop for a couple of hours creating a background grid to help organize my icons by types into the different blocks of the grid.  When the monitor problem happened, the background grid disappeared also.  I have gone into the nVidia control panel to look for possible corrections, but there is nothing there about an HD resolution for monitor #2 or the presence (absence) of the missing monitor #1.  The Benchmark Valley software is on the EVGA DVD that came with the 780 card so it must be a safe and vaild program to run; however, it seems to have eaten my video settings for lunch.  I have rebooted the computer after this happened and there was no change.  I have searched for everything that I think might help fix this problem and nothing has worked. 
 
Would a re-installation of the 331.82 nVidia drivers be a safe and good thing to consider?  Do you think that it is possible that the Benchmark program corrupted the video card drivers by my haveing run it?  I watched the information in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and the temperature at one point reached 75 degrees C.  But it was only a momentary thing, so I can't imagine that would be the cause of this problem.
 
Got any suggestions as to what I do now?
 
Thanks,
 
Tom    

Running the Valley benchmark could have corrupted the driver install.  At least that would probably be your best case scenario.  If just a simple reboot doesn't straighten things out, yes, you could install the driver over again.  I would still do a custom install with only the graphics & PhysX components.  And also check the "Clean" install box.

Good morning bdary and Earnest,
 
Well, I think I have finally gotten everything working!  Indeed, it was a resolution issue that I had to trouble shoot.  With my monitor setup, it has always been a little tricky to get all of the settings just right.  The crazy thing about my setup is that as I sit looking at the 27" main monitor, the two 19" monitors are BEHIND me on either side of the 4 keyboard stack for a virtual pipe organ.  These two monitors are used exclusively the programs that runs when I am playing the organ.  I have the screen space on the main monitor extended across them so that I can move various windows of programs from monitor to monitor.  I think my problem was caused by the different resolutions of the monitors.  The 27" is set to 1920 X 1080 and the two 19" ones are set to 1280 X 1024.  I guess that I just missed something in the setup.
 
bdary, I did make a restore point and download the 337.88 driver from NVidia.  I did NOT uninstall the older one, but just installed the new one without any problem.  All seems to be working well now.  Again, thank both of you for your assistance with my problems.
 
Regards,
 
Tom

bdary,
 
As I have mentioned during our working on my problems, I use 3ds Max 2013.  This morning before I tried to open it, I checked my emails and there was one from EVGA News about their 15th anniversary and a new version of Precision X.  I had removed Precision X when trying to resolve the video card issues and so I thought it would be a good idea to install this new version.  It installed without incident and I worked with it just a little and then decided I would open 3ds Max and finish reconfiguring it after the Windows repair install.  I tried to open it and I got an immediate error message.  I tried again with the same results.  After trying several different approaches without success, I thought that I was going to have to reinstall 3ds max.  A crazy thing happened during one of the attempts to launch 3ds Max.  For a brief time, the UI for 3ds Max opened and in the upper left-hand corner of all 4 of the view windows, "EVGA PRECISION X" was visible.  It immediately closed and when I tried to open the program again nothing but an error message.  My thought at this point was that by installing the new Precision X software, I had created a problem with the 3ds Max program.  I went to the control panel and uninstalled Precision X and tried 3ds Max again and this time the program opened as usual and has been working without problems.
 
I wanted to let you know of this incident since someone else may encounter a similar problem after installing the new Precision X software.  I don't know if it was just a fluke or if there is some incompatibility with EVGA's new software. 
 
Regards,
 
Tom

This driver does not like GPU overclocking or custom BIOS and i think it killed my GPU.
 
I had a Galaxy 660Ti with a custom BIOS and overclocked with ASUS GPU Tweak and when i updated to this driver, my GPU's boost clock went from 1280 to 0000 and the voltage went from 1031 to 0000 and i could not adjust the clocks and i would get like 3-8 fps while gaming and stuttering like crazy. 
 
I uninstalled GPU Tweak and re-installed but still the problem was there however when i did a restart this was the condition of my screen and that is the story of how i came to being an EVGA customer and member.