Of all I have read about graphics card, I thought those things were plug and play, and you almost did not have to worry about the display drivers, etc.

Well, not quite.

First of all, when you dust off your computer in order to accept a graphics card of the size of this GTX 1050 ti graphics card, i.e. more than 20 cm long, you've got to make sure your PC case allows it in the first place. Fortunately for me, this was a quite recent Zalman case, wide enough to accomodate most today's cards. The MSI GTX 1050 ti graphics card sports two fans and is therefore quite wide, and occupies two slots.

If you think let's plug this thing in the PCI-e express bus, and we are ready to go. It's not quite that. If you do so, like I did, the first that will occur is that when the case is closed and wires back in, your display cable will most probably unlock and move the graphics card when you put it in. Why ? because the PIC-e express bus lock system isn't enough to prevent moves when you are putting a cable, such as a HDMI cable in. So be sure to put one screw to one or the two slots so it won't move when you put the display cable in.

Next mistake, you boot it and the PC acts like you didn't insert any graphics card. The PC screen shows a No signal message and you are left wondering what happens. In fact, this MSI GTX 1050 ti card needs additional power in order to work at all. So you've got to take a 6-pin cable from your power box and put it in the corresponding socket in the graphics card. Before you do this, there is no error message whatsoever, so nothing tells you what to do. Of course, wiring this additional power comes at a cost, because you may max out your power draw just doing so, and might end up either returning the graphics card or buying a more powerful power box.

This obstacle out of the way, now let's boot this thing. It boots but without drivers the graphics card acts like a two-decade old VGA display card. It's horrible to see. It will destroy the location of your icons on the desktop, etc. but it works this way because if you try to install a graphics card driver without it inserted first, the driver won't install. That's quite strange by the way. The only point of a driver is to add itself to the list of known drivers therefore, in theory, it should be possible to add the driver without the graphics card in the PC.

Next step is to insert the CDROM and install the .exe that comes with it. All runs flawlessly and you are urged to restart the computer. Nothing bad except that when you reboot Windows does not load and you get stuck with a black screen and a pointy mouse. Force a Windows restart then boot in Windows safe mode. You can check the Nvidia display driver version that gets installed. For me, it's version 398.11. Something's got to be wrong with this driver, because it's precisely when the display card makes the switch from the dumb VBA mode to the actual resolution that it does not work.

Sure enough, you actually need to go to the nvidia support center, then nvidia display driver, pick your model and then start the (Huge) 500 MB download. Double-click on it in order to start the install process. If everything goes flawlessly, perhaps this is the real thing, finally.

Restart your computer again and miracle, this time no black screen. Just a black screen for half a second, which gets replaced by ther Windows boot bitmap. It finally does what it is supposed to do.

A computer geek would get around all this because he may have the basic principles in order to search for fixes on the internet. But common people who don't know much ? No way, they won't get there.