MTS: Damn graphics drivers...

[♫Milø]

Okay, I know I've asked this question a million times before. This time I'll write it down, I swear.

I just installed an ATI Radeon graphics card and drivers. Thing is, I don't know how to make it the primary card. I can't figure out how to get this darn thing off the integrated card. Any help?

[Oni Lukos]

My first guess is somewhere in Display > Settings. I think it's the top pull-down. Might be under advanced.

[♫Milø]

See, I can get that far. But I really have no clue what to do from there. I tried going into the BIOS, but I just get a stop error when I boot the computer up.

[kyon]

I don't recall graphics cards being handled by the BIOS, Milo.

On a related note: Right click "My Computer" and click properties (Or just go to System under Control Panel). Click Device Manager. Your video hardware should be under "Display Adapters." Tell me what you see there, and I might be able to tell you more. (If there are two entries, disable the one that you dislike ("integrated" or whatnot). That should force your graphics card to step up. Also make sure that your graphics card's enabled, just in case. But of course you did that.)

[Sz]

Graphics cards are most certainly not handled by the BIOS. :E

[Mr. T]

Integrated cards do.

[Eric]

Some newer motherboards let you disable integrated graphics in the BIOS (there's usually a section called "Integrated Peripherals"). On other boards, you have to set an actual jumper on the motherboard. Consult the manual to find out.

Unless you plan on using both graphic adapters simultaneously, you shouldn't need to do anything in Display Properties and such. I mean, in the old days, it was smart to set your display adapter to "Generic VGA" before physically swapping out a graphics card, but modern versions of Windows pretty much elminiate the need for that.

[kyon]

If memory serves, Milo's computer is from about the 1 GHz-ish vintage, thus anything requiring a new board wouldn't really apply to him, would think. I should've really looked more at the bios last time I looked at it.

[Oni Lukos]

<digression>
Hahaha, I don't have any computers from that era. I have, let's see...a 25MHz Mac LCIII (an m68k era Mac! Wow!), a 300MHz Dell (well, had. I cannibalized it and my dad trashed the case), a 266MHz Dell that was bought a few months later (and is sparingly used, which is why we got a cheaper model), a 450MHz Dell that was my brother's, but I got when he got a laptop (it's now running Debian Linux), a 1.6GHz Sony laptop (big leap there, huh? Yeah, it took about half a decade) which died and has been trashed (hard drive was salvaged), a 1.6GHz Dell laptop...bought two years afterwards (which is what I'm typing this on right now), a 2.0 GHz AMD Sempron in a custom built computer from September (that computer is really nice for a $450 budget comp) and a 2.0GHz Core Duo Sony SZ (not Pasta, though) laptop from a few months ago.
</digression>

In other news, I know nothing about multiple video cards in one computer.

[♫Milø]

Yeah, these stupid integrated cards are handled in the BIOS. I'll try the Device Manager later, Tony. Once I feel like rebooting. ~.~

[Robert]

Other than strictly disabling the integrated video in BIOS, sometimes they also have an option about which busline boots video first, PCI or AGP. Shot in the dark that might make any difference.

As for jumpers... m'boards have been pretty much jumperless except for occasional proprietary functions for quite a few years now.

[♫Milø]

Eh, got it working. Just had to go into the device managaer and disable the onboard driver. I was just scared to for fear of breaking compy.