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I have on-board video. It is an Sis 650/651/M650/740 Chip set. I have an old pc with an Nvidia Gforce 2mx 32mb PCI. I know this card will perform better than the Sis, but can I disable the on-board system. I know it is a Microstar Mobo with a p4/1.6ghz on it. I have not had the side off yet to see the model.
Yes you can and the only time you will have to open the case is to install the new video card. With the old card still installed, go into comtrol panel / system /devive manager and go to the display adapter icon and click on the plus sign and double click on the SIS device and at the bottom left of windows there are two check boxes that say disable device and device exists in all hardware profiles put a check in the disable device box and when it asks to restart your computer tell it no then shut your computer down and then install the new card and fire it back up and install the new drivers and your good to go. :D
I'd suggest before disabling your onboard video in your windows to check the bios if your can disable it hardware. That would liberate the weight of the onboard vga on your cpu, giving it better ressources
I looked in the BIOS and found that this is the only option for the onboard video.
SiS-7012 AC97 Audio
This setting enables or disables the SiS-7012 AC97 audio. Setting options:
Disabled, Enabled.
SiS-7013 S/W Modem
This setting enables or disables the SiS-7013 S/W modem. Setting options:
Disabled, Enabled.
System Share Memory Size (for SiS650 chipset only)
For SiS650 chipset, the system shares memory to the onboard VGA card.
This setting controls the exact memory size shared to the VGA card.
Setting options: 4MB, 8MB, 16MB, 32MB, 64MB,
If I dropped it down to 4MB, would this free up a lot of the memory. Is there another way to disble it in BIOS? At the moment it is set at 32MB. The MOBO is a MS6524
Check out the <a href="http://www.msi.com.tw/support/manual/manual.php?model=MS-6524" target="_blank">manual</a> to see how to disable the onboard video
In my previous post I said I have an Nvidia Gforce MX2 32mb PCI card. I was only assuming this is better than the Sis chipset I have onboard. I would be grateful if you could confirm this for me before I start to rip my old pc to bits!
It's hard to say which is going to be better. If you stick with the on-board video, it is likely connected to the AGP bus, resulting in faster video performance. On the other hand, the PCI card has it's own memory and will free up a bit of memory for the system.
I'd have to say try it and see.
Also look in the bios for AGP/PCI first and set it to detect the PCI card before AGP.
I looked in my bios and I don`t have an option of booting from AGP or PCI. The maual says it should be there ,but it isn`t. I put the pci card in and booted the pc. Then disabled the onboard. Then I installed the Nvidia drivers.I rebooted but nothing. I think it must be booting from AGP but as I said, I can`t change the boot sequence. The Mobo is a MS 6524 with bios version 1
I took the plunge and upgraded the bios. It is v1.2. It worked ok, and it now has a boot from vga or pci option. So it must have been a dud bios.