Integrated vs standalone gfx cards

[Pestilence3]

My fren has an integrated video card that is Sis 630 something I forgot the name. So, I was wondering, if he buys my Riva tnt 2 pci 32 m and put it under a vacant pci slot, will there be any conflict between the integrated video and the riva? how do i know if his pc will use the riva as the main display card?

Thanks in advance

[Esturk]

Well just hook up the monitor to the new card and then disable the onboard video thru the BIOS.

[Zephon]

There are two options: he can make the TNT2 his secondary card, so he would still use the SiS 630 as a primary video device, and the TNT2 would be available only in programs which recognizes secondary cards(most games).

Another option is to disable the onboard video card, like Esturk said, through the BIOS, or sometimes through jumpers. This way the PCI video card would be set as primary.

[Esturk]

What are the specs of the SiS 630? And why would you not wanna disable it?

[BoF2]

I think most onboard video dont have hardware acceleration, bu have lots of ram nowadays.

[Esturk]

Don't they share system RAM?

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by BoF2
I think most onboard video dont have hardware acceleration, bu have lots of ram nowadays.

Most onboard video cards use your system ram as video ram.. Hence you can have a lot of video ram, but they are allocated from your system ram.. So if you have 64 megs of ram for your pc, your video card may use 8 megs of it for video ram leaving your system with only 56 megs.. I think it sucks.. The more you allocate for your video card, the less ram you have for your system..

[gerbilcannon]

Last time I checked, they don't usually allow you to allocate much system ram to the video memory either. It isn't like you can toss unlimited amounts at it.

[BoF2]

Originally posted by fivefeet8


Most onboard video cards use your system ram as video ram.. Hence you can have a lot of video ram, but they are allocated from your system ram.. So if you have 64 megs of ram for your pc, your video card may use 8 megs of it for video ram leaving your system with only 56 megs.. I think it sucks.. The more you allocate for your video card, the less ram you have for your system..


Holy crap, i never knew that. So some motherboard specs that say 64mb onboard video means thats the most that can be allocated?

[fivefeet8]

Originally posted by BoF2



Holy crap, i never knew that. So some motherboard specs that say 64mb onboard video means thats the most that can be allocated?

Or that's how much was allocated to the onboard video card from the main system ram..

[Shiori]

btw, that's a BIG chunk of system memory being taken away.... so it's usually compensated by a substantial amount of RAM (256MB and up). Anything less than that would mean a significant slowdown, especially when running WinXP.

[Pestilence3]

How to disable the integrated gfx card thru BIOS? Under what option? Hehehe! Finally I get to sell my riva tnt2!!! :D

[K.I.L.E.R]

AGP textures also allocates system memory to the gfx card if it runs out of onboard memory.

[Jomama2001]

I doubt this will work for your computer because I'm pretty sure you have a different bios. My bios is American Megatrend. When you first turn on your computer, repeately press Del (It's near the numpad). A menu should come up. For mine, I go to the "PCI/Plug and Play Setup" and there's a option that says "Primary Graphics Adapter". I can toggle mine between AGP (my onboard card is AGP) or PCI (I'll choose this if I get a PCI card because It will disable the onboard AGP graphic card). But be careful, make sure you know what you're doing because if you screw up, your computer might not even boot.