Interesting failure mode for the Radeon 9200 graphics card

[Capmaster]

One of the four home PCs has a MB with lame shared 32MB built-in S3 graphics. It's a PC Chips MB. With the upcoming Doom3 release, we decided we'd like to upgrade the card. Found a Radeon 9200 128M B for $50 and installed. But before booting up I disabled the onboard graphics by setting the primary video as AGP and not PCI. Booted into Windows and the card was sensed and drivers installed. But it was slow as hell dragging windows around, and left afterimages.

A quick run of the ATi diagnostic revealed that none of the card's memory was being recognized Tried to disable the Radeon, then I planned to boot, go into setup and enable the onboard, thinking the new card was defective. I ended up with an in-between state that didn't output to either card :P

Soooo, pop the cover and reset the CMOS. Boots fine into Windows. Remove ATI apps and drivers. Power down, reinstall the card, power up, all installs well and it works fine.

Bottom line: apparently disabling the onboard graphics also disabled the memory of the add-on card too. It appears that it's best to just leave the onboard turned on. I just hope that Doom3 will see only the new card and not try configuring for the lame onboard adapter.

Has anyone else gone through the same monkey-motion with their onboard adapter?

[indolikaa]

Did you remember to install the AGP GART driver for your motherboard's chipset before you install the ATI drivers? My guess is the chipset is an SiS chipset, which means the file is called SiS AGP PCI-to-PCI Bridge...

If you don't the AGP Speed indicator in the ATI Display Properties page will show your AGP bus running at 1X.


I have a pair of mobos with onboard VGA. I not only had to disable them in the BIOS, but I had to set the Shared Memory setting to Auto instead of the 32MB it defaulted to.

[rallynavvie]

And thusly RallyNavvie was glad he shunned the use of system boards with their graphics onboard

The funny thing is I couldn't find a board with onboard graphics AND an AGP slot, but then I suppose those that fit my criteria were server boards

[Capmaster]

Did you remember to install the AGP GART driver for your motherboard's chipset before you install the ATI drivers? My guess is the chipset is an SiS chipset, which means the file is called SiS AGP PCI-to-PCI Bridge...

If you don't the AGP Speed indicator in the ATI Display Properties page will show your AGP bus running at 1X.


I have a pair of mobos with onboard VGA. I not only had to disable them in the BIOS, but I had to set the Shared Memory setting to Auto instead of the 32MB it defaulted to.

The GART was installed and the reported AGP speed was 4X, the max the MB can offer. The only thing not working was the DDR RAM on the graphics card. I had changed the CMOs setting from 32MB to "Disabled" before installing the new card. I guess it believed me because even when I removed the AGP card, it was still disabled.

[indolikaa]

Did you remember to install the AGP GART driver for your motherboard's chipset before you install the ATI drivers? My guess is the chipset is an SiS chipset, which means the file is called SiS AGP PCI-to-PCI Bridge...

If you don't the AGP Speed indicator in the ATI Display Properties page will show your AGP bus running at 1X.


I have a pair of mobos with onboard VGA. I not only had to disable them in the BIOS, but I had to set the Shared Memory setting to Auto instead of the 32MB it defaulted to.

The GART was installed and the reported AGP speed was 4X, the max the MB can offer. The only thing not working was the DDR RAM on the graphics card. I had changed the CMOs setting from 32MB to "Disabled" before installing the new card. I guess it believed me because even when I removed the AGP card, it was still disabled.

The more I think about it, the more I think that makes no sense. Maybe I need a drink...

[ViRaL1]

Most (not necessarily all) mobos with onboard video will automatically disable the onboard video if another video card is detected, whether it's PCI or AGP. You shouldn't have to disable anything in the CMOS.

When you say...

"I had changed the CMOs setting from 32MB to "Disabled" before installing the new card. I guess it believed me because even when I removed the AGP card, it was still disabled."

..are you saying that when you removed the ATI card you had no video at all? Did you have to short the CMOS jumper just to get back into the BIOS?

As far as not detecting any of the memory, that seems a little odd. Without detecting any video memory you wouldn't see anything, let alone be able to pull up video properties.

Neither Window$ nor any other applications should continue to detect the onboard adapter once you have a video add-in card installed. The option in your BIOS for PCI or AGP has nothing to do with the onboard video. That option is used if you have both a PCI and an AGP video add-in card installed in your system. That's what tells it which is your primary card. If your mobo HAS an AGP slot, 50-to-1 your onboard video is AGP as well.

[Ripper2860]

What is your AGP aperture size setting in BIOS? If set at 16MB or below it can cause serious perfromance problems equiv. to a 1X setting. Also, make sure you've assigned an Interrupt to the video adapter in BIOS.

Also, delete all references all video adaoters in windows hardware device list and let MS re-detect the vidcards on re-boot. Check hardware device list to make sure that only 1 adapter is seen and if both adapters are seen by Windows, that the on-board is diabled w/ an red "X". If not manaually disable the device in Windows.