lje67

Folks,
I have a gigabyte mobo (GA-945GCM-S2C) in which I am replacing a anemic ATI x1650 that died with a NVIDIA 9800GTX+ (little bit of a step up), and I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to disable the onboard video. I think the latter is interfering with the NVIDIA card because while I see the RAM check, BIOS reports, and such through the NVIDIA card, as soon as I get past the Vista boot screen (the little progress bar that goes back and forth), I lose the signal to the monitor. If I remove the NVIDIA card and go back to the onboard video everything works okay...but slowly. The BIOS does not have an explicit option to disable the onboard video but it does have an Init Display option that you're supposed to set to "Onboard/PEG" according to the manual to allow the PCI-E card to take precedence over the onboard video. I've set it to that, with no difference at all in behavior. Any ideas about how to get this done? Thx.

BTW, I can't have the PCI-E card installed with power to it and have the onboard video work at all. I have to either remove the PCI-E card or unplug the power connectors to get any signal out of the onboard video. So it's not as simple as starting with the onboard video and switching to the PCI-E after the drivers are installed. I have no idea how to get from point A to point B here.

mothergoose729

You are probably having a drivers issue. I am guessing you forget to clean out your ATI drives before installing your Nvidia GPU. Download driver, boot into safe mode, and remove all display drivers. Go into your CP and remove the ATI software suit in regular user mode as well. Then install your Nvidia drivers and see how that goes. My guess is it will probably sovle your problem

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The Importance of Sub Timings

squareshot

Download a program call Driver Sweeper. Deleted all your video driver and run Driver Sweeper. Reboot and run Driver Sweeper again. Reboot and download Nvida drivers
for you card from Nvida. The answer above is right if you didn't deleted your ATI drivers.

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lje67

Well, I don't think it's a driver issue. I tried the first suggestion, with no change in behavior. So then I threw up my hands and re-installed windows (I was overdue for that anyway). Similar result. This time is a little different, because I can get the display to show up...after jumping through a few hoops.

I think there's some kind of hardware conflict here that doesn't have to do with the onboard video. A few of weird things are happening. First, the mouse movement is very jerky. Just moving it across the screen results in stops and starts. Second, the display will not wake up after going to sleep unless I change the DVI cable to the other port. Doesn't matter which port the cable is in at the time, just changing it to the other port causes the monitor to wake up (presumably, recieve a signal from the card). Third, the max resolution is stuck at 1024x768. No way to make it go any higher.

I wonder if my motherboard is just not cut out for this card or something. It's a MicroATX. Never had any trouble with it before the old card died (locked bearings on the cooling fan). It's not exactly top of the line. Is there some standard that a mobo has to support for a card like this? I'm not running in SLI mode -- only have one pcie 16x slot.

mothergoose729

Could be a defective card. It your bios should automatically accomidate for a video card like that, and reinstalling windows solves probably 95% of all problem. Since your system seems to work fine with the onboard video I would say that the problem lies with the video card. I would return it.

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The Importance of Sub Timings

lje67

Well, I finally figured this out. There's something wrong with the DVI cable or port on the monitor. I plugged a DSUB cable into the DVI port on the card via an adapter and the card/monitor work just fine now. Go figure. I hope it's the cable and not the monitor going bad. Thanks for the tips guys.