Video card watts requirements question

You'll need to uninstall the current drivers and disable the onboard graphics. Then you'll install the 8500GT first and then the drivers.
 
Ahh, question about that. How do I go about disabling the onboard graphics? Or is that done when disabling the current drivers? I am a complete noob with this kind of stuff, so I apologize with these dumb questions. :(
 
It's as easy as going into Device manager, right clicking the video device, and removing it. Doing so will also remove the drivers.
 
I am a complete noob with this kind of stuff, so I apologize with these dumb questions. :(

everyone started somewhere...

Also make sure you have the card in really good because if its half in, the card will fry and it will probably destroy your x16 slot
 
@ Atomic: Sounds easy enough. Thanks man!

@ Prodigy: Ahh... dude. Now I'm worried. lol

So, all I really have to do is gently wiggle it a bit to make sure it's firmly in place, right?
 
im not trying to scare you lol but my friend was a newbie and he left the card half way out and sure enuff the card fried

All im saying is pay attention and make sure its totally in.. youll know when its in place
 
Edit: Ah, I've got that fixed!

But, take a look at this...




According to my Advanced Settings for my display, it's still using 1.5 GB of ram. I only have 3.5 GB in my system (total = 4GB, but I am running Vista 32-bit). Does this mean that my PC is acting as if it only has 2GB of ram? I did what Atomic said and used the device manager to uninstall my previous display driver, but it seems as though the machine is still trying to used shared memory to enhance the card.

Am I right about this? If so, is there another way to disable the onboard memory? Or did I do it wrong? :(

I do have to say, though, I am quite glad that upgrading my memory and video card has improved my Overall Index Rating from 3.0 to 4.5! Simply from the graphics sections haha
 
I've checked in the bios, but the only thing I can do is set the primary video device, which is currently on PCI. Should I try changing it to PCI-E?
 
If you have that option, yes it should be set to PCI-E.



According to my Advanced Settings for my display, it's still using 1.5 GB of ram. I only have 3.5 GB in my system (total = 4GB, but I am running Vista 32-bit). Does this mean that my PC is acting as if it only has 2GB of ram? I did what Atomic said and used the device manager to uninstall my previous display driver, but it seems as though the machine is still trying to used shared memory to enhance the card.
That's normal. Windows Vista has its own Shared System Memory used by the video subsystem. It has nothing to do with your hardware (other than being limited by the available system RAM you have) or any BIOS settings. All systems get Shared System Memory for the video subsystem.

In Windows Vista all video memory is managed by the operating system, dedicated and shared alike. Windows Vista has added the concept of Shared System Memory for the video subsystem. It handles swapping to the higher-speed dedicated memory as needed to optimize performance.

I have Vista x64 with an 8800GT 512MB card and it shows it as having 1791MB of shared system memory.


The reason you only see 3.5GB of total system memory is that Vista x32 can not address more than 4GB RAM.

Here's the Microsoft article on this subject: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us
 
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