Video Card

My Computer was reformated, and not knowing that the video card was on the motherboard, and had no dirver, I now have colors only in 16. The display driver is comming up as Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) It did display in True colors. I bought a new video card thinking this would solve the problem, and now my computer thinks I have two monitors, and still plays in 16 colors. I have no idea what brand of video card I have (I have looked and looked, and have not found it yet) so finding a proper driver has been impossible. How can I find out what type of video card (I have asked the man. and they can't tell me over the phone) I have. OR how do I disable or turn off the original video card and make the new one the main card, and tell my computer that I only have one monitor. I'm lost!! Also how do I go about finding a driver for my motherboard incase I'm missing any other things on my computer.

Type of computer
GenunineIntel (Midwest Micro)
Intel Celeron
63.0 MB RAM
12.6GB HD memory

 

Welcome to the board!

Do you want to use the onboard video and return your vid card or do you want to use the vid card you bought? If you want to use the new vid card then you have to disable onboard video in your bios. It is done differently with each bios brand so what bios and version do you have? Are you unsure what brand vid card you bought or unsure what is on the mobo? If you need drivers for the new one and don't know what make/model it is, then find the fcc id and look up the manufacturer HERE. To find who made the onboard video then find the fcc id (if you don't already know who makes the mobo) for the motherboard (usually in the center) and go to the manufacturers website and look up your specific model and it might say and even offer driveers. If you need drivers for the onboard, plug'n play should autodetect it but I really suggest going with the vid card and not using onboard unless you want your money back from the one you bought. You will have much better quality all around, even if you don't use your computer for extreme things like gaming or graphics programs, ect. if you use PCI or AGP video instead of onboard. If you have the drivers for your vid card then all you have to do is disable onboard video in your bios and you are good to go.

 

I would guess from your description that you are running an Intel chipset with integrated video, probably an I810 or I815. If you open up the machine to get the fcc ID, take a look at the biggest chip on the board, it will probably say 810 or 815 or a similar number. If not, deuce_mn's advice will work, other ways are to look for a model number on the back of the system and search for that. You can also get the motherboard info from the bios number. This is the long number that appears at the bottom of the screen when you first boot up (you will need to use the pause key to stop the boot process) Write the number down and go to www.wimsbios.com, where you can look up the number and get a link to the manufacturer. To make the pci card the primary, try to find a bios setting for which video type to initialize first, this can be set to agp or pci, set it to pci and the add-in card will become the primary, at least that is how it works on my Celeron 400 with Intel video. I also agree with deuce_mn about using the pci card for better quality. All of the shared memory, onboad video (that's why you only have 63megs memory showing, rather than 64) are not as good quality as a real video card

 

swwelsh your link does not work for me.



Savvy

 

Me neither, sorry about that. This should work:

http://www.wimsbios.com/

 

yes it does


Savvy

 

Why would mainboard makers do this ? Why spend money to make this inferior integrated video and inferior integrated audio mainboards ? Why making us pay for it and then making us pay in time and money for real cards ?