Hi, I have a PC Chips M810L micro ATX motherboard, running duron 800mhz and atm, on-board graphics. I tried to install my old (voodoo 2) graphics card but the motherboard did not detect it at all. I tried setting PCI as the first graphics device but it didnt change and ther is no option to disable the on-board graphics. I want to purchase a new AGP graphics card, but i am reluctant to as it might not work with my motherboard. Does it work? Should it work? It could of been because my voodoo2 was PCI.. I dunno Please help, Adam
I used to have this exact mainboard, although I never used a PCI card. The way it works is that it will use the onboard video, unless you have a video card. I've alrready used my Geforce 2 MX400 (AGP) with that board and it worked. But I've had a couple of weird problems with this board, like hardware that I know works, but doesn't seem to on this board. It may be the case with your Voodoo2. But do you get a display with your Voodoo 2 , or do you hear beeps ? Can you boot into your OS with it ? I believe it should work, make sure you select the right option in the BIOS for the onboard video/add-on video card, and make sure you save when you quit. It seems dumb but it happens to everyone ! EDIT: Also, make sure the card is seated properly(should have told you that right away), and if all else fails, try putting it in another slot and see if it works.
oh, ok thanks. Yer it booted fine and my card (voodoo2) was inserted properly but when i plugged my monitor cable into the board nothign happened asif the monitor got no signal so i unplugged that and put it in the on-board port and the monitor came on. Thnaks for your help, I was thinking a tnt 32mb, what you think? I ony want a cheap one htat runs opengl as i play half-life regularily and my onboard graphics dont like half-life ;x
If you want a cheap card, you might wanna go with a GeFore 4 MX440 64mb which can be had for $60 cad at my local store ( which is $40 usd if I'm not mistaken). I can play Half-Life flawlessly with my video card, but it's only $8 cad less than the GeForce 4 so you better go with that one. There's also the ATI Radeon 7500 64mb DDR at $60 cad, I don't know which one is better, I'll try to find some info and get back to you on that. These are low-end cards but you'll find the performance to be A LOT better than with your onboard video, I know cause I experienced it !
You can go here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-02.html where there are various benchmarks for various cards, including the GeForce 4 MX440 and the Radeon 7500. They're quite close, one card wins in one benchmark, then it's the other. I heard ATI has a better image quality, although I've never used one (Actually I used an ATI Rage 128 Pro for a couple of minutes and I quickly noticed the difference between this and my GeForce 2 MX400, the ATI did look better, even though it was an older card). If you don't plan to do heavy gaming with your system : if you only play Half Life, then I suggest you to get the cheapest of the two.
