[lug] Moving from integrated to AGP video card

[Steve A Hart]

Hmmm....In reality you should not even need to disable the on-board 
video.  Just plug in the monitor to the AGP card and start it up.  If 
that doesn't work, then there has to be a setting in the BIOS somewhere 
where you can enable AGP as the default video setting.  Might not be a 
setting to disable the on-board but there should be something that you 
can set to AGP.  I mean, the board has an AGP port so the BIOS MUST have 
a setting for it.

Bear Giles wrote:
> That was my first thought, but I can't find anything that would actually 
> disable the integrated video.  (Phoenix bios, if that helps).  I've gone 
> through all of the menus.  It would be acceptable to keep this video up 
> as long as I can set up an X session on the second video controller, but 
> it's not getting seen.
> 
> Steve A Hart wrote:
>> In the motherboard BIOS you should be able to disable the integrated 
>> video and activate the AGP port.  Once the on-board video is disabled 
>> it should look for any AGP and/or PCI video card available.
>>
>> It really has nothing to do with Linux but rather the BIOS for your 
>> particular motherboard.  If you have your monitor plugged into the AGP 
>> card and the system boots into the grub screen, then your motherboard 
>> BIOS is set correctly.  I would boot into single user mode, move 
>> /etc/X11/xorg.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig and then let X fail into 
>> the configuration program.  You should be able to pick your monitor 
>> and video card type as well as the resolution and then it will create 
>> the correct xorg.conf file.  In /etc/X11/xorg.conf your driver should 
>> default to be "nv".  It should end up going to the graphical login 
>> screen from there.
>>
>> Also, you are using an NVIDIA card, make sure you download the latest 
>> NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver for your card.  To install the 
>> driver, boot into single user and run the NVIDIA script you 
>> downloaded.  It will install the kernel modules for the accelerated 
>> graphics.  Just make sure to change your driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf 
>> from "nv" to "nvidia" then continue the to boot normally.  You should 
>> see the NVIDIA splash screen right before the standard graphical login.
>>
>> If you are running something like Ubuntu, the nvidia accelerated 
>> graphics should load themselves through the package management 
>> program.   Other distros may or may not load the driver automatically.
>>
>> Hopefully that makes sense.....
>>
>> Bear Giles wrote:
>>> Does anyone else have experience moving from an integrated to an AGP 
>>> (nvidia) card?
>>>
>>> I didn't have a problem with identical hardware running windows.
>>>
>>> On Linux, I went into the bios and tried changing the default video 
>>> driver, no joy.  X -configure doesn't seem to see video card either.  
>>> It's rather annoying since the integrated controller is limited to 
>>> 1024x768 under Linux.
>>>
>>> Bear
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> 
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-- 
Steve Hart
Professional Research Assistant
Systems Administrator
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research
University of Colorado Boulder
shart at colorado.edu
(303)492-8109