Intel Onboard Chip v ATI Card

[DellFan]

Bought an ATI Card - PCI @128MB memory - and installed it onto a DELL
computer using an Intel 845G Graphic Subset. The Intel reports 64MB of
memory - but shared - having 768MB of memory - do not miss it.

For games the ATI card is superb - for handling my TV Card - it sucks.
The Intel built-in to the MOBO works best. This has happened once vefore
- with a soundcard I purchased - a 5.1 surround dolby thing - but the
Intel AC'97 Intel Chipset worked best - the dolby lagged for video
recording - great for playback - but not capture.

I upgraded my system with some other things recently - a 300GB HD - a USB
DVD-RW - notably. Everything caused problems with this system which has
been dependable beyond belief by following the manufacturers suggestions.

Everything is working normally again - as I removed everything from the
computer - reinstalled XP without a Service Pack (as originally my DELL
shipped without a service pack). Installed all of the drivers -
including the Intell Application Accelerator (for support for drives over
137GB - SP1 has it built-in - but not specfic enough I found for an Intel
Board) and finaly installed SP1a after everything up and running.

No more freezes - system has been running for 76 hours without a single
lockup or reboot. Dependable again.

Have replaced everything but the ATI card. The main difference on setup
when the ATI card was installed versus when only the Intel Chipset is
used - is that XP does not recognize my Intel Chipset and so I must
install drivers later. I was running the ATI card OK - without lockups -
until I purchased the new HD - and needed to reinstall everything - so I
just used XP w/SP1 slipstreamed and turned off the Intel in the BIOS -
but Windows still recognized it - just did not install drivers.

I am back to before the ATI card now - just as prior - with a Ghost copy
of the system without the ATI installed. So if as before I Ghost the
system and then add the ATI card it will be just an extra card and not
primary for XP to mess with at setup.

My question is this - the ATI card is inferior for Video Capture (on my
machine) because it nor the Intel actually capture - they are just
displays - the TV-Card captures which is also a PCI - so for speed it
only needs to talk to the embedded chip on the Intel vs going back out on
the PCI bus - displaying and then returning to the processor again - so
does anyone have thoughts about just creating a 98SE partition for the
ATI card - after installing XP without it physically in the machine -
ghost the partition - and then install the card - disablg it under XP and
running it strictly for 98SE.

maybe it works?


thanks for thoughts

 

[Paul Rossi]

pos card pos chipset pos dell

Bought an ATI Card - PCI @128MB memory - and installed it onto a DELL
computer using an Intel 845G Graphic Subset. The Intel reports 64MB of
memory - but shared - having 768MB of memory - do not miss it.

For games the ATI card is superb - for handling my TV Card - it sucks.
The Intel built-in to the MOBO works best. This has happened once vefore
- with a soundcard I purchased - a 5.1 surround dolby thing - but the
Intel AC'97 Intel Chipset worked best - the dolby lagged for video
recording - great for playback - but not capture.

I upgraded my system with some other things recently - a 300GB HD - a USB
DVD-RW - notably. Everything caused problems with this system which has
been dependable beyond belief by following the manufacturers suggestions.

Everything is working normally again - as I removed everything from the
computer - reinstalled XP without a Service Pack (as originally my DELL
shipped without a service pack). Installed all of the drivers -
including the Intell Application Accelerator (for support for drives over
137GB - SP1 has it built-in - but not specfic enough I found for an Intel
Board) and finaly installed SP1a after everything up and running.

No more freezes - system has been running for 76 hours without a single
lockup or reboot. Dependable again.

Have replaced everything but the ATI card. The main difference on setup
when the ATI card was installed versus when only the Intel Chipset is
used - is that XP does not recognize my Intel Chipset and so I must
install drivers later. I was running the ATI card OK - without lockups -
until I purchased the new HD - and needed to reinstall everything - so I
just used XP w/SP1 slipstreamed and turned off the Intel in the BIOS -
but Windows still recognized it - just did not install drivers.

I am back to before the ATI card now - just as prior - with a Ghost copy
of the system without the ATI installed. So if as before I Ghost the
system and then add the ATI card it will be just an extra card and not
primary for XP to mess with at setup.

My question is this - the ATI card is inferior for Video Capture (on my
machine) because it nor the Intel actually capture - they are just
displays - the TV-Card captures which is also a PCI - so for speed it
only needs to talk to the embedded chip on the Intel vs going back out on
the PCI bus - displaying and then returning to the processor again - so
does anyone have thoughts about just creating a 98SE partition for the
ATI card - after installing XP without it physically in the machine -
ghost the partition - and then install the card - disablg it under XP and
running it strictly for 98SE.

maybe it works?


thanks for thoughts

 

[DellFan]

pos card pos chipset pos dell

that is what I know - anyway I did as I said - setup a partition for 98SE
and reinstalled the ATI card. I disabled the card in XP and disabled the
i845 Chipset in 98SE. I have a dual monitor which accepts input via the
VGA port and the DVI port - so when I boot over into SE I need only to
choose which port to receive signals from. So far no problems. Will let
it run for a few days and see if all is well. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Batman or Superman]

pos card pos chipset pos dell

If you're not going to help him, **** off. You have to make sure you
have anything onboard like video or sound disabled for it's replacement
to work properly. This is done in the BIOS not the operating system. On
bootup, press F2 or F1 on a Dell to access it and there should be an
option to disable the onboard video and/or sound. Then install the
graphics card. IMHO its not really worth adding a PCI card, sure it may
be faster than the onboard but doesn't hold a candle to AGP or PCIe.

 

[Sleepy]

*snip*

It sounds to me as though you have devices sharing resources that dont work
well together. One differance between XP and 98 is that XP along with ACPI
forces IRQ sharing whereas 98 does not. The way to get around this is to do
a fresh install of Windows XP without ACPI - either disable it in the bios
first or hold down one of the F keys during the install and select standard
hardware layer.

 

[J. Clarke]

*snip*

It sounds to me as though you have devices sharing resources that dont
work well together. One differance between XP and 98 is that XP along with
ACPI forces IRQ sharing whereas 98 does not. The way to get around this is
to do a fresh install of Windows XP without ACPI - either disable it in
the bios first or hold down one of the F keys during the install and
select standard hardware layer.

Before I did a reinstall I'd try moving the boards around--many machines
have two slots hard wired to the same interrupt line--if you have two high
traffic devices in those slots they can fight.

 

[DellFan]

Batman or Superman <[email protected]>
wrote in

If you're not going to help him, **** off. You have to make sure you
have anything onboard like video or sound disabled for it's
replacement to work properly. This is done in the BIOS not the
operating system. On bootup, press F2 or F1 on a Dell to access it and
there should be an option to disable the onboard video and/or sound.
Then install the graphics card. IMHO its not really worth adding a PCI
card, sure it may be faster than the onboard but doesn't hold a candle
to AGP or PCIe.

Great replies - all. Life is good again. In terms of speed - the PCI card
is not speedy - but it can handle graphics that the onboard cannot - so for
games it is useful. Working great under 98SE.

 

[DellFan]

*snip*

It sounds to me as though you have devices sharing resources that dont
work well together. One differance between XP and 98 is that XP along
with ACPI forces IRQ sharing whereas 98 does not. The way to get
around this is to do a fresh install of Windows XP without ACPI -
either disable it in the bios first or hold down one of the F keys
during the install and select standard hardware layer.

I did that and it works well for XP - but the PCI card is slower in
displaying video when capturing using my TV Card than the onboard is - so I
am running the ATI card only under 98SE now. In XP I just chose to update
drivers for the computer and selected Standard HAL - yes the video card was
sharing the IRQ for my HD which is a no-no.

 

[DellFan]

Before I did a reinstall I'd try moving the boards around--many
machines have two slots hard wired to the same interrupt line--if you
have two high traffic devices in those slots they can fight.

Did not do a reinstall - just created a dual-boot environment where the
ATI card works only under 98SE and the onboard works only under XP. Has
solved all of my probs. thanks