problem with AGP on K7VMM+ mainboard

tueb · April 6th, 2003, 10:10 AM

Hi there,

Hoping someone can help me, maybe even someone else has had this problem.

My system:

Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB DDR ram
K7VMM+ Mainboard
(WinFast A250 LE TD MyViVo Geforce 4 ti-4200 graphic card 128 MB)

Problem: Getting my Geforce 4 ti-4200 graphic card to work

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The K7VMM+ mainboard comes with an onboard graphic card. Instead of this card I want to use my newly purchased Geforce 4 AGP card.

The card is AGP 4X/8X compliant and the mainboard supposedly supports AGP 4X - so the setup should work I believe.

I'm not a hardware expert, but I've installed plenty of hardware - I don't believe I'm making a 'beginners mistake' (such as the card not being plugged all the way into the AGP slot :-))

First I thought I was simplt supposed to plug in the new AGP card, and the mainboard would then automatically detect the card and use it instead of the onboard one.

This did not happen. I got no picture on my monitor, which as a result went into standby mode. This before my windows XP booted, so it has nothing to do with drivers etc. - I'm not even at that stage yet!

So - I thought probably I need to change some setting in bios. I did some reading up on the internet and it seems that yes, sometimes one does have to change a bios setting or alter a jumper setting on the mainboard to get it to use a card on the AGP slot instead of an onboard card.

However, I simply cannot find an appropriate bios setting (and I've searched quite thoroughly), and the 3 jumpers on the mainboard (from reading the documentation) have nothing to do with this. Only bios settings I can find are:

1) lets me switch between 1X / 2x / 4X AGP (AGP mode multiplied frequency)

2) AGP comp driving (apparently pertaining to currency - I have no idea what this is). It's default set to Auto but can be set to manual, and another setting can then be changed from CB to other two-letter settings (which I don't know what mean).

3) AGP aperture size. Default set to 64. Can be set to 8/16/32/64/128/etc..

4) Primary graphics adapter. Default set to PCI, can be changed to AGP. Documentation states that if the default PCI setting is set, the onboard card can still work and will allow a secondary display card to be installed on a PCI slot. I assume this should be set to AGP in my case (which doesnt change anything).

5) Allocate IRQ for PCI vga. Set to Yes. Kind of assuming this has no bearing on my situation.

But - no setting which simply states 'Use AGP slot instead of onboard graphic card', as I had hoped.

So.. I though maybe it was a bios problem and I just needed to flash a newer version. I did so, but all setting were the same..apparently no added features, and no change of my situation.

I'm hoping someone here can help me out, maybe even someone who knows the K7VMM+ mainboard a bit. (it's produced by ECS by the way).

Thanks in advance,

Tue Backhausen.

nurdonsite2 · April 6th, 2003, 10:40 AM

First of all welcome to TechIMO

did u check in the maual to see if there was a jumper to disable the onboard video?

tueb · April 6th, 2003, 10:47 AM

Thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, I've checked the jumpers in the manual. There are 3 jumpers:

1) Clear CMOS

2) CPU clock selector

3) Keyboard Power On Selector

So..not really any jumpers pertaining to my situation.

nurdonsite2 · April 6th, 2003, 01:26 PM

have u tried booting up with just the onboard video and then once in windows, disabling it from device manager?

tueb · April 7th, 2003, 04:34 AM

I have a WinXP professional installation.

Yes, I've tried booting with the onboard card, and disabling it in windows.

If I do this, my screen is of course still black if I boot up again with the monitor cable attached to the AGP card.

If I boot up with the cable still in the onboard card, the first thing WinXP does is to detect the onboard card and install the driver for it.

Somehow I don't think this problem has anything to do with windows. If I assume correctly, I should be able to get a picture on my monitor at boot time with the cable inserted into the AGP card, whether or not there are any windows drivers installed.

Sweeper · April 7th, 2003, 05:00 AM

I just read through the manual online "PDF" file. I too, did not see an option to disable the onboard video. Very odd indeed. Only suggestion I can offer: Have you tried the video card in another machine to see if it works?

Peter M · April 7th, 2003, 05:04 AM

If you manage to insert an AGP card correctly, the chipset integrated AGP graphics unit automatically disables (in hardware). Will say, you got a hardware problem there. Most of the time, it's simply the card not being seated in the slot correctly.

tueb · April 7th, 2003, 05:33 AM

Wow, I must say I'm impressed by the help I'm getting here - you guys rock! :-)

Yesterday I tried (to rule out the card not being seated properly) taking out the mainboard, seating it on a phonebook, to make sure the cabinet wasn't hindering me from inserting the card properly. I'm very sure indeed that the card was all the way in the slot - I simply cannot see how I could push the card further down!

Also, the fan on the card is running properly .. to me this indicates that it's seated ok in the slot.

So my problem seems to be that there's no option in BIOS or by jumpers to disable onboard video, and the hardware not automatically disabling the onboard card!

I haven't yet tried the card in another machine but will do so later today. However, I have a strong notion that the card is working properly. It's a brand new card. But of course I must rule out the possibility.

Dang it.. this is real annoying.. but thanks for the great replies!

complickated · November 4th, 2003, 08:34 AM

Hey there.
I had the same problem with my ATI Radeon on my board.

so the user manual said to install the card (physically), let windows detect it, (it will do this when you boot up)
and then it windows XP will install two verions of your video card.
(the first is your actual agp card and the next is a copy of it representing the on board card left behind) all you need to do is go into your hardware profile in your "my computer" properties and disable the second card in your video adapter list.

it worked for me and a few of my friends who had the same problem including with ATI and Gforce cards.

give it a try, ya never know.

Good luck!

Scooderman · March 7th, 2004, 01:15 AM

Hi ... I saw your post about not being able to use your Gforce graphics card with the K7VMM+ Motherboard ... I had the same problem as the K7VMM+ has an onboard graphics card ...but I had put an SIS card in the AGP slot and that seemed to work .. but was only a 32 mb card. When I tried to upgrade to a 64 mb Gforce I couldn't get anything on the monitor screen, so as a last resort I cleared the cmos using the jumper. I took the jumper off of 1-2 and put it on 2-3 and then returned it to 1-2, plugged the computer back in started it and it worked fine. For some reason that motherboard doesn't want to see the Gforce 4 until the cmos is cleared ... I hope you can get it to work .. and I hope I didn't send this message to you to late. ....