Onboard change to video card question

[Jordan#1]

I have a packard bell computer with brand new ME just installed and all new drivers. Works great, smooth, and speedy, but I would like to change something. The video performance! Currently it has an onboard video chip (SIS 5598 Rev 64 chip-4MB max). There are a few PCI slots open to use. I don't care for the onboard chip.

Would it be possible for me to buy the ATI 16MB PCI video card (its the only 16MB made by ATI), install it and would it work?? Can someone tell me how to go about doing this?

Mother board is Biostar M5SIB
Processor is Cyrix MII-300 (225 Mhz)
I've got 192MB of Ram. 188MB available (current video takes up 4MB)

Thanks to all who help.

[Jimstep]

Most motherboards will auto detect the video card that the monitor is plugged into and use it. The operating system will still see both video cards, but that won't hurt anything. I've done this with an IBM that had an ATI video chip on the motherboard. Plugged in a Voodoo2 card and had no problems.

[Kureboy99]

You can also disable the onboard card in the Bios. I used to have an onboard video machine. Basically, just find where it is on your settings are for it in the Bios (some systems differ in location) and set the ram down to zero "0". Then choose PCI from the select video at startup option (or whatever yours is called). This should disable it. But yeah, most systems will bypass the onboard video if you install a new PCI video and set it up as a new VGA card for your system.

[Peter M]

SiS 5598 is not just the video unit, it's the core chipset.

The VGA unit in there does not coexist with PCI VGAs, and does not auto-disable either. So there must be some way of physically disabling it - by jumper, BIOS switch or whatever. Do that BEFORE inserting the new card.

regards, Peter

[Jordan#1]

in the bios there is an option to be able to assign IRQ to VGA. What is that/what does it do if I enabled it??


Note to Kureboy99: In the VGA bios settings the MB of video memory only goes as low as 0.5MB.

[NDD]

Please do not double-post. It confuses the members.
Another Thread (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104130)