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Thread: A7N8X, "Primary VGA BIOS" PCI vs VGA

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    May 2000
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    Union City Ca USA
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    A7N8X, "Primary VGA BIOS" PCI vs VGA

    I had the shop that put my A7N8X system together use a Gforce2 MX 400 AGP I already had.
    Looking through the BIOS settings In notice in the Advanced section that the "Primary VGA BIOS" line is set to "PCI VGA Card" instead of "AGP VGA Card".
    The system works better than I had hoped (XP2000+) on every 3D program I throw at it including Trainz so it is hard to believe the shop put a PCI version of Gforce2 in there rather than my AGP Gforce2. I supose I could look inside but that is awkward to do the way the computer is placed and besides it works so well.

    If it is a PCI card and I switch the BIOS to AGP, will I lose the video or worse and not be able to switch back to PCI?


  2. #2
    Ultimate Member omega31's Avatar
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    Jul 2002
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    So. Cal. USA
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    It really doesn't matter what this is set to. The system will use whatever is available, so if it is a AGP card, it will use it, or if it is a PCI card it will use that. The setting is useful only for when you have both AGP and PCI video cards in your system. Then this setting will use whatever this setting is set to (if set for AGP, then the AGP card will be the primary; if set to PCI, then the PCI card will be primary). So, no, you will not lose video if you switch this setting.

    I really doubt the shop switched cards. If they did, the shop could get in some serious trouble.

  3. #3
    Gone
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    5,713
    All it does is tell it which vga card to boot from first not which to use etc. Like primary HDD is the boot drive vs. secondary. The system will still boot. It has its uses though. Like for instance. I flashed a ati card once with a special bios. It didnt take. So I had to install a pci video card. Set the bios to initialize pci vga first then put back in agp 8500 and reflash back. Then changed it again in bios. So it determinse who to boot from but still doesnt disable the other card. Hope that helped some.

  4. #4
    Junior Member
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    May 2000
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    Union City Ca USA
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    Thanks guys. I really apreciate your help.

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