Graphics is it easy to change from ati to nvidia

hi all i have a 9200se and might b buying an nvidia 6800 will the change over be as simple as take the ati out and put the nvidia in or do i have 2 play in bios.As i read a few ppl who did this couldnt get there pc 2 boot up

 

Uninstall the ATI drivers, swap over the cards. Boot up and press F8 just before the XP boot screen loads and select "VGA mode". Then install the Nvidia drivers and your all set for gaming.

 

I switch video cards more than I change underwear. 99% of the time there is no problem. I don't even delete the old drivers (who knows I may bring the card back to this system). Anyway, XP is good about this type of thing. It will just load and use the new driver and if the old one is there it will ignor it.

So yeah, just pull one out and put in the new. Heck, put them both in and do dual video (its da bomb). Oh, guess you can't do that if they are both AGP. (and people curse PCI video cards tisk tisk).

 

Did someone say PCI-E?

Out of interest, why aren't there any high-end motherboards with dual AGP? Is it just that no-one would actually buy it, or is there a technical reason?

 

There would be no point, not like you play games accross 4 screens?

Also there was never any proper SLI stuff developed for AGP.

 

First of all, download the drivers (the drivers on the CD supplied are often outdated).
Now power down and unplug the system to swap video cards.
Then power it back up. It should try to load X, but fail.
Log in as root and type in "init 3" (do not type in the quotes).
Then install the drivers, edit the XF86Config file if necessary (if you read the nVidia documentation, it will explain how to do it), and type "init 5" to get back to X mode.

It has been suggested to uninstall the ATi driver, but I've had no problems with just installing the nVidia drivers right after swapping the cards.

BTW, nVidia isn't very happy with nonstandard kernels, so you may have to switch to a standard kernel to get it to work.

 

There is a technical reason or you would see them and of course you could play games across 4 or 10 screens - its not that technically difficult (or expensive) at all.

But AGP is a PORT (Accelerated Graphics Port) not a BUS. AGP only has provisions to connect two devices at a time (point-to-point). Thus, if you are a memory controller and you have some data coming from the AGP, you know the device it came from, you don't have to mess with the overhead you would have to deal with a bus (like PCI). So, AGP is very simple and fast when compared to PCI.

PCI lets you put any number of devices (you can have like 250+ PCI busses with some 30 devices per bus or some such non-sense). But each device has to share the bus with other devices and wait around for it to be empty. Then it has signal the bus controller that it is ready, only then can it start a transfer.

With the AGP it just says - hey, here is some data, run with it. The controller already knows where it came from and basically what to do with it. Also, the AGP's simple design lends itself to higher clocking speeds.

So that's why there is only one AGP slot on a MoBo.

PCI lets you put any number of devices, but then each device has to share the bus and wait around for it to be empty, then it has signal the bus controller that its ready, only then can it start a transfer.

On the AGP it just says - hey, here is some data, run with it. The controller already knows where it came from and basically what to do with it. Also, the AGP's simple design lends itself to higher clocking speeds.

So that's why there is only one AGP slot on a MoBo.

And yes of course PCI-E, but thats not a widely available solution yet so hush.

 

Did I miss something or are you just assuming he is running Linux? That is a rather silly assumption to make unless you have some inside info. Otherwise, you really should let him know your instructions are for Linux or you could cause a lot of confusion.

 

I'm running xp m8. Thanks for the help