Hello there,

I am new to NTcompatible.com. I have a sony VAIO with an SiS 651 chipset. I have been wanting to play some newer games and the graphics card that came with the machine is just not capable of running those games. After 2 years of just dealing with it and not playing the games, I finally went to the store and bought myself a ATI Radeon 9200 Graphics card in hopes of fixing my problem. Now I have the card installed but am unable to get my games to work. After reading some other peoples messages and talking with the SONY support guy online, I am thinking that my problem may lie in my inability to make the onboard graphics card secondary. Can someone help me with any sort of suggestions and/or help?

Thanks for your help in advance.

You need to DISABLE your on board graphics card via the BIOS Setup screen ie set it to 0MB graphics, then set the default display adapter to AGP rather than onboard.

Peter,

Many thanks for your suggestion. I will be trying this out and I will let you know how it turns out!

Peter,

Thank you for yuor help so far. I haven't been able to get this right yet. I went into my BIOS which is the Award BIOS Setup Utility. The following were my choices under the Advanced Menu, PCI Configuration:

Slot 1 IRQ {Auto}
Slot 2 IRQ {Auto}
Slot 3 IRQ {Auto}
VGA BIOS Sequence {PCI/AGP} - I switched this to AGP/PCI
Onboard LAN Boot ROM {Disabled}

After making the switch that I listed above, I was unable to find any other area to adjust the Graphics Card. Is there another place that I should be checking? Any advice that you have will be very useful.
** by the way. My computer is popping up a 'Found New Hardware' information box after the systems boots up. Should I go through that sequence?

Thanks again

In your BIOS you should be looking at some option labelled "Onboard Device Configuration" or anything that says "Onboard."

1. Download the latest chipset drivers and the latest ATI Display drivers at www.ati.com, the drivers on the CD might be too old now. The chipset drivers are probably at www.sis.com.tw or at the Sony support site. I am not sure with retail PCs whether or not you can use default drivers from SiS directly. Look at the Sony site first, your computer documentation should have website support information.

1. Uninstall the drivers/software for your video device, by going into Control Panel and selecting "SiS Video Software" or something to that effect. If there is no software go to the next step. Do not reboot.

2. Uninstall the video device, by going into Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager and uninstalling it from the Display Adapters section. Do not reboot the PC, instead select Turn Off Computer.

3. Install the Radeon card into your computer.

4. Turn on your PC and go into the BIOS setup. Look for any menu that says "Onboard" as this will likely have the option for your video device. Then simply select the option to disable the device. Exit BIOS and save your settings.

You may not even be able to turn off the video in the BIOS you might need to set a jumper on your motherboard to disable it.

If you need more information you should have a manual for your VAIO PC that explains your BIOS screen and jumper options.

5. Startup Windows XP, it should detect the Radeon card and install default drivers. If it asks for drivers just choose the option to not install drivers at this time.

6. Install the ATI drivers you downloaded, then reboot.

7. Reinstall the SiS chipset drivers and then reboot, this will give you a correctly working AGP driver for your card.

8. Install DirectX 9.0c off of Microsoft's website or the ATI driver CD, you can choose to install whatever version you have, but 9.0c is the latest, and the ATI CD might come with an older version.

Good luck.

hi,ihave a problem with my gecube ati radeon 9250.

when i plugin the monitor cord to the radeon card the monitor when blank after the windows xp loading.before this, its okay.after a while that blank monitor happened after i restart the computer...i'm really confuse...help me...

my computer spec;

intel pentium 4 1.8A/512/400/1.5V
asrock P4i45GV R5.0/E/M/ASR
kingston kvr 400x64c3a/256 MB
intel 82845G graphic controller./(gecube ati radeon 9250 128MB)