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Re: [LUG] Graphics Cards (was Meeting in Paignton)

 

On Thursday 20 January 2005 23:19, Anton Channing wrote:
So let me get this straight, I thought AGP was the slot in
the motherboard for inserting a graphics card.  But from
they way people are talking, the graphics chip built into
the motherboard is also AGP?

I had, perhaps wrongly, assumed that using the AGP slot
would automatically override the onboard chip.  I had
never thought of looking in the BIOS.  I'm going to get
back to Debian over the weekend and try and sort these
issues out, I've been kind of busy this week doing
photoshop work.  Eventually I'd like to see what graphics
software there is for gnome, but I expect it will be a while
before I give up photoshop completely.  Simply because
its hard for an artist to adjust to a new medium.


HI,
It's been a while since I worked on component level stuff (not since the very 
early days of P4's). But the AGP bus used to support only 1 device reliably.
On board graphics chips can exist on wither the PCI or AGP bus - dependant on 
the type of chip. Nowadays I'd expect all to be AGP. Bioses may have options 
for turning off on board graphics - this option used to be rare, I don't know 
if it still is.
IIRC, if you plugged an AGP card into a motherboard with onboard AGP, all 
sorts of strange things could happen. If it has an AGP slot as well as 
onboard AGP I'd expect there to be 1 of the following:
1) an option for turning off the on board chip
2) special drivers to allow both AGP devices to be used - ie as dual monitors.
For the drivers, you'd have to find out what it actually supports - the odds 
are you'll be looking at the actual motherboard chipset drivers (ie what used 
to be the north bridge) rather than the graphics drivers. Whether there's 
support for something like this in the linux drivers I don't know - you'd be 
best asking on a relevant list for the drivers in question.

HTH
Jon

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