come someone please explain

[newguy5]

i have a 7600GT Geforce PCI-E card and separately i have 1GB PC5300 RAM (1024 MB).

my bios shows my video card to be registered as a "PCI VGA" and when my computer posts it shows 128MB of my 1024MB of total RAM to be "shared memory size," and when i get into windows it shows 896MB of total RAM.

when i go into my bios and change the PCI VGA to "PCI-E VGA," which i thought would be correct, when my computer posts, it is no longer using 128MB of shared memory, and windows shows my computer to have 1GB of RAM.

however, when i run my video card via PCI-E VGA and there is no shared memory on RAM, the performance of the video card is significantly worse, and i do not understand why (by "significantly worse," i mean the 3dmark05 score was 4000 when the video card was registered in the bios as PCI-E, and the score was 6000 when the video card was registered as PCI and the 128MB of shared memory was being used). the computer defaulted to setting my video card as PCI VGA and using 128MB of shared memory.

i simply don't understand why my card is working better registered as PCI instead of PCI-E and furthermore i do not understand why my computer is using 128MB of my RAM to supplement the video card under these settings. can someone offer some explanation as to why this is happening and whether or not it is correct?

 

[mattsprattuk]

try disabling your onboard graphics card if you have one, and make sure the plug is plugged into the 7600 and not the motherboard

 

[newguy5]

try disabling your onboard graphics card if you have one, and make sure the plug is plugged into the 7600 and not the motherboard

the plug is definitely in the 7600. honestly, i don't think there is a disable feature for the onboard video, although i know there is an onboard video.

but i'm reading in the manual that the shared memory is used to allocate memory to the onboard video, although there is no way to disable the onboard video. that's really weird. perhaps i should invest in a new motherboard to solve this?

 

[newguy5]

another thing to note is that when on PCI-E mode, the graphics are severely distorted in games and 3dmark05 as well--things are different colors, items are translucent. really, what could be going on? i'm highly confused.

 

[mattsprattuk]

in bios, try and find a way of changing the graphics to anything other than onboard, that should free up the ram. also, try re-seating the graphics card as once a graphics card is in place usually it deactivates the onboard.
other than that, try the ram in different slots (might help)
and also try completely removing the onboard drivers.
if you can, test the card in another pc to see if its the card, and your motherboard could be an early pci-e and not a 16x one. what sort of motherboard do you have?
try flashing the bios via the motherboard website as theres probably a newer one out if you havnt done so already, this could help allocate the ram where its needed and give you your 128mb back.
did you use the nvidia drivers that came with the disk?
if so, update them from the nvidia website.
right click on my computer, click properties, go to hardware at the top and hardware manager, then right click the onboard graphics card and click disable, this might stop it detecting the onboard 128 instead of the 7600.
try all these, let me know how you get on