Quake 3 Tweak Arena - Disabling an intergrated graphics card

Chances are that If you have a graphics card that uses the PCI BUS, you bought it because you have an older computer without a AGP slot. However, many computer manufacturers now build there computers with intergrated sound / video cards attached to the motherboard (basicaly as a way of cutting the costs of production) Because of this, it is impossible to upgrade to state of the art graphics cards as there is no AGP slot available. Whats more, the intergrated cards are usually built around older hardware (such as the ATI RAGE PRO). If you don't get a new motherboard, then PCI is the only solution.

However, it is unwise to install your new PCI graphics card if you have not completely disabled your built - in one first. To do this, first shut down your computer and enter the SETUP. Now, go to ADVANCED CHIPSET and see if you can locate " ONBOARD AGP/PCI CHIP". If it is there, then set this to DISABLED. If it is not there, then first look for it in the other SETUP options and try to see if there is anything closely resembling it. If not, then the only other solution is to flash upgrade your BIOS (Basic Input / Output Socket). This is incredibly risky and only should be attempted if you really need to do it and you know what you are doing. Visit your computer manufacturers website first to find out if you can update your BIOS or failing that try to find the manufacturer of your motherboard and visit their site. As a last resort, you can visit the BIOS manufacturers website ( usually American Megatrends, Award or Phoenix ) to try and find it their but this could be a long and potentially fruitless experience. Once again only do this if you simply must do it and find out how to do it first. After all, if you mess up your BIOS - You mess up your computer potentially irrepairably. You are warned!!

If you have got this far without any problems then well done!!! It is plain sailing from now on. Right, start up your PC and go to SETTINGS. Next go to CONTROL PANEL and then ADD / REMOVE PROGRAMS. You should then try to find your graphics hardware display driver (such as ATI MACH64 on an ATI RAGE PRO). This should be uninstalled. You will now need to delete the registry entries left over from your previous card - back up your registrt first, and then search for words likely to be used by your adapter - delete any entries that were from your old display adapter. Be careful when doing this, because if you delete any important entries needed by windows, you may stop your computer from fuctioning properly. That is why backing up before working with it is so essential.

Finally, install your graphics card if it isn't already and install the drivers for it. You will now find a much more stable system which crashes less and is faster than before. It's good to tweak isn't it?