Upgrading(?) friends PC

[Tullphan]

A buddy of mine want's me to upgrade his PC.
It's an eMachine with the Intel graphics onboard.
The machine has 1 gig of ram which i'm upgrading to 2 (max allowable).
My question is, will it be a performance difference if I install a 7900GT & disable the Intel graphics? If so, what will be the best way to remove the Intel graphics drivers?
Thanks.

 

[AzN]

In system manager. You should be able to disable onboard video through bios is what I'm thinking.

 

[nosfe]

the igp should automatically disable itself when you plug a video card in

 

[Tullphan]

What about the Intel drivers, though. Shouldn't I uninstall them? I know when one switches from ATI to nVidia or vice-versa, there's a program that completely removes all the drivers. I didn't know if I needed to do that or not.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

You shouldn't need to use a Driver Cleaner type of program - just the regular uninstaller.

In the BIOS, there may be an option to change the boot-up graphics from onboard to PCIe, although, as nosfe has pointed out, the PC should make the switch automatically.

 

[JPB]

Yea, Like nosfe said, the IGP should disable auto once a hardware GPU is installed.

But what is the rest of the hardware in the PC ? CPU ect ?

Just trying to see if it would be a bottleneck or not.

My brother last year bought a eMachines that had a single core AMD in it. I installed a EVGA 7600GT in it and the IGP disable automatically.

 

[Tullphan]

This one is an older Pentium D 925 @ 3.0GHz.
It has 2x512MB PC2-5300 to which i'm upgrading to 2x1GB (max available).
I'm hoping the 7900GT i'm putting in the available PCI-E x16 slot will be an improvement over the onboard Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950.

 

[JPB]

Improvement is what your looking for ? Well you will get that without a doubt. I would be willing to bet a 7900GT is ALMOST PROBABLY 90 times faster than the IGP.

 

[Tullphan]

The things I don't like about this machine is that it came pre-loaded w/Vista Home Premium, but will only support 2GB ram max.
Now...will y'all hop over here & see if y'all can help me out on another issue? LOL!

 

[kyzen]

Originally posted by: JPB
Improvement is what your looking for ? Well you will get that without a doubt. I would be willing to bet a 7900GT is ALMOST PROBABLY 90 times faster than the IGP.

90 is probably an understatement, especially if it's an older intel chipset.

 

[WraithETC]

Make sure to remind your friend to plug the monitor into the Video Card trust me on this one.

 

[Tullphan]

Well, I got the thing in there & guess what? The PSU didn't have a PCI-E connector!! Sheesh!

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
Well, I got the thing in there & guess what? The PSU didn't have a PCI-E connector!! Sheesh!

Most pci-e cards come with an adapter that allows you to convert 2 molex connectors into a pci-e connector. Look through the packaging and make sure it's not in there somewhere.