Disabling onboard video? intel dg965wh mobo

Bleeargh

So I went through the Intel retail edge purchase program and got their Core 2 Duo / dg965wh combo going, together with an ATI x1600 PCI-e video card. However, try as I might, I can't figure out how to disable the onboard video, and its leeching away my system memory. I've tried calling and emailing, I couldn't understand the guy on the phone except that any graphics card should disable it automatically, and the email was automated and didn't even address my problem.

So here's what I've tried:
disabling the onboard video in device manager
switching between pci-e graphics and auto detect in bios
reseating my graphics card
a different graphics card
flashing to a new bios version in hopes of more options

Nothing has worked so far. Any ideas?

Barrakketh

The technical support people are going to be reading from a script, and if your problem isn't covered in that script then you're SOL. You could try calling and ask to speak to a superior (who may just be a level 2 tech).

For now you'll have to settle for setting the RAM allocated for the onboard video to the smallest value. Some manuals for slightly older Intel motherboards have said that you can't allocate zero RAM for "legacy reasons."

Raere

Double check your BIOS. It might have an option to disable onboard video. I know on almost all motherboards, you can disable things like onboard sound and ethernet from the BIOS. It might work with onboard video too.

Deusfaux

you would WANT to disable anything you're not using in the bios, not the OS

capnrico

It will be in your BIOS.

naporeon

Also, it wouldn't hurt to actually uninstall the on-board video driver.

Bleeargh

I currently don't have any drivers for it installed, its sitting as a disabled unknown video device in the device manager.

The thing is, while there are clear options to disable onboard sound and ethernet, in the advanced options for video, there are only really two options: switching between 256 and 512mb of shared memory for the video, and switching your primary video source from onboard to pci or pci-e, which hasn't done anything for me.

Iroh

This is kind of obvious, and you probably have done it, but when you switch to PCI-E in the BIOS, are you saving your settings before you exit and boot up? This should have absolutely nothing to do with Windows.

Bleeargh

Yeah, definitely saving bios configs when I exit.

You would think it'd simply be a bios toggle, but this is rather perplexing.

Fats

Intel's manual also says it's supposed to automatically disable itself when you install a normal video card. I wonder why it's not.