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I'm trying to use an antiquated monitor with my gigabyte motherboard and AMD Radeon HD 7850 graphics card.

Unfortunately my BIOS won't recognize VGA while the video card is powered on, so right now the card is receiving no power. Can someone explain how I allow VGA to run with my graphics card powered up?

I have Z77M-D3H Gigabyte motherboard.

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1 Answer

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A lot of older motherboards , especially those up to the core 2 era share PCI-e lanes between internal graphics and the x16 pci port. As such it is not possible to use the internal graphics adaptor and the external graphics adaptor at once.

However the sole DVI port is likely a DVI-I port and will output vga with a cheap passive DVI to VGA adaptor. You could use this on your older monitor.

Edit: In this case though, thats obviously not the problem. However now that I know what the motherboard is, finding a solution becomes trivial.

From the manual, page 48, you need to go to the peripherals option in your bios and pick the appropriate setting from the options -In this case IGFX

  Init Display First
        Specifes the frst initiation of the monitor display from the installed PCI graphics card, PCI Express graphics 
card, or the onboard graphics.
 Auto                    Lets   BIOS    automatically   configure   this    setting.    (Default)
 IGFX                    Sets   the onboard graphics    as  the first   display.
 PEG                     Sets   the PCI Express graphics    card    on  the PCIEX16 slot    as  the first   display.
 PCI                         Sets   the graphics    card    on  the PCI slot    as  the first   display.
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Considering I just bought the motherboard yesterday, I don't think it's old. – Unknown Oct 13 '12 at 1:56
You may want to update your question with the specifics of your motherboard then. Chances are the answer to your question is in the manual, so.. without that info, its just a matter of guesswork. Does Bios output after initial bootup with the video card? – Journeyman Geek Oct 13 '12 at 1:59
Ok I just have updated it. – Unknown Oct 13 '12 at 2:03
@BernieMacinflor This board is listed as discontinued for some reason, even though it was only released a few months ago. Anyway, your AMD card came with a DVI-VGA adapter; just use it and you should be fine. – Michael Hampton Oct 13 '12 at 3:18
hmm. Can you go into your bios and see if there's an option to set your default video device? – Journeyman Geek Oct 13 '12 at 3:41

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