GeForce 8400 GS turned off?

[Skorpian]

Hello TF people.
This computer got a GA-G31M-S2C motherboard and as it appears it's got an onboard graphics card. It seems to be conflicting with the Geforce 8400 GS inside it because the slightest games which run on a cousin's computer with the same processor but onboard graphics smoothly. Games like Swat 3, Age of Empires 2, Red Alert 2 aren't smooth at all.
This CPU is Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz. It's got a 1 GB ram and a 160 GB Hdd.
Also, it's kind of weird that my GPU shows different specs than the ones on the website. On CPU-Z it shows :
Core clock 459 MHz
Shaders clock 918 MHz
Memory clock 400 MHz
Memory size 256 MB
And on GPU-Z : Texture fillrate 3.7 Gtexel/s
But on nvidia's official website :
Core Clock (MHz) 567
Shader Clock (MHz) 1400
Memory Clock (MHz) 400
Memory Amount 512MB
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec) 3.6
Also according to GPU-Z, the GPU's temperature is always from 76C to 79C at idle or load, isn't that hot for a GPU?
Sorry for a too long post.
Thanks.

 

[Yami]

I doubt that there's a conflict, but you should have the onboard graphics disabled in the BIOS regardless.

Have you tried updating the graphics drivers, is my first question?

 

[Skorpian]

I did update the graphics drivers.
I went to the bios, and found 2 options : Permanently enabling the onboard graphics -or- Enabling it only when there's no other GPU installed. So I chose the second.
But it doesn't make any sense that this computer isn't able to play what a weaker computer can play. Could it be related that I've recently used partition magic to fuse 5 partitions into 1? And the games are on that partition?

 

[Thomas]

The specs will vary between vendors. I agree with Yami, Have you updated to the latest drivers? Also what os are you using XP?

 

[Thomas]

I did update the graphics drivers.
I went to the bios, and found 2 options : Permanently enabling the onboard graphics -or- Enabling it only when there's no other GPU installed. So I chose the second.
But it doesn't make any sense that this computer isn't able to play what a weaker computer can play. Could it be related that I've recently used partition magic to fuse 5 partitions into 1? And the games are on that partition?

That's possible, But most likely it is something your overlooking. Does your friend's computer your referencing have 1g of ram as well? I would personally start with a fresh format and install after hearing you merged 5 partitions. But that may not be the best or only approach but it surely wouldn't hurt.

 

[Skorpian]

Yes that computer also got 1 GB of ram.
I don't know if you mean a new windows fresh install, or a format of the new partition which resulted of the merging. I did install a clean windows after merging. But I can't format this partition as I got no place to back up its important info now. The C partition is too small to hold anything.

 

[Skorpian]

Bump

 

[Skorpian]

Bump

 

[Skorpian]

Okay problem got worse.
I wanted to diagnose if the GPU was the problem. So I went into bios and found an option called initial display device, which I changed to onboard and changed the bios settings to make the onboard opened permanently and now the computer screen is blank. What should I do?

 

[patonb]

Did you switch the cable from the 8400 to the onboard output?