Originally Posted By: daves66nova
[/quote]The comp works well with vga cable with integrated connection.vga on both ends. Comp is 2+ y.o. Win 7. Cheapie Dell monitor. Comp was brand new.Only 1 cable was connected at 1 time. Vid card was never connected before to see if it worked or not. It's a work computer. Boss says its alright to mess with. I use a vga hdmi connector to connect to card. Card has hdmi output, monitor only has vga
HDMI is purely a digital standard, it doesn't have analog signalling in it. Lots of those cheap HDMI-VGA adapters don't work or are poorly made unless you get one from Apple or Bizlink/Foxconn(who also supply the OEMs with their DisplayPort to DVI adapters).
If you're careful in the BIOS/UEFI settings menu, you can go in and under one of the menus(usually Advanced or Devices), you can check the graphics settings. Most of the time, that's set to integrated graphics first. You can change it to set the external graphics card as the primary device - it will be seen by the BIOS/UEFI as discrete or PCI Express/PEG device. Try changing the order to see the external graphics first but don't set it to external/discrete graphics only or you'll be pulling the CMOS battery or shorting a jumper to clear the settings if that doesn't work.
Most OEM-spec graphics upgrade cards from HP/Dell/Lenovo/Acer don't need the 6-pin PCI Express external power plug to work either. Only the higher-spec Nvidia or AMD/ATI Radeon cards need that.