Change 9700 to AGP4x

[pelly]

I am experiencing some serious stability issues with a sample Sapphire 9700 Pro and my MSI KT4 Ultra. I can load any game, however roughly 10seconds into the game the system will hard-lock.

Here are the specs:

XP1600+ ( overclocked and non-overclocked tried )
MSI KT4 Ultra BIOS: 6590 version 1.0
(2) 256MB Corsair XMS PC3200 CAS2
420W Deer Power supply ( voltages are within tolerances )

I've tried the following drivers:

Stock Sapphire driver ( version 11-002 )
wxp-radeon-6-13-10-6094-efg
wxp-radeon-6-13-10-6166-efg

In the BIOS, I tried to change the AGP setting to 4X......Unfortuantely, the setting is greyed-out and cannot be altered. As a result, I downloaded the newest version of Powerstrip....There is a section where you can set the AGP speed.....I select 4X, though once I hit "OK" or "Apply", the setting goes back to AGP8X....

Does anyone know of a way I can force AGP4X as I imagine this would solve my problems?

Thanks ahead of time...

:D

[pelly]

Anyone?

:confused:

[pelly]

Frustration seems to be the word of the day....

I can't imagine the rage I would be harnessing if I had paid $300-$350 for this card and be dealing with this.....

:eek:

[jbirney]

Pelly did you try to post this over at Rage3d? If you do it in a nice mannor (not like some I have seen that start out .... this POS stupid crap ATI idoits.... as those posts for some reason dont get a lot of help) and they can help you with it. I have heard that newer BIOS can fix the issue. Sorry for your troubles

[pelly]

Thanks for the advice man....
I currently have posts at the following forums:

MSI, AMD MB, [H]ard OCP, Anandtech, Rage 3d, and here at nV News...

:D

[Gator]

Rage3d will definetly be able to help you better. Post in the R9700 forum. They have the largest 9700 owner databse of people available anywher eon the net. Afterall, this is NVNews

reminder to all: don't flame Pelly, he's very helpful here... and he one of the peeps running this place ;)

[pelly]

Thanks for the advice Gator...

I already have threads in the following places:

nV News
Rage3D
AMD MB
MSI Forum
Hard OCP

So far, no luck....

:confused:

[jbirney]

JR has the same card and he post here. However I dont know if he is running his at x8. However it is working for him :(

[jbirney]

Pelly,

after searching around the forums it looks like that x8 AGP does not work with some SIS/VIA combos. Tbreak in their review was not able to get it. I heard that you can get ahold of ATI and get a newever version to work. On another thread over the

Spent over an hour with ATI Customer Service Canada and more important, the Engineering Dept. The subject: Our testing shows the Radeon 9700 will NOT work at all on the Asus P4S8X (SiS648), Gigabyte 7VAXP (KT400/8235), and VIA P4PB (P4X400/8235) which are the only 8x AGP boards on the market. Customer Service was not completely aware of this, but Engineering is.

According to ATI, they are now receiving and testing these 8X AGP boards. They are ALSO finding the 9700 does not work at all or works intermittently at best on these boards. Engineering indicated most of the boards already shipped have this problem.

Solution: A new BIOS and some board revisions are now available that fix this problem. Call ATI Customer Service for help with the issue. At present, they will ship a replacement board that WILL work in SiS and VIA 8X, but they are also considering a BIOS flash solution for problem boards.

Customer Service and Engineering deserve a 10-1/2 for their wonderful handling of this issue. They are very concerned that it be corrected quickly. They also shared that most of their 8X validation testing was done with Intel's unreleased 8X chipset and that they are just now receiving shipping versions of the SiS and VIA 8X chipsets.


You can find tons of other info if you do a search at rage using the KT400 as that is the chip set on your KT4 Ultra. Good luck!

[John Reynolds]

Yea, my mobo is a ASUS P4T533-E, which is limited to 4x AGP. No problems with this board on my end, save for lock-ups in the UT2003 demo after I edited its ini file to enable Truform support. However, thanks to JB I've got to double-check whether or not Truform is enabled in the control panels when I get home tonight.

[pelly]

I've contacted Sapphire this morning and I am waiting to hear back from them...

:(

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by pelly
I've contacted Sapphire this morning and I am waiting to hear back from them...

Yeah, good luck getting a response. Methinks you're going to have to send the card back to them to get a newer revision that should function on your board. :(

[Gator]

Originally posted by jbirney
...after searching around the forums it looks like that x8 AGP does not work with some SIS/VIA combos...

me thinks AGP 8x is da devil. Maybe it's simply not ready for mass use, too buggy. I've been hearing far more people with problems making 8x work over those who don't have problems. I dont think this likely ATI or Sapphire's fault, 8x itself is just wacked

[MuFu]

You know what the AGP 8X problems remind me of?

The AGP 4X problems. Weird that.... :D

MuFu.

[jbirney]

And we all now the x8 AGP will buy us soo much..... (note just joking). Sorry while I love advancement in technology I find some of the PR about x8 rather funny :)

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

You are going to need to RMA your card. ATi does it quick, some got their cards within 2 days, so no worries. You'll be okay, but the revision you have on the Sapphire 9700 is old, the new 1.3 revision fixes the AGP issues.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

Wow, sorry to hear about the whole AGP 8x prob, I hope NV30 AGP 8x works on my mobo.:)

[SlyBoots]

Originally posted by pelly
Anyone?

:confused:

I've seen this fix posted, but it only applies to XP>

"The fix that I found that removed all my hardlocks was to disable write combining in Windows. Note that it should already be disabled in the Bios. To disable it in windows go to display properties --> advanced --> trouble shoot --> uncheck the box that enables write combining. After a restart you should be able to play BF 1942 with no problems."

note that was for BF1942, but who knows?

Mine works fine in the Shuttle KT333, and I'll be testing the Shuttle AK37GT [KT400] as soon as I can find a vendor. I like the fact they're making use of the P4 4pin connector....extra juice can't hurt eh?
:) :)

[pelly]

Bumping the AGP voltage up to 2.8V made the games run an additional 10seconds or so before crashing...

I think its safe to say that its a voltage issue....

:rolleyes:

[Hawke]

I built a new system around this card not long ago and kept getting lockups at both 8X and 4X AGP running D3D games, opengl had no problems.

P4 2.53MHz
GIGABYTE GA-ASG667 SIS 648
ATI 9700 PRO OEM
512MB CORSAIR XMS3200 CL2
ERNERMAX 350W Power Supply
WIN98 SE

You probably need to test with an older set of the VIA AGP drivers that don't operate at 8X AGP to find the right combination that works for you.

What worked for me was to do is install the SIS 1.10 AGP drivers, disable fast writes and set to 4X AGP. This is the only combination I could get to work with my setup.

I systematically tested a combination of running 4X / 8X AGP with the 1.12, 1.11 and finally the 1.10 AGP drivers. I was able to run at 8X AGP for longer than 10 seconds ( I could play a couple of rounds of the UT2003 demo before the system locked up).

From what I can work out any AGP driver later than ver 1.10 enables 8X operation regardless of what is set in the bios, which would seem to explain why it is now working.


It could be a regulation problem but I doubt it. At the moment I'm stuck waiting for a bios update from Gigabyte to test, the current bios for my board doesn't allow for voltage adjustments. The card would'nt even post in my old system a P3 1000 / ASUS CUSL2-C.

Anyhow I hope this helps you out, let me know If you need any more info.

[pelly]

I should have posted an update for this thread, though I did mention my "fix" in another thread in this forum...

It turned out, there was no thermal compound on my review sample card...Furthermore, the heatsink wasn't even touching the GPU core...

After lapping the shim, heatsink, and applying some AS3....I had no problems...

Thanks for the assistance though...good suggestions!

:D

[Hawke]

Not a problem I know a lot of people are having trouble getting these cards to work with the current 8X motherboards, although your case was extreme. No thermal compound on the core was a big slip up.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

Yeah, that could have destroyed the card. I found out my mainboard had issues with AGP 8x that are now resolved and now I have Hyperthreading! whoo hoo! now I just need a Hyperthreading CPU, lol.