AGP Woes... ;(

[Xorcist]

Okay, this is sorta sucking right now... as I just put together a new gaming machine, $$$ and I can't play the games I like. Here is the low down:

I have a Shuttle AV49N motherboard and a Sapphire "Atlantis" Radeon 9600 Pro. Problem is the card is running at 8x and a lot of games are crashing due to this (or at least this is what I'm being told). I would like to force it to 4x... thus begins the saga. (note my system is a P4 2.4b with 512MB DDR400)

1. With the installed ATI/Sapphire software I have no way of setting the AGP bus speed. Even though people have mentioned there is a way through the SmartGart tab, which surprisingly I don't have. (niether ATI control panel nor Catalyst driver updates added this either)

2. The motherboard manual shows a AGP Mode setting which would allow me to do what I need. Unfortunately this setting is NOT in the actual BIOS.

3. Flashing the BIOS to the latest version does not add this field and subsequently prevents Windows 2000 from booting. Nothing would let me past the screen with the white loading bar. Installation CD did the same. (reverting to the older BIOS let me back in)

So... anyone have any ideas? How exactly am I supposed to change the bus speed of the card?

[Xorcist]

Strange... I decided to install not the latest, but the previous ATI control panel, and that did it. The SmartGart panel came up and I was able to set the card to 4x, now everything is working fine.

[Gait_Keeper]

very strange 8x cards are supposed to be backward compatible

I'm not sure why you'd think that games running at 8x agp would be the reason for is crashing?? But glad you got it fixed.

[Xorcist]

Yeah I'm not sure exactly why this happens. It could be a combination of things, I've got a P4 2.4b (533FSB) with 512MB of DDR400 installed (which should be more than enough as far as the video card is concerned). A couple people told me certain games have issues with Radeon cards running in 8x mode. Lots of games worked fine in8x mode, mostly 3D FPS game like Wolfenstien - Enemy Terrirtory. However Neverwinter Nights and a couple others would lockup as soon as the actual gameplay began. Cutscenes and stuff worked fine, but once the 3D aspects were introduced... WHAMO! and the only way out was a system reboot.

[Auswak]

It is a puzzling problem.

It is not limited to ATI cards and it seems to be the 8X AGP standard with motherboards. I really don't think it has anything to do with the games as it also happens with 3DMark and even the demos supplied by nVidia

I had same problem with a FX5900 ULtra and MSI K7N2 Delta Series motherboard (nForce2) AMD XP2800+ Barton.

Once the AGP setting in the BIOS was changed to 'Disable 8X AGP' everything runs sweet.

I just hope that manufacturers come out with fixes for 8X AGP before certain games are released that utilize the standard.