How do I enable Side Band Addressing and Fast Writes?

[Ruahrc]

I have a GF3 "vanilla" and an Asus A7V133 Mobo. I recently ran WCPUID and the chipset info page says that fast writes are Supported but Disabled. The same goes for Side Band Addressing.

I checked my BIOS settings and saw that the listing for fast writes is indeed enabled- but WCPUID is not registering it? Also, I do not see any option for enabling SBA. How do I go about enabling this?

Thanks

Ruahrc

[ShawnD1]

To have fast writes support you need 2 things.
-fast write enabled in bios
-motherboard drivers


Do you have your motherboard drivers installed?

[Ruahrc]

Yes it's enabled in BIOS
I'm using the most recent VIA Hyperion's.

But it still doesn't show up.

[NDC]

Try using Nvidia Tweak utilities and it will have the option to enable (force) fast write. Sometimes enabling in the BIOS and loading the chipset driver doesn't seem to enable it from my past experience...

By theory, fast write should make a significant difference in performance. However, I noticed that it doesn't when benchmarking...

[Ruahrc]

Thanks NDC I downloaded GeForce Tweak Utility and that did the trick. Except enabling SBA causes War3 and Pocket Tanks to crash upon loading. So I just enabled Fast Writes and it seems to run okay. No idea on performance gains either.

Ruahrc

[NDC]

SBA is known for causing instability on certain systems. This also seems to be the case with FW on certain combinations of vid card and motherboard. The peformance gain is undetectable from my past experience. I just leave it at whatever default setting is.

However, on my Tyan Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz system with a Xtasy TI-200, both SBA and FW are enabled by default. I don't even have the option to enable/Disable these features in the BIOS for this motherboard. I'm not using any tweak utilities either. I never run my video card OC'd so. Anyhow, this system has been running ROCK SOLID since day one even with FW and SBA enabled so I leave it at that (not that I even have a choice unless I load the tweak utility which I won't)