My current PC uses a Giga-Byte GA7VRXP board, XP1800 cpu and a Radeon 9600 Pro AIW video card with Catalyst 3.7. It refuses to operate at anything but 1X AGP. The mobo bios is set for 4X (it's max) and the card has 8X capability. In the display setting 'SmartGart' tab, if you set it to 4X it reverts to 1X upon restart. System performance seems to be low for this set-up.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks
M Board / Radeon issue
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Apoptosis
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Well I'd personally try a few things.
1) Update the motherboard BIOS
BIOS version F12 is out (2002/11/5) it is located RIGHT HERE. I would make sure you have your system updated to this BIOS.
2) Uninstall and remove the old ATI 3.7 files
3) Reboot and install the new ATI 3.9 Cats
If you are using an ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON you should install the appropriate WDM capture drivers prior to installing the display drivers. The WDM capture drivers will be needed in order to have capture support available.
Once you update the BIOS load optimized defaults and give it a try!
Good Luck and let me know,
Nathan Kirsch
1) Update the motherboard BIOS
BIOS version F12 is out (2002/11/5) it is located RIGHT HERE. I would make sure you have your system updated to this BIOS.
2) Uninstall and remove the old ATI 3.7 files
3) Reboot and install the new ATI 3.9 Cats
If you are using an ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON you should install the appropriate WDM capture drivers prior to installing the display drivers. The WDM capture drivers will be needed in order to have capture support available.
Once you update the BIOS load optimized defaults and give it a try!
Good Luck and let me know,
Nathan Kirsch
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Illuminati
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Thanks for your replies.
Firstly I should say that I've already had three different Catalyst versions installed. The version that shipped with the video card was older and also would only operate at 1X AGP. So I went thru the process of installing Cat 3.9 and not only did it also operate at 1X, it seemed to conflict with one of my frequently used games (IL-2 Sturmovik) and the game wouldn't run.
At that point I checked out UbiSoft's forum. The users there recommended Cat 3.7 as the version that seemed to have the least issues and was most likely to be trouble free. When I installed 3.7 it worked as they said, and now all my software runs fairly well. However, I am using Win98se and plan to reformat my back-up drive with XP and install everything on it to see how it all works. If it's better, I'll stay with XP, but I don't think that the OS is at fault in this case.
As far as the bios is concerned I downloaded and installed the new version as recommended. The install seemed to go cleanly and the new bios has more features than the old, and runs fine. However the AGP issue is unchanged and although the PC otherwise is OK, it still won't operate at 4X.
I use CPU-Z to get current status.
??
1) Should I reinstall Cat 3.9 and maybe have to go back to 3.7? (Time consuming)
2) Do you believe that it's actually a driver problem?
3) Could it be a defective card? (RMA issue as it's only about a month old)
Maybe in the meantime I'll reinstall my Radeon 8500 and test it, which I hadn't done before. If it works at 4X, that may point to the new card as the problem.
Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks
Firstly I should say that I've already had three different Catalyst versions installed. The version that shipped with the video card was older and also would only operate at 1X AGP. So I went thru the process of installing Cat 3.9 and not only did it also operate at 1X, it seemed to conflict with one of my frequently used games (IL-2 Sturmovik) and the game wouldn't run.
At that point I checked out UbiSoft's forum. The users there recommended Cat 3.7 as the version that seemed to have the least issues and was most likely to be trouble free. When I installed 3.7 it worked as they said, and now all my software runs fairly well. However, I am using Win98se and plan to reformat my back-up drive with XP and install everything on it to see how it all works. If it's better, I'll stay with XP, but I don't think that the OS is at fault in this case.
As far as the bios is concerned I downloaded and installed the new version as recommended. The install seemed to go cleanly and the new bios has more features than the old, and runs fine. However the AGP issue is unchanged and although the PC otherwise is OK, it still won't operate at 4X.
I use CPU-Z to get current status.
??
1) Should I reinstall Cat 3.9 and maybe have to go back to 3.7? (Time consuming)
2) Do you believe that it's actually a driver problem?
3) Could it be a defective card? (RMA issue as it's only about a month old)
Maybe in the meantime I'll reinstall my Radeon 8500 and test it, which I hadn't done before. If it works at 4X, that may point to the new card as the problem.
Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks
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Illuminati
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My hunch now is that if you go ahead and install Windows XP, everything will work just fine. I am guessing that there could be an OS problem with the AIW9600Pro and Win98. Do you have the retail box? does it say that it supports Windows 98? I'm starting to see a lot of system requirements of just Windows XP/2000/ME on the bottom of boxes. If it does... and a Windows XP install still doesn't fix it... then I would agree that you have a bad card.
Good luck and let us know how the 8500 testing goes... although that may not rule out the possibility of an incompatability between the AIW9600Pro and Win98.
Good luck and let us know how the 8500 testing goes... although that may not rule out the possibility of an incompatability between the AIW9600Pro and Win98.
Sorry for the long delay in replying....
In answer to Illuminati's question ATI does state that the card is Win98 compatable, however I believe that they use the ME drivers.
It took a while but I did resolve the problem. It seems that there was a problem with my VIA agp driver. I downloaded and installed ver. 4.30 and and the issue disappeared. Your responses got me going in the right direction and I was able to come up with a solution, thanks.
Having that out of the way, I've since installed XP. I don't think that these AIW cards really work properly with Win98 as some of the cards functions were erratic (ME drivers???). Things such as time shifting and scheduled recording seemed only to work when they felt like it, and now they work fine.
I haven't benchmarked anything yet as I've got a few XP related software incompatabilites to clear up first, and I may need your good advice again. When I'm done I'll post benchmark differences for anybody that's interested if XP is faster or slower on this type of system.
Cheers
In answer to Illuminati's question ATI does state that the card is Win98 compatable, however I believe that they use the ME drivers.
It took a while but I did resolve the problem. It seems that there was a problem with my VIA agp driver. I downloaded and installed ver. 4.30 and and the issue disappeared. Your responses got me going in the right direction and I was able to come up with a solution, thanks.
Having that out of the way, I've since installed XP. I don't think that these AIW cards really work properly with Win98 as some of the cards functions were erratic (ME drivers???). Things such as time shifting and scheduled recording seemed only to work when they felt like it, and now they work fine.
I haven't benchmarked anything yet as I've got a few XP related software incompatabilites to clear up first, and I may need your good advice again. When I'm done I'll post benchmark differences for anybody that's interested if XP is faster or slower on this type of system.
Cheers
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Illuminati
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