A7N8X Deluxe problem - graphics card not working properly?

[Peter Weir]

|
|
| > Your card doesn't support 8x AGP so don't worry about that. Your
AGP
| > aperture isn't meant to match your cards memory. It should be set
to
| > whatever closest to twice the cards ram plus 12 megs, so set it to
128.
|
| Ah - this I've never been too sure about. I'll give it a try to see
if it
| makes a difference!
|
| > You may want to check your AGP acceleration status by start ->
run ->
| > dxdiag.exe and you'll see it in the display tab.
|
| AGP Texture acceleration is enabled.
|
| >THe ATi smartgart tool
| > is know to have issues setting the AGP acceleration properly.
|
| Interesting one: from my experience with ATI cards, I initially
turned off
| the AGP fast-writes; Smartgart seems to be happy that my card can
run at AGP
| x4. I've just tried enabling fast-writes in the BIOS, but I expect
that
| smartgart will prevent this from making any difference...
|
| Peter
|

I have BIOS setup for fastwrites enabled and 8x and 64M AGP aperture,
but with my 8500 ATI card (64meg), smartgart shows FW disabled and 4x
mode. I did an in place upgrade of win2k when I installed my
a7n8x-dlx mobo (reinstall over current win2k install once mobo was
replaced). I have some faint memory of slower than normal video
response but can only suggest that I uninstalled and reinstalled the
ATI Catalyst drivers (am using ver 3.6) and installed nforce drivers
from asus (later upgrading to the 3.13 ver from nvidia) and my vid
card is working fine speed wise.

Can you run 3dmark2k1se and give us an update on the results. My
system resulted in about 103000 on the test (CPU: XP @ 2088 Mhz,
333Mhz Mem/FSB).

Just run twice, giving scores of 8386 and 8584.

Other info I haven't yet noted: in the BIOS, I have System Performance and
CPU Interface set to Optimal, Memory frequency is by SPD.

Peter

 

[Peter Weir]

Well it says right in the mobo manual, To utilize dual channel memory
feature install the DIMMs in any of the following sequence: sockets 1 &
3 , sockets 2 & 3 or sockets 1, 2 & 3

I don't see 1 & 2 mentioned. ;p

True, but as I mention, I expect that the m'board may get unhappy if I try
to use dual channel with two different makes of memory - so I'm making do
with single channel. Besides, I think the performance difference is only
slim (around 10% or so). Mind you, I'll probably give that a try before
long...

Peter

 

[Peter Weir]

Just run twice, giving scores of 8386 and 8584.

.... and probably worth mentioning that this is with all the default options
in 3DMark - run straight as installed.

Peter

 

[Ben Pope]

I suspect that article is slightly old anyway and presumes everyone
has either 32 or 64 meg cards, hence their end suggestion

Yeah, I did the the impression of it being somewhat old.

I never
said it would increase performance, although the context might have
suggested that I meant it would. I did see a more complete
explanation of the twice ram + 12 rule before, but I've no idea where
that was now. AGP always was a fairly nebulous technology, roll on
PCI express I say.

Indeed.

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

True, but as I mention, I expect that the m'board may get unhappy if
I try to use dual channel with two different makes of memory - so I'm
making do with single channel. Besides, I think the performance
difference is only slim (around 10% or so). Mind you, I'll probably
give that a try before long...

Dual Channel should be fine with the timings you are using now - you don't
need to match anything in order to get Dual Channel.

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

Yes: I've installed the nForce2 drivers (latest version from the Asus
website).

Thoroughly recommend the 3.13s from nVidia.

The Asus ones are quite out of date (unless you grab the ones from the ftp
site, but I don't think that they are mentioned on the website)

Ben

 

[Peter Weir]

Thoroughly recommend the 3.13s from nVidia.

The Asus ones are quite out of date (unless you grab the ones from the ftp
site, but I don't think that they are mentioned on the website)

I'll give them a go...

Peter

 

[Ben Pope]

I'll give them a go...

If you install them WITH the SW IDE drivers, and experience problems burning
CDs, reinstall without the SW IDE Drivers.

They work for me, though.

Ben

 

[Ed]

If you install them WITH the SW IDE drivers, and experience problems burning
CDs, reinstall without the SW IDE Drivers.

They work for me, though.

What doesn't work for *you* ? ;p

3.13s made my HDD (PATA) a hair faster with about 1.8% less CPU usage,
but other then that seems everything else slowed down a hair, Nvidia LAN
speed dropped some too, I never even tried to burn a DVD or CD and went
back to the 2.45s, but knowing me I'll probably try the 3.13s again at
a later date if I get bored enough, or just wait for the next
version(s). ;p

btw, I think the 313 drivers as a whole are made more for added
stability then any performance gains, but what the hell do I know? ;p

Cheers,
Ed

 

[Ben Pope]

What doesn't work for *you* ? ;p


3.13s made my HDD (PATA) a hair faster with about 1.8% less CPU usage,
but other then that seems everything else slowed down a hair, Nvidia
LAN speed dropped some too, I never even tried to burn a DVD or CD
and went back to the 2.45s, but knowing me I'll probably try the
3.13s again at a later date if I get bored enough, or just wait for
the next version(s). ;p

btw, I think the 313 drivers as a whole are made more for added
stability then any performance gains, but what the hell do I know? ;p

Yep... That seems to be the way it is.

Ben