P
Paul
"Mary" said:Paul, I thought you might be interested. I have a couple of updates about my
motherboard/video problem. I got AGP texture acceleration enabled after
working for hours on the weekend on the motherboard/video problem (I must be
mad ). I tried so many different things I am not sure which one of them
worked. I uninstalled DX 9b with a DX Uninstaller and installed 8.1 and
uninstalled and installed ATI drivers - different ones than before, but same
result - no good. I was getting ready to reformat and thats why I was
reckless and had nothing to lose.I ended up putting DX9b back in sodon't
know what worked.But I still have what is probably the more important issue
of why the video card won't go more than 2X. Please scroll down.
Actually, after one of my experiments, that line is now VIA CPU to AGP (no
mention of AGP 2.0, 3.0)
Here is where you could be right that it is the motherboard which won't
allow 2X in my video card. In Powerstrip, Options/Adapter information a
couple of new things - the dot is now in DMA, but not in DIME. (It was in
Disabled before). (I think the dot can only go in DMA or DIME or Disabled).
In the AGP transfer rate, the dot is still in 2X, and I found when I took
the checkmark out of "Read only" on that page, when I clicked on 4X, a
message came up saying "Although the graphic board supports this option, the
system board does not. If you believe this option should be available, check
your system bios and/or AGP Gart driver or contact systemboard vendor".
How reliable is the Power strip information? If its correct, looks like you
were right, and gives an important clue that maybe there is something wrong
with the motherboard and the video card is OK. All along I thought it was
the video card.
Also, in Display/Smartgart tab, the slider previously only showed a maximum
to 2X, and after some changes I made, now shows 4X , but when I put the
slider at 4X and it asks you to reboot, it has gone back to 2X.
http://www.asus.it/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7V8X-X&Type=All&SLa
nguage=en
I did that, and the bios is now revision 1007, but didn't help video speed
problem but better to have a later bios update anyway.
Mary
I think my response to all of this is, congratulations! AGP texture
acceleration is the most important thing, because many games check for
it, and won't load if it is missing. (For example, now you should
be able to run 3DMark2001SE if you want.) The speed of AGP transfer
is a secondary issue - you'll still get some use out of the card, as
there is diminishing return with higher AGP transfer rate. In fact,
in some cases, AGP 4X on an AGP 2.0 compliant card (i.e. uses all
protocols available to AGP 2.0) can be faster than an AGP 8X
card on an AGP 3.0 compliant card. This is because AGP 3.0 removed
some features that presumably wouldn't have scaled well to 8X
rates. So, raw speed isn't everything.
If SmartGART offers you the 4X rate, but sets it back to 2X when
the Windows desktop reappears after a reboot, that means there
must have been trouble detected when SmartGART did its testing
after the reboot. At least this eliminates the BIOS as the
sole agent of the problem, as I've noticed that SmartGART doesn't
pay attention to the BIOS setting anyway. SmartGART must be
examining the same info that Powerstrip gave you, and picks the
lower of the motherboard/video card status register limits to
figure out what to offer in the control panel. (What I cannot tell
you, is if the ATI Catalyst drivers have any hard-coded motherboard
or video card info - like special case code for certain combinations
of hardware. This should only be necessary for cases where the
driver test at boot time would crash the machine, as if the bus
recovery mechanism works properly, the test should be able to
be carried out for any combination of hardware.)
Perhaps the new BIOS did something to change the device ID of the
AGP interface, and then the next time you used the Via 4in1
installer, a different AGP driver got installed ? Maybe you used
an older 4in1 driver, which had a different AGP driver in it ?
I think the significant difference is the "VIA CPU to AGP" thing.
Somehow you got a different driver, and it is working better.
At this point, if you benchmark it and are happy with the results,
you could keep your system as is. If not, then you could swap
some hardware, on the off chance that things could get better.
I'd suggest contacting tech support at ATI and/or Asus, to find out
if the lack of 4X is a known problem, but the odds of getting
an answer are pretty limited.
Now that the Via end of things is "fixed", maybe running through
the series of ATI Catalyst driver versions again might help.
Only if you have the stomach for more reboots
Paul