Help: A7V133 and Radeon 9600Pro

[brucefurman]

Hello,
I am pretty sure that I have to flash my BIOS on the A7V133 mb that I am
trying to install a Radeon 9600 Pro video card on. I have illiminated IRQ's
as a problem. Having nothing but grief and headaches attempting it. I go
back to my antique vid. card and all is fine.
Also I have read that I need to upgrade the VIA drivers as well. Anyone
out there have some ideas?
Thanks, Bruce

A7V133
Radeon 9600 Pro
BIOS 1005A
VIA 4 in 1 drivers 4.35

 

[F.N]

1005A is very old, Get 1009 at the asus site.
What OS you using, what radeon drivers? And just what is the problem
anyway?

 

[brucefurman]

Thanks,
I will flash to 1009 then. That is the latest BIOS that I could find.
My OS is ME and I am using the latest driver as of 10-8 for the Radeon 5600
Pro. The driver was just released on ATI's site.
I am using the 4.35 VIA 4 in 1 driver. That is a question I have as well.
VIA says that the 4.35 is a good driver set for 98SE. However, with ME I
wonder if I could use the latest driver. VIA does not mention that. They
talk about 98SE or XP. They skip over ME.
The problems I am experiencing are many. (1).Random lock ups (2) Only AGP
1x can be selected in the Radeon Control Panel settings even though the AGP
slot on the A7V133 is capable of 4x, and finally, (3) I can not set my CRT
monitor refresh rate above 60 Hz, no matter which method I use to set the
rate as detailed by ATI in their help section.
I have looked pretty hard for others experiencing the same problems. But
there is not much info. out there for my particular dillema. However, I dug
deep in ATI's site and found a FAQ related to the VIA KT133 chipset
conflicting with some Radeon cards. But it was only the KT133 chipset on
some motherboards. I suspect the A7V133 is one of them.
But thanks for System Restore built into ME. I just put my old TNT card
back in at do a restore and all is fine again and ready for another shot at
getting it right.
Long winded explanation I know but thanks for the help and ideas in
advance,
Bruce

 

[F.N]

Ick. ME... the worst MiStake they ever made.
Ok, not setting the AGP to 4x is due to the VIA drivers. Download the
latest hyperion (that is what they call them now) and install them.
Don't install the IDE (Atapi) drivers though.

The 60Hz issue, that usually means your monitor is not setup
correctly.

For chipset issues, that is what the Via drivers are for. Also the
BIOS to 1009 should help.

 

[brucefurman]

OK, I'll do these steps and am confident it will work out. I think that
I have set myself up, un-knowingly, using the combo of the A7V133, the KT133
chipset, the Radeon 5600 Pro and to top it all off ME.
I do like system restore though, got lots of practice with that.
Thanks for all the help,
Bruce

 

[brucefurman]

Problem is fixed:

First I used msconfig in the Run command in Windows and went to startup tab
and unchecked everything except
Explorer and Sys Tray( this takes several programs out of running in the
background, in particular the Anti-Virus)
1. flashed BIOS to 1009
2. Installed VIA driver to 4.38
3. upgraded VIA driver to 4.49(did this in steps on purpose from 4.38 to
4.49
4. uninstalled all ATI drivers and used Drive Clean 2.0 as per instructions
5. set vid card to Standard Graphics PCI card(VGA) in ME
6. reinstalled latest 3.8 driver and control panel from ATI's web site
7. installed latest monitor driver
8. went back to msconfig and reconfigured all my startups
Lots of reboots later, all is well

Thanks for the input F.N.