Huge problems with ATI video cards on my PC

[Michael W. Ryder]

You do know about AGP to 4x, and FastWrites OFF for all ATI
AGP cards ?? You can't run AGP 8X, or FastWrites ON on any
of those cards. If you do, they will lock up in games randomly,
but usually in about the first 5 minutes of the game. Reason
the OS doesn't lock up is because the OS drops AGP to 2x.
Go in to SmartGart, and change those settings, and reboot.
Do it twice to make sure the settings hold. That will fix your
problem.

johns

Maybe with some machines you are correct, but definitely not for all
machines. I am running an ATI 9700 Pro with 8x AGP and Fast Writes on
and have never had any problems with the card.

 

[J. Clarke]

You do know about AGP to 4x, and FastWrites OFF for all ATI
AGP cards ?? You can't run AGP 8X, or FastWrites ON on any
of those cards.

Actually you can and they work just fine on nearly all motherboards--there
are some particular combinations of motherboard and video board on which
this is a problem.

 

[KCB]

You do know about AGP to 4x, and FastWrites OFF for all ATI
AGP cards ?? You can't run AGP 8X, or FastWrites ON on any
of those cards. If you do, they will lock up in games randomly,
but usually in about the first 5 minutes of the game. Reason
the OS doesn't lock up is because the OS drops AGP to 2x.
Go in to SmartGart, and change those settings, and reboot.
Do it twice to make sure the settings hold. That will fix your
problem.

johns

That can't be true. Before I just upgraded, I ran a 9700 Pro @ AGP 8X with
FastWrites ON and never encountered any problems because of it. I played
HL2, Doom3, FarCry, BF2 without problems. The system was an Asus A7N8X with
1GB RAM, Athlon 2700+, all at stock speeds.