I've been fighting this for months now.
GA-8INXP, AIW 9700 Pro, 1GB Corsair 266 RAM (Dual channel), P4 2.4 GHz,
E7205/ICH4 chipset, 4XMaxtor 60GB 7200 drives, 550W PS all running under
Windows XP Pro SP1+, DX9a, Catalyst 3.5 and MMC 8.5 suite.
Run at AGP 4X, FastWrites off (take a big performance hit here, about 50%).
Have also lowered Direct3D and OpenGL settings. I've also bumped up the
registry value for Memory Management System Pages to 0XC0000000 as per ATI's
suggestion (ATI Info-Base # 4217). System is more stable, but the following
is not uncommon (ie once every hour or so, shorter if I push the card,
longer if I don't).
When scrolling a window, system freezes or drops to 4bit mode (stuck in
device driver XP stop code)
Get blocks of dropout lines when moving a window (can clear by moving a
window over bad areas)
Matrix like DOS characters right after system reset, drop ed let ers in w
ndows dia ogue box s.
Get quick flashes of single coloured polygons (usually black or white) when
- running Animusic's PipeDream demo, particularly at the beginning
- when using MS Windows Media 9 Series visualization Rhythym and Waves
- running 3DMarc03 Mother Nature demo, which can also cause system to lock
up hard (stuck driver stop code again)
Can run ASUS V9280/TD Ti4200 (read nVidia) and ATI 8500DV at AGP 8X with no
problems.
I have ... changed RAM, run in single channel mode, bought another mobo,
played with IDE configurations, moved PCI cards, put in a beefier PS, ...
nothing seems to help.
Contacted Gigabyte and they say ATI device driver.
MS Online Crash Analysis says ATI device driver (I send every dump to MS in
the hope that ...).
ATI says nothing, and is very noticeable in their silence.
SiSoft Sandra 2003 notes the AGP device has a latency of 256 cycles. That
seems absolutely ridiculous. My Promise RAID only needs 96 cycles (and that
still seems very high). Can Windows XP handle a device that holds onto the
bus for that long?
ATI SmartGart allows me to turn off FastWrites and drop AGP to 4X. Anyone
know how to shut off SideBand addressing (as one post somewhere has
suggested as a possible solution). Gigabyte BIOS doesn't expose this
setting.
Also seen elsewhere (Maximum PC magazine I believe) are potential E7205
problems. Any one have any insight here?
Bottom line for me ... Why did I buy an expensive card that has the speed
and capabilities I want when, in order to get it to run, I have to turn all
these speed and feature settings off? Seems neurotic at best, schizoid at
worst. If I didn't want 9700 performance and capability I would have spent
my money on a cheaper card but more stable card. Do I feel ripped off ...
you bet!
I suspect this a hardware timing or data integrity (parity error) problem
within the card itself, or on the AGP/PCI interface to the system bus.
Yet ya know, when this card behaves, it outshines anything I've seen to
date.
Hope this can help, and hope I can get some pointers ... John
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