Is there something fundamentally wrong with AGP?
 

Well, I know the answer to the subject, of course...

But there has to be something fundamentally wrong
with my understanding of the AGP setup, BIOS
configuration to work with an AGP card, etc.

I have two different machines (one has an ASUS
A7V motherboard, one has a newer ASUS A7N8X, with
PCB rev. 2.0, or 2.01 I think), and on both I have
been unable to make any AGP card work fine.

I just bought a new AGP8X card (an XFX, with nVidia
GeForce chipset), replaced the PCI card that I have,
and the monitor receives no signal.

The motherboard does not beep funny, so it seems
to be recognizing that there is a video card
attached.

But I don't even get to see the first screen, in
text mode! (the green led on the monitor never
turns on -- the led that indicates that the monitor
is receiving video signal).

After putting back the old PCI card, I checked the
BIOS settings, and everything seems normal:

AGP8X: Enabled
AGP apertu 64M

And two other settings that I don't remember exactly
(sorry, can't see the BIOS and use my computer to
write this message simultaneously :-)), one of them
is "Enabled", the other one is "Auto detect", or
"Auto", or something along those lines.

Is there something else that I'm missing? I would
be very surprised that a brand new video card (in
a retail box) just happened to be defective, at the
same time that I'm not able to make the other AGP
card work on the other motherboard? Sounds to me
like the statistics speak for themselves...

Any help/ideas/advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carlos
--

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 23:05:20 -0500, Carlos Moreno
wrote:


Well, I know the answer to the subject, of course...

But there has to be something fundamentally wrong
with my understanding of the AGP setup, BIOS
configuration to work with an AGP card, etc.

I have two different machines (one has an ASUS
A7V motherboard, one has a newer ASUS A7N8X, with
PCB rev. 2.0, or 2.01 I think), and on both I have
been unable to make any AGP card work fine.

I just bought a new AGP8X card (an XFX, with nVidia
GeForce chipset), replaced the PCI card that I have,
and the monitor receives no signal.

The motherboard does not beep funny, so it seems
to be recognizing that there is a video card
attached.

But I don't even get to see the first screen, in
text mode! (the green led on the monitor never
turns on -- the led that indicates that the monitor
is receiving video signal).

After putting back the old PCI card, I checked the
BIOS settings, and everything seems normal:

AGP8X: Enabled
AGP apertu 64M

And two other settings that I don't remember exactly
(sorry, can't see the BIOS and use my computer to
write this message simultaneously :-)), one of them
is "Enabled", the other one is "Auto detect", or
"Auto", or something along those lines.

Is there something else that I'm missing? I would
be very surprised that a brand new video card (in
a retail box) just happened to be defective, at the
same time that I'm not able to make the other AGP
card work on the other motherboard? Sounds to me
like the statistics speak for themselves...

Any help/ideas/advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Carlos

Look in the bios for a setting that specifies which video device will be the
*primary*. My guess is it is set to PCI. Change it to AGP...

/daytripper

Carlos Moreno wrote:


I would
be very surprised that a brand new video card (in
a retail box) just happened to be defective,

I wouldn't. I RMA'd a brand new ATI 9800 pro that wad DOA. You'd think
they'd test a $300+ video card! :-)

--

Stacey

daytripper wrote:


Look in the bios for a setting that specifies which video device will be
the *primary*. My guess is it is set to PCI. Change it to AGP...



Wouldn't it still work? I thought that just picked which of two cards is the
primary. I'm pretty sure I've had that set "wrong" with a single card and
it still worked fine.

--

Stacey

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 00:03:48 -0500, stacey wrote:

daytripper wrote:


Look in the bios for a setting that specifies which video device will be
the *primary*. My guess is it is set to PCI. Change it to AGP...



Wouldn't it still work? I thought that just picked which of two cards is the
primary. I'm pretty sure I've had that set "wrong" with a single card and
it still worked fine.

And I've worked on systems that if it was set "wrong" had the same symptoms
you described...

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 23:05:20 -0500, Carlos Moreno
wrote:

snip

Is there something else that I'm missing? I would
be very surprised that a brand new video card (in
a retail box) just happened to be defective, at the
same time that I'm not able to make the other AGP
card work on the other motherboard? Sounds to me
like the statistics speak for themselves...

Any help/ideas/advice will be appreciated.


When you're working with the newest hardware, be prepared for
surprises. First stop would be the BIOS downloads page for the
motherboards in question:

http://www.asus.com/support/download...A7N8X&Type=All

Even straight out of the box new motherboards rarely come with the
latest version of the BIOS installed. I would *not* recommend
grabbing the latest BIOS and flashing away, but I would recommend
using that link as a starting point for research. If you dig and dig
and dig and get nowhere, then *I*, being the reckless soul that I am,
might try flashing to the latest BIOS (if it's not already installed)
just to see what happens.

If you're an experimenting sort, you might try unplugging things
(unneeded diskdrives and whatnot) just to see if you can get the damn
thing to boot with your AGP card installed. I would also try
*disabling* the 8x AGP just to see what happens. And I might be
tempted to try underclocking, also just to see what happens.

What you really want to do is to figure out whether you've got a
dead/defective card AGP card, or whether you've got a weird timing
problem arising from new and relatively untested hardware. My guess
would be that you have the latter, but you never know.

RM

Robert Myers wrote:

When you're working with the newest hardware, be prepared for
surprises.

Wow... Surprise #1: I didn't really think that this was the
newest hardware. In fact, I was originally looking for a
cheap-o PCI card, but got this one because it was the only
thing I could find (well, in the "just above cheap-o"
category).

As for the motherboard, well, it's a relatively new model,
but I didn't think it was the bleeding-edge technology either.

If you're an experimenting sort, you might try unplugging things
(unneeded diskdrives and whatnot) just to see if you can get the damn
thing to boot with your AGP card installed. I would also try
*disabling* the 8x AGP just to see what happens. And I might be
tempted to try underclocking, also just to see what happens.

Ok, I guess I'll play a little bit with the settings before
running back to the store for an exchange (with the 20cm of
snow that we have today, a trip to the store will be soooo
complicated :-))

Thanks,

Carlos
--

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 09:23:37 -0500, Carlos Moreno
wrote:


Ok, I guess I'll play a little bit with the settings before
running back to the store for an exchange (with the 20cm of
snow that we have today, a trip to the store will be soooo
complicated :-))

I would start by using the jumper to clear the CMOS settings and
restore to the default. Since most users will have AGP video cards,
the default will support this configuration. If there is no hardware
defect in the video card or motherboard, then this should allow it to
work.
- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

Gary L. wrote:

Ok, I guess I'll play a little bit with the settings before
running back to the store for an exchange (with the 20cm of
snow that we have today, a trip to the store will be soooo
complicated :-))

I would start by using the jumper to clear the CMOS settings and
restore to the default. Since most users will have AGP video cards,
the default will support this configuration. If there is no hardware
defect in the video card or motherboard, then this should allow it to
work.

Hmmm, at this point I'm guessing I better go back to the store
for an exchange. I had touched absolutely nothing in the BIOS
settings other than the CPU frequency, and with that default
configuration it wasn't working.

I then changed several parameters in the AGP configuration, but
none had any effect (I tried the least aggressive settings,
setting the primary VGA device to AGP, ...).

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions!

Carlos
--