ATI 9800 Pro will only Run 4x on my Asus PC-DL Dual Xeon System - HELP!

My problem is that my graphics card will only run in 4x not 8x.

My system is based on the ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Dual Xeon Motherboard with
2 x 3.06Ghz CPUs & 8x AGP slop. I have 2 x 512Mb PC2700 (PC333)
Memory. 2 x 160Gb SATA Harddrives (Raid 0). My graphics card is an
ATI 9800 Pro (128Mb).

My OS is Windows XP Pro (For my sins)

I have the latest 1003 BIOS from Asus.
I downloaded the latest drivers for the graphics card (as of today).

I enter the display setup, go to the tab that refers to AGP speed
(can't remember that tab name.). The slider shows it is set to 4x. I
slide it to 8x and apply. Windows XP asks me to reboot, I say yes.
Upon reloading the screen is slow to update and after a few seconds
flickers and stablises. I enter the display setup again and the
slider has returned to 4x!

I am a systems engineer with many years experience (not to say I don't
mess up once in a while) but I am *fairly* confident it is nothing
related to jumper settings or "is it plugged in right?"

I would love to fix this issue as it is really bugging me that I have
spent £250 on a card that isn't running at its full potential.

Is my graphics card compatible with my motherboard?

Your help would be greatly welcomed.

Regards,

Christopher Howarth
E-mail: --
Web: http://www.kitt.net

In article ,
(Christopher Howarth) wrote:

My problem is that my graphics card will only run in 4x not 8x.

My system is based on the ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Dual Xeon Motherboard with
2 x 3.06Ghz CPUs & 8x AGP slop. I have 2 x 512Mb PC2700 (PC333)
Memory. 2 x 160Gb SATA Harddrives (Raid 0). My graphics card is an
ATI 9800 Pro (128Mb).

My OS is Windows XP Pro (For my sins)

I have the latest 1003 BIOS from Asus.
I downloaded the latest drivers for the graphics card (as of today).

I enter the display setup, go to the tab that refers to AGP speed
(can't remember that tab name.). The slider shows it is set to 4x. I
slide it to 8x and apply. Windows XP asks me to reboot, I say yes.
Upon reloading the screen is slow to update and after a few seconds
flickers and stablises. I enter the display setup again and the
slider has returned to 4x!

I am a systems engineer with many years experience (not to say I don't
mess up once in a while) but I am *fairly* confident it is nothing
related to jumper settings or "is it plugged in right?"

I would love to fix this issue as it is really bugging me that I have
spent £250 on a card that isn't running at its full potential.

Is my graphics card compatible with my motherboard?

Your help would be greatly welcomed.

Regards,

Christopher Howarth
E-mail: --
Web: http://www.kitt.net

The SmartGART tab is supposed to give you Wihdows level control over
your AGP functionality. When you change the settings, the next time
Windows boots, SmartGART does a test, just as the Windows desktop is
appearing. It tries a setting, and if the software detects trouble
accessing the video card, it reduces the speed or turns off the offending
features, until the software thinks the interface is stable.

In my experience, SmartGART also ignores the AGP speed setting in the
BIOS. At least the versions of Catalyst I've tried have done that. That
is bad if you are having trouble and would like to limit how far the
SmartGART software goes with the 1X/2X/4X/8X speed setting. For example,
the first Catalyst driver I tried would _crash_ when the SmartGART
test was run. If I had BIOS control, I could have reduced the max AGP
setting and got back into Windows. With SmartGART I didn't have that
option. Since SmartGART works a lot better now, maybe this is less of
a concern.

With regard to AGP settings, before SmartGART came along, the Asus
BIOS was capable of influencing what happens to your choice of video
card. It seems in some cases, if Asu detects a certain video chip
plugged into the AGP slot, they limit the feature set to give stable
operation. This annoys most users, because the users are convinced
that there is a way to enable the max transfer rate, when in fact
Asus already knows there would be trouble. Now, with SmartGART
involved, the user is once again in control, and as long as the
SmartGART software is convinced that the Asus motherboard can handle
the card, it will try to enable whatever features it thinks will work.

So, what to make of this rambling explanation ? If you don't like the
current Catalyst driver, try another version. I'm sure each of them has
particular quirks that may please or annoy, and only more testing
on your part will discover the good version. You can try Googling
on "Catalyst", to see if any particular versions are real dogs or not,
or visit the forums of abxzone.com and see if there is a consensus
on the best version there.

Since the performance difference between 4X and 8X is not going to be
that awe inspiring anyway, if you cannot get past 4X, don't
worry, be happy :-)

What you paid £250 for, was multi-GB per second video memory bandwidth
and multiple pixel pipelines. These are what give you the performance,
that and high clock rates for video chip and video memory. When a
video card has 128 or 256MB of memory on the card, there is hardly a
reason for a game to be transferring textures to the card during game
play (they are loaded before the level starts). So, in real world
scenarios, the AGP speed isn't an issue.

HTH,
Paul

did you install the m/board drivers as I've seen a similiar thing on other
boards when the drivers were not installed.

"Paul" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Christopher Howarth) wrote:

My problem is that my graphics card will only run in 4x not 8x.

My system is based on the ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Dual Xeon Motherboard with
2 x 3.06Ghz CPUs & 8x AGP slop. I have 2 x 512Mb PC2700 (PC333)
Memory. 2 x 160Gb SATA Harddrives (Raid 0). My graphics card is an
ATI 9800 Pro (128Mb).

My OS is Windows XP Pro (For my sins)

I have the latest 1003 BIOS from Asus.
I downloaded the latest drivers for the graphics card (as of today).

I enter the display setup, go to the tab that refers to AGP speed
(can't remember that tab name.). The slider shows it is set to 4x. I
slide it to 8x and apply. Windows XP asks me to reboot, I say yes.
Upon reloading the screen is slow to update and after a few seconds
flickers and stablises. I enter the display setup again and the
slider has returned to 4x!

I am a systems engineer with many years experience (not to say I don't
mess up once in a while) but I am *fairly* confident it is nothing
related to jumper settings or "is it plugged in right?"

I would love to fix this issue as it is really bugging me that I have
spent £250 on a card that isn't running at its full potential.

Is my graphics card compatible with my motherboard?

Your help would be greatly welcomed.

Regards,

Christopher Howarth
E-mail: --
Web: http://www.kitt.net

The SmartGART tab is supposed to give you Wihdows level control over
your AGP functionality. When you change the settings, the next time
Windows boots, SmartGART does a test, just as the Windows desktop is
appearing. It tries a setting, and if the software detects trouble
accessing the video card, it reduces the speed or turns off the offending
features, until the software thinks the interface is stable.

In my experience, SmartGART also ignores the AGP speed setting in the
BIOS. At least the versions of Catalyst I've tried have done that. That
is bad if you are having trouble and would like to limit how far the
SmartGART software goes with the 1X/2X/4X/8X speed setting. For example,
the first Catalyst driver I tried would _crash_ when the SmartGART
test was run. If I had BIOS control, I could have reduced the max AGP
setting and got back into Windows. With SmartGART I didn't have that
option. Since SmartGART works a lot better now, maybe this is less of
a concern.

With regard to AGP settings, before SmartGART came along, the Asus
BIOS was capable of influencing what happens to your choice of video
card. It seems in some cases, if Asu detects a certain video chip
plugged into the AGP slot, they limit the feature set to give stable
operation. This annoys most users, because the users are convinced
that there is a way to enable the max transfer rate, when in fact
Asus already knows there would be trouble. Now, with SmartGART
involved, the user is once again in control, and as long as the
SmartGART software is convinced that the Asus motherboard can handle
the card, it will try to enable whatever features it thinks will work.

So, what to make of this rambling explanation ? If you don't like the
current Catalyst driver, try another version. I'm sure each of them has
particular quirks that may please or annoy, and only more testing
on your part will discover the good version. You can try Googling
on "Catalyst", to see if any particular versions are real dogs or not,
or visit the forums of abxzone.com and see if there is a consensus
on the best version there.

Since the performance difference between 4X and 8X is not going to be
that awe inspiring anyway, if you cannot get past 4X, don't
worry, be happy :-)

What you paid £250 for, was multi-GB per second video memory bandwidth
and multiple pixel pipelines. These are what give you the performance,
that and high clock rates for video chip and video memory. When a
video card has 128 or 256MB of memory on the card, there is hardly a
reason for a game to be transferring textures to the card during game
play (they are loaded before the level starts). So, in real world
scenarios, the AGP speed isn't an issue.

HTH,
Paul