getting the 9700 to run on a KT133a

[pam123]

For anyone having trouble with the 9700 I found this thread on viaarena after following another thread on rage3d and it seems to make excellent sense.
Another effective solution has been to turn off AGP read/write.
I suspect there's a close connection but it will take someone with more knowledge than I to explain it.


Thread Title: KT133A vs. R9700 & Win2k : Solution!?
Created On Sunday 6, October, 2002 3:45 AM



Seuss
New Member

Posts: 4
Joined: Oct 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 3:45 AM (NEW!)



Alright, bear with me here... this is my first post and it's bound to be a long one.

After extensive problems with D3D games hardlocking and even more extensive lurking of both these forums and the www.rage3d.com forums I believe to have found a solution and perhaps the source of the problem. I won't begin to tell you how many solutions I've tried before this, only to have them fail miserably (bios settings, power supply change, drivers and driver settings, latency timings, AGP voltages etc. etc.) but I believe this solution has fixed my problems for good and hopefully it can help some of you with the same instability.

Like I said I had tried many solutions, so today I read this thread http://forums.viaarena.com/messagevi...threadid=22789 which essentially says that Service Pack 3 may be the cause of the problem with the D3D/Infinite Loop bug. I had also read another thread somewhere on Rage3D that dealt with someone NOT installing the newest 4 in 1 driver set after having installed a fresh copy of WinXP and this had solved his hardlock problems on entirely different mobo and chipset than my own. Curious and frustrated that I was after not being able to use my brand new card properly I decided to try both solutions from these threads together and see what came about.

Soooooo....... I formatted my primary drive, set my bios back to the default settings and then tweaked it out to how I liked it (Memory latency settings, Aperture Size etc.) Installed Win2k as well as Service Pack 2, I then proceeded to install the newest Ati drivers (6178's found here http://mirror.ati.com/support/infobase/4081.html) as well as any other drivers I needed for the rest of my hardware. I did NOT install the newest 4 in 1's, I used whatever version that installs on it's own when Win2K is installed. I then proceeded to test extensively, I was able to get about 4 hours of gaming in without hardlocking once (UT2K3 Demo + Benchmark and Mafia as those seemed to be the worst games for hardlocking) whereas I used to only get a good 10 mins at most before my computer froze. Still Curious I decided to install the newest 4 in 1's to see if SP2 was really the single solution. I installed version 4.43v and started to test once again... only this time I hardlocked in about 5 mins... So I then began to backtrack, I figured the best try would be to un-install the AGP driver first and see what happens. So I un-installed the AGP driver and voila, 2 more solid hours of gaming put in without hardlocking once.

Now I'm not saying this is a definite solution but it is what worked for me after having tried several dozen possible solutions and having all of them fail. Hopefully it helps some of you out there who haven't had the pleasure of enjoying your brand new R9700 to it's full extent. I'm going to try and install SP3 but I'm wondering if it contains an updated 4 in 1 package or Via AGP driver, if someone out there knows could they try and confirm this for me??



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Seuss
New Member

Posts: 4
Joined: Oct 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 3:50 AM (NEW!)



Whoops I guess I should probably post my hardware specs

Asus A7V133
T-Bird 1.33Ghz
512 MB @ Cas 2
Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
Radeon 7000 PCI 64 MB (Yes I have 3 monitors)
Creative Labs Audigy OEM
Linksys LNE100TX(v5) Fast Ethernet Adapter



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Midniteoyl
Platinum Member

Posts: 4915
Joined: Jan 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 6:08 AM (NEW!)



Have you tried the 4.38 or 4.40 4in1's? They have a different AGP driver....

-------------------------
"To be absolutely sure, you have to either know it all; or know nothing at all."

XP 1700+ - Stock Clock
MSI K7T266Pro2 v2.0 - 3.5 BIOS
512Mb DDR266 - Kingston (Samsung Chips)
eVGA GeForce4MX 440 - 30.82
SB Live! 5.1
45gb Maxtor / 13gb IBM
Plextor 8/4/32
D-Link NIC
19" SyncMaster 950p
350 Watt - HEC
WinXP Pro (SP1) - Legal


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Seuss
New Member

Posts: 4
Joined: Oct 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 9:41 PM (NEW!)



Yep I've tried all the AGP driver versions I could find, here's the summary:

Don't work:
4.05c (included in 4.28's all the way to 4.38 4in1's) -> Hardlocks
4.20a (included in the 4.40 4in1's) -> Hardlocks
4.30 (included in 4.41 and beyond) -> Hardlocks

Work:
5.00.2195.2104 (included in win2k sp2) -> Work Great but a little slow
5.00.2195.3649 (included in win2k sp3) -> Work Great and a tad bit faster

Now the thing is, the drivers coming out of the Service packs are stable but obviously haven't been optimized for performance as I lose 1000+ 3DMarks when compared to the actual Via AGP drivers. I'm hoping some of the Via Tech's out there see this post and look in to the difference between the driver versions and maybe find a solution to these hardlocks while still providing some optimizations.... I'm also wondering how many other Via chipsets are suffering from these AGP drivers, could be a solution to the D3D Infinite Loop problem many people are having with their Via boards...


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Midniteoyl
Platinum Member

Posts: 4915
Joined: Jan 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 10:14 PM (NEW!)



Well, timing is everything



-------------------------
"To be absolutely sure, you have to either know it all; or know nothing at all."

XP 1700+ - Stock Clock
MSI K7T266Pro2 v2.0 - 3.5 BIOS
512Mb DDR266 - Kingston (Samsung Chips)
eVGA GeForce4MX 440 - 30.82
SB Live! 5.1
45gb Maxtor / 13gb IBM
Plextor 8/4/32
D-Link NIC
19" SyncMaster 950p
350 Watt - HEC
WinXP Pro (SP1) - Legal


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Seuss
New Member

Posts: 4
Joined: Oct 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002 10:38 PM (NEW!)



Well I hope someone from Via see's this thread as I'm curious to know what the difference is between the drivers included with the service packs and those provided by Via themselves. Obviously there's some optimization done but what does the extra version number mean in the Microsoft drivers... Also like to know if there's any newer MS provided drivers out there and if so where to get them.

Oh well, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best


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