Mary said:
<snipped URL'S)
Paul, Wow! you sure gave me a lot of URL'S to read and I read them
all. Didn't understand everything as some things were quite technical,
but good information for anyone to read. I reformatted my hard drive
last night, because I made so many changes last night, trying to get
AGP Texture acceleration to work, that I figured I might as well
reformat which was my last resort as I hate it - takes hours. I
had to back up a lot of stuff to CDR's.
Part of the challenge of these problems, is trying to learn about
how the underlying stuff works. This has been an interesting
read for me.
In other words, if I had an 8X video card, the BIOS would magically
offer 8X, as well as 2X/3X/4X in the "AGP Capability" line? Right now
there is no 8X - highest choice is 4X. Seems strange for a BIOS to
offer something that was not there at all before,
but may be true for all I know.
Not exactly. What I found in Google, was mention of a quirk. What
seems to happen, is if a AGP 8X card is used with the A7V8X-X, the
BIOS _only_ allows 8X, and no lower speed. If you have a 4X card,
then you are offered multiple speeds. This is a bit disturbing,
because it suggests this is another chipset with an incomplete
AGP feature set. This shouldn't have anything to do with your
problem. [ Actually, after reading some more of the specs,
the BIOS would only be allowed to offer 4X/8X, but the BIOS is
just offering 8X. Still a quirk though. ]
My card seems to be running at 2X (before and after reformatting).
In ATI Display/Smartgart tab, the slider only goes from 1X to 2X
and says my card is currently working as 2X AGP speed. Also in ATI
Display under Catalyst tab says 2X AGP speed. Sandra also shows my
current video card as 2X. I think an ATI 9000 pro card should work
at 4X.
I may have mentioned that I've noticed SmartGART ignores whatever
limit you set in the BIOS. But, SmartGART should not be ignoring
what appears in the AGP status register. If you have an AGP 2.0
Northbridge, there are only three bits used to represent the speed
of the card. If an AGP 3.0 card is plugged into a AGP 2.0 Northbridge,
then the four bit field sent by the AGP video card is truncated
to three bits, and the only value that matters, 8X, is read by the
software as 2X. This _should not_ be happening to you, because with
8X in the name of the product, the Northbridge should be AGP 3.0
specification compatible, and all values should be properly represented.
So, while all the symptoms would suggest this mix of hardware
(AGP 3.0 card in AGP 2.0 Northbridge), we are _told_ the Northbridge
is really AGP 3.0 compatible, right ?
Did all the above. Installed Via 4.51 which are latest drivers for
KT400 which is my board. Installed ATI Catalyst 4.2 latest drivers
for my card and other Radeons. Installed DX 9b.
http://downloads.viaarena.com/installguides/HyperionDriverInstallationGuide.
htm
I had already got those drivers before, but thank you for the URLS.
Not sure what you mean - I only have one computer.
Some people move a hard drive, with an existing Windows install, onto
a new motherboard which has a different chipset and peripherals. While
the hardware should be re-enumerated by Windows (the enum key in the
registry), any miscellaneous registry settings (not in enum) might
affect the stability of the install.
Oh, whyd ya have to go and mention that? - I feel exposed
The thread got long because so many people joined in and gave
advice/opinions.
I deleted some inf files from my old ATI video card. But that was
right at the start when I first had problems installling my video
card drivers. Someone suggested it, and it seemed to work, but then
other problems were created but had nothing to do with deleting the
inf files.
I got that one now thanks.
These uninstallers would be used on a drive with an existing
video card already installed. By using these, you are helping
to remove all traces of video card driver files and registry
settings, so that the new installer can work properly.
I have ATI Radeon 9000 pro.
I downloaded Power strip but can't figure out how it works yet.
I use Powerstrip solely as an AGP status tool. It shows whether
DMA or DIME is enabled or not. If neither are enabled, then
chances are the motherboard chipset driver isn't loading
properly. You can see these settings in the Options popup menu
item from the Taskbar. Once AGP is OK, I uninstall Powerstrip,
as adding an additional agent into the mess doesn't help.
There is only two things now that I am not satisfied with and
thats -why I can't get AGP acceleration to work, though I am
at the point of giving up on that, and the other thing which
is more of a concern is why is my card only working at AGP 2X.
Makes me wonder if something is wrong with the card.
There are thousands of posts about KT400 motherboards and
video card issues. So far, I haven't found a match for your
exact problem.
The AGP (2.0 spec) Status register definition is here. The
interesting part is bits 3 through 0:
ftp://download.intel.com/technology/agp/downloads/agp20.pdf (pg.249)
Status Register (Offset CAP_PTR + 4)
Bits Field Description
31:24 RQ The RQ field contains the maximum number of A.G.P.
command requests this device can manage. ³0² means
a depth of 1 entry, while FFh means a depth of 256
entries.
23:10 Reserved Always returns 0 when read; write operations have
no effect.
9 SBA If set, this device supports sideband addressing.
8:6 Reserved Always returns 0 when read; write operations have
no effect.
5 4G If set, this device supports addresses greater
than 4 GB.
4 FW When the bit is set, the device supports FW (fast
write) transfers.
3 Reserved Always returns 0 when read; write operations have
no effect.
2:0 RATE The RATE field indicates the data transfer rates
supported by this device. A.G.P. devices must
report all that apply.
Bit Set Transfer Rate
0 1X
1 2X
2 4X
For AGP 3.0 (pg.129), the bottom four bits are expanded a bit:
http://developer.intel.com/technology/agp/downloads/agp30_final_10.pdf
3 AGP3.0_MODE Œ1¹ = AGP3.0 Mode and Œ0¹ = AGP Mode; Set by
hardware on power-up reset, see section 2.4.2 for
details. Note that when AGP3.0_MODE = 0, the RATE field
(AGPSTAT [2:0]) and DRATE field (AGPCMD[2:0]) in both
the master and target must function as defined by the
AGP Interface Specification V2.0 for compatibility
with existing software.
2:0 RATE Data Rate Support (RATE) -
AGPSTAT[3] Code Speed Supported
0 xxx See AGP2.0 Specs
1 001 4x
1 010 8x
1 011 4x, and 8x
1 ??? All other codes Reserved
From the difference between the two tables, maybe you can see how if
the AGPSTAT[3] bit is masked off by software, then an 8X card will
appear as a 2X card. Right now, I don't see any other bits in the
spec that could influence the driver on this issue.
Table 17 on page 41 of the agp30 spec presents another possibility.
The TYPEDET pin on the video card, codes the I/O voltage requirement
of the card. This is that "3.3 versus 1.5V" nonsense. When a motherboard
has a universal connector (accepts either kind), the video card
can specify its preference of the two. Your motherboard is not
universal, so will ignore TYPEDET for the purposes of setting up the
I/O power supply for the card. However, if you read the wording
about the AGP3.0_MODE bit in the status register, just below the table,
it opens the possibility that if the TYPEDET pin was broken (or the
pin wasn't grounding the signal properly for 1.5V), the AGP3.0_MODE
bit would get set to 0, and you'd be stuck with a 2X video card.
TYPEDET is pin A2 on the AGP card connector, and is supposed to go
directly to ground. You could measure between pin A2 and pin A5 with
an ohmmeter, to see whether TYPEDET is grounded or not. The ohmmeter
should read zero. (There was one report I read of, where a video
card was manufactured with a resistor from A2 to A5, and that was
the cause of the card malfunctioning. The connection is supposed
to be a dead short, if the card wants 1.5V I/O voltage.)
I've also owned a video card, where I managed to scrape two resistors
right off the board. These were resistors that were too close
to the connector. The resistors apparently weren't critical, as
the card still works today.
I did see this on Via page in FAQ's
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=3&faq=18&Search=agp
There are a couple of questions and answers about a video card
should be running at 4X instead of 2X, but that seemed to happen
because of old Catalyst drivers, which is not my case.
Yes, thanks. everything helps.
Mary
I am against doing total reinstalls myself, because it means
admitting defeat
Depending how much time you have to waste
on this problem, you may want to remove the drivers again and
start from scratch. In some of the Google posts I was looking at
(using search terms KT400 and AGP), some people mentioned the
default Windows driver working, but I'm willing to bet this is
not an accelerated driver. There are too many posts with those
keywords, for me to read them all today.
The last video card I installed was a PITA, just like your
card. It did take me a couple of days before all was well
and textures were accelerated. (Tried about three Catalysts.
One would crash at the desktop. They are better today, than
when I was installing the earlier ones.)
Paul
