AIW 9600Xt and KT133: no video

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wabbit
  • Start date Start date
It should work on your board, unless something is fundamentally different in
the architecture of a regular 9600 XT (my card) or an AIW 9600 XT (your
card).
Click to expand...

Been wondering where to post this, with the various fora discussing
this problem (ViaArena comes to mind).

I've just finished a near Overnighter in Hell trying to get my new,
ATI-built, AIW 9600XT to work on my Abit KT7A (Rev. 1.0). And this was
with a replacement I got after I'd (mistakenly) determined the first
to be defective and secured an RMA; I'd been assured by ATI this card
would run on this board

This machine has a 1.2GHz unlocked T-Bird, 1G SDRAM, 4 HD's running
off a Promise Ultra100 TX2 card, SCSI Plextor CDR on an Adaptec
AHA-2930CU, a piece of shit Soundblaster and 500W power supply. It's
not overclocked in any way but the BIOS has been optimized to both the
Ars guide and Adrian's taking into account ATI's recommendations. Also
VCore has been upped to 3.8 and CPU upped to 1.85 (or is it the other
way around?) I may revisit this to back them off a bit as I don't
think they play in the ATI equation.

What I THINK partly solved my problem was to adjust the AGP Driving
Strength to 68. This info came from Paul's KT7A FAQ at Sudhian. I'd
pulled everything out of the box except the card, the CPU and one
stick of RAM swapping cards just so I could get to the BIOS, I
stumbled on this one line in Paul's FAQ at Sudhian mentioning some
have benefited from the AGP Driving Strength setting as I was close to
just putting my old Rage128 AIW back in and taking it up with ATI (or
Abit) on Monday.

One more attempt at powering up and it clicked in... video!

I let the system boot up as far it would go so that the ESCD reset
would take and then powered down. Powered back up and nothing but the
beeps. retried powering a couple more times and it clicked in again.
That was enough for me. I reinstalled everything and proceeded to
power up again to get the install underway. Took 14 hits on the power
switch but it finally clicked again and I was off.

So that's where I am now. Fortunately I leave my machine on so this
won't be an issue till the next power failure (no UPS yet) or until I
absolutely HAVE to power off (or until I upgrade this motherboard).

The word I read also at Ars, where you can find a good tutorial on AGP
4X, is that VIA kind of botched it's implementation and then had to
include settings like Driving Strength to make up for a less than
robust autodetection scheme. Be advised tho that this setting can kill
a card so read up on it before fiddling.

HTH

C.
 
I let the system boot up as far it would go so that the ESCD reset
would take and then powered down. Powered back up and nothing but the
beeps. retried powering a couple more times and it clicked in again.
That was enough for me. I reinstalled everything and proceeded to
power up again to get the install underway. Took 14 hits on the power
switch but it finally clicked again and I was off.

HTH

C.
Click to expand...


I rma'd the AIW 9600xt and will be receiving another one on Thursday. I
don't think that I will get better results, but better than not trying.
Only after a cold boot, the video card fails to be detected. I have to
wait for about 10 minutes after leaving it on, then power it off and on
again and the card is seen again. Sounds like a cold solder or capacitor
not building sufficient charge? Will post another update after I receive
the new card.

Wabbit
 
Good luck. I could never get my Radeon 9500 Pro OR 9800 Pro to work on my
KT133e based motherboard (an AJA2e from Chaintech). Both cards work perfectly
in my Nvidia Nforce2 NFS boards. This was the nail in the coffin for VIA AFAIC.
I'll never buy one of their chipsets again.


Chuck said:
I rma'd the AIW 9600xt and will be receiving another one on Thursday. I
don't think that I will get better results, but better than not trying.
Only after a cold boot, the video card fails to be detected. I have to
wait for about 10 minutes after leaving it on, then power it off and on
again and the card is seen again. Sounds like a cold solder or capacitor
not building sufficient charge? Will post another update after I receive
the new card.

Wabbit
Click to expand...


-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)
 
(e-mail address removed) (Wblane) wrote in
Good luck. I could never get my Radeon 9500 Pro OR 9800 Pro to work on
my KT133e based motherboard (an AJA2e from Chaintech). Both cards work
perfectly in my Nvidia Nforce2 NFS boards. This was the nail in the
coffin for VIA AFAIC. I'll never buy one of their chipsets again.
Click to expand...


New board...same cold boot problem. Does anyone know exactly what the AGP
problem is? VIA AGP driving strength? It is frustrating since the board
works fine after 10 minutes or after getting the card recognized.

so VIA sucks?

Wabbit
 
so VIA sucks?

Wabbit
Click to expand...

More research. Maybe not ViA. Abit sucks with PWM circuit design. I read
the following from http://download.sudhian.com/faq/ka7/faqgraphics.html

"ABIT's first four SoftMenu™ III models (BE6-II, BF6, KA7, KA7-100) include
a PWM circuit design, with which GeForce 2 graphics cards (both GTS and MX)
are incompatible. These cards may fail to initialize after a cold boot.

"We at ABIT are aware that the phenomenon of older mainboards not
supporting newer peripherals is very frustrating. By making some capacitor
changes, we have been able to alter the PWM's behavior and overcome this
incompatibility. Therefore, the problem will not be found on any current
SoftMenu™ III models (including BX133-RAID, KT7, or any others manufactured
since July 2000).

"If you have an early SoftMenu™ III board and are experiencing cold boot
problems with a GeForce 2 card, please contact your nearest ABIT branch
office for an RMA, and our engineers will make the necessary adjustments."

Wabbit
 
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