A7V8X-X and Radeon 9600pro/Radeon 9800pro - a bad combo?

geitner · § #1 02-24-2004, 07:50 PM

Hi people

I have the A7V8X-X Mb with a newly bought HIS Excalibur 9800 pro 128 mb. RAM.... and LOTS of problems!

Let's take it from the top:

This is what I do/have:

1. A completely fresh install of Windows XP pro.
2. All updates froms WinUpd.
3. Newest BIOS (1008)
3. Newest VIA drivers (Hyperion) (Have tried many others)

So far everything is going well. The system is stable.

Then I install the ATI Catalyst drivers... and then all h*** breaks loose! I get freezes, reboots, VPU recovers... and so on.

I have tried many of the realeases of the the Catalyst drivers. I have read 100's of pages in other forums to get help... so far no luck...

My system:

Asus A7V8X-X
Antec TruePower 430
2500+ Barton
512 mb. pc2700 RAM
HIS Excalibur Radeon 9800 pro
120 gb. IBM HD.

(I even had some of the same problems, when I had a Sapphire Radeon 9600 pro...)

please !

Regards
Andreas, Denmark

Steve Robertson · § #2 02-25-2004, 07:18 AM

Have you tried changing the AGP speed to 4x or 2x?

geitner · § #3 02-25-2004, 08:48 AM

yes I've tried that (among many other things).

I tried to change fast write to on/off

I tried to change the power cable to the card, so no other devices gets it's power from the same cable.

I tried to upgrade the cooler and fan, to a much better Zalman solution.

There are no IRQ conflicts.

It seems to be related to the driver. As soon as I install the driver it runs for about 5 minutes, and then it crashes....

please

regards
Andreas, Denmark

Steve Robertson · § #4 02-25-2004, 08:58 AM

I'm going to build my own A7V8X-X based PC in a few days. I've got a 9800pro. I'll let you know how I get on.

geitner · § #5 02-25-2004, 09:02 AM

Good!

I hope you have better luck than me.

I check this forum daily so I'll be happy to exchange "knowledge".

Andreas

gibbonsl · § #6 02-26-2004, 02:40 AM

have you tryed the drivers from the card manufactor, instead of the ones from ATI?

gibbonsl · § #7 02-26-2004, 02:44 AM

also try uninstalling the VIA drivers then install the ATI or whatever drivers

see what happens

Prophecy1 · § #8 02-26-2004, 04:09 AM

Did you try the OMEGAS, OR DNAS?

Proph

**molestedbyasus** · § #9 02-26-2004, 11:34 AM

Try the Omega's, as opposed to the normal ones. I think it was the 3.2's that were the stability champions, if the manufacturers doesn;t help.

You might want to try re-installing the via drivers after the video card ones, maybe that will give you a different response?

Have you run dxdiag? maybe it;s a funky directX install?

TheSilverSurfer · § #10 02-26-2004, 12:13 PM

Sorry to hear about all your computer woes buddy! but I am running my 9800 se softmodded to a pro (using the regular Cat drivers which are just modified with the Patched ati2mtag.sys file) on the exact same board as you but I am currently running the original 1003 MB bios. I can't speak for others who may be running 9800pros with the newest 1008 MB bios so I don't know if this may be the problem.

However to try to narrow the focus to the problematic element here, you could try 1stly:

1.Clean Install of WinXP CD only. Don't install any more Win. updates just yet.

2.VIAHyperion4in1v4.49 drivers which I have found to be very stable.

3. A7V8x-x onboard sound drivers

3. A7V8x-x Lan drivers

4.DirectX9.0b

5.Windows Media Player 9

6. Cat's 3.10 very stable for me on every game I've played so far.

I don't normally install the all in one Cat. package. I install the Display Driver then the Control Panel just to make sure of a more controlled install.

If this install goes fine then go and update the critical Win. updates only. If it all gets scewed up after that then the problem may be in something Windows is installing during the update session.

You could also try an Nvidia based card to see if the same thing happens. Borrow a friends card if he/she will let you, just to see for yourself. You could also try changing processors just to see if that has an effect on the stability.

To be honest I have tested my A7V8X-X with Nvidia based cards and ATI, this MB adopts both AGP cards very well.

My 9800 is built by ATI card though I don't think that should have any baring on any compatibility issues.

Providing all of your components are known by you to be working previously ie.Ram and the rest... then maybe you have a faulty MB. It does sound a little weird after all that you have tried a Sapphire Radeon 9600 pro which produced the same problems.

Good Luck!

geitner · § #11 02-26-2004, 05:53 PM

Hey

Thanks for all your suggestions!

Right now things are working with the newest driver from the card manufacturers homepage... I'm anticipating a crash anytime though...

So gibbonsl was right (for now) - thanx buddy !

I've found that tons of problems come from the VIA Hyperion drivers. If you remember the 4.50 scandal that caused so many people so many problems. Since then I've lost a lot of respect for VIA.

I'm running on a completely clean install of XP right now. I will carefully try to install other programs and drivers now - thanks for all the tips to TheSilverSurfer.

Regards
Andreas, Denmark

geitner · § #12 02-27-2004, 06:57 PM

I FIXED IT!!!

I can't believe how long this took. 7 months!!
I tried EVERYTHING (or at least I thought I had).

Forget changing AGP X8/X4, forget Omega drivers, forget what VIA drivers you are using...

I simply _downgraded_ my bios from 1008 to 1006.

No crashes, no freezes - super stable... WOW I'm a happy camper

I would like to take this opportunity to tell ASUS what f.... amateurs they are! How could an _upgrade_ in BIOS make my MB uncompatible ??? The new 1008 BIOS is not working with different brands of Radeon 9600 pro and different brands of Radeon 9800 pro...

This project cost me soooo much money in replaced hardware - and all I had to do was downgrade my bios...

Regards
Andreas, Denmark

Steve Robertson · § #13 02-28-2004, 05:17 PM

Thanks for the info! My new A7V8X-X board has bios 1006 on it, so I'll be sure not to upgrade it after I put the machine together.

You've save me a lot of hassle. Many thanks!

TheSilverSurfer · § #14 02-28-2004, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by TheSilverSurfer on 02-26-2004 at 05:13 PM
I am currently running the original 1003 MB bios. I can't speak for others who may be running 9800pros with the newest 1008 MB bios so I don't know if this may be the problem.

So I guess this was the problem

Glad you got it sorted dude. I'll dodge that bios version as well then

mortado · § #15 03-16-2004, 03:45 AM

As an OEM we have shipped shitloads of these boards using wide range of display adapters and there are definitely stability issues with A7V8X-X BIOS releases 1007 and 1008, no matter what AGP card you plug in. As previously posted, forget BIOS settings and driver stuff. This is more like a CPU/RAM speed issue and you may have trouble with BIOS 1007/1008 using FSB333 CPU and 333MHz or faster DDR. Downgrade to 1006.

My 2 cent tip for people with single DDR333+ not willing to downgrade and like it on the edge: only use DIMM slot 2, the one in the middle. Should resolve some issues. Feedback appreciated.