ATI 9200SE w/ DVI out: slow PC performance
 

Hi everyone,
I'm having an issue on the following configuration: Soltek SL-B8E-F
motherboard, Asus ATI Radeon 9200SE graphic card, Pentium 4 processor,
Windows XP Professional SP1.

When installing Windows XP from scratch, everything works perfectly as long
as I'm using the analog video output of the graphic card. At this point, if
I connect the monitor to the DVI output, when I turn the PC back on, it
slows down to "almost unusable". Boot takes forever (2 minutes instead of 20
seconds), sound from the on-board AC'97 card stutters and the mouse pointer
stutters when there's heavy hard disk access, and shutdown is also very
slow.

It looks like DMA mode got disabled, but it actually is enabled in the
device manager. There are no conflicts whatsoever in the device manager, and
I have all the latest drivers installed. There are no particular peripherals
connected to the PC, everything is standard.

The problem can be reproduced easily: format the PC, re-install Windows XP,
everything works. Then connect the monitor (an AOC LM919) to the DVI output,
and the problem starts again.

I have yet to try installing Windows XP with the monitor already connected
to the DVI output, but that's not the point. I really don't understand why
changing the port on the graphic card slows down an entire system so much.

No, there are no exotic programs installed, no antivirus, no anything.
Removing the ATI drivers doesn't help. Even removing the ATI card entirely
(and thus using the Intel 865G chipset onboard graphic card) doesn't help at
this point: the system remains slow, until I reinstall Windows. A "system
repair" or "restore" doesn't help either. It wants to be reinstalled
completely.

I haven't touched anything in the BIOS. Re-installing Windows without
touching the BIOS fixes the problem. The motherboard BIOS has been upgraded
to the latest version (1.4X). I have already changed the AGP aperture from
64 to 128 MB (and back again). The system has 512 MB RAM.

This is not an issue about poor graphic performance. I only need a system
having a decent speed to work with. When this happens, I have a Pentium 4
2.6 GHz performing like a 486..

I have never seen anything like that and I'm clueless. Do you have any
suggestions?

Thank you very much.
-Manuel




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