In article ,
(shmortz) wrote:

I have an 8X AGP motherboard, and radeon 9600xt which is 8x AGP.
Problem is that what ever I do I cant get my system to work in 8X. I
have checked my bios and *X is enabled, howere in ati control panel
(smartgart) agp is listed as off, I have tested my machine performance
with 3dmark05 and the score that I get compares to similar processor
and same graphics card to me running at 4x agp. Also my analyis for
3dmark05 tells me that i have only got 4x enabled. I have tried
everything, engineer has even changed my grpahics card, but my machine
is still telling me that it is only 4x agp. Has anyone any experience
of this, is it possible that the problem is with my motherbaord? Any
suggestions on how I could sort it out, I want to play half life 2 to
best of my machine ability

Many thanks

(Next time you post, include the name of the motherboard.)

Things to try:

1) Always remove the previous graphics card's drivers. Go to the
Add/Remove Program control panel, and uninstall the old driver.
Then, shut down the computer and install the new video card.
When the computer boots, it will operate the card in a diminished
operating mode, until the new drivers are installed.

2) Read the instructions that came with the card. Usually the
manufacturer will suggest a minimim version of DirectX be
installed. The video card CDROM should have a copy of DirectX
on it, or you can download the latest one from Microsoft.

Some older games will not work properly with newer versions of
DirectX, so you may want to experiment first, on a scratch disk,
with the DirectX version and your games. The reason for doing
the experiment, is you cannot install an older version of DirectX
over a newer version. Once you decide to install a newer version,
of DirectX, it is permanent. That is why, you may want to do a
fresh install of the OS, on a separate scratch disk, and do
your experimenting there.

3) Logically speaking, the order of install after the new video
card is installed:

a) Motherboard chipset drivers. This would be Intel INF for an
Intel chipset, maybe Via 4-in-1 for an older Via chipset etc.
One job the chipset driver does, is allow the devices inside
the Northbridge, to be enumerated properly. After this is
done, you may see mention of an AGP bridge or the like, in
Device Manager. If, instead of AGP bridge, you see PCI bridge
only, that would stop AGP from working, because it tells
the video card installer, that there is no AGP slot. Check
that there is an AGP entry of some sort in Device Manager.
b) Video card driver. Some drivers may insist that a certain
version of DirectX be installed first. As far as I know,
you can do the same version of DirectX over and over again
if you like - it won't matter. If the installer for the
video card really insists, you can oblige it by installing
DirectX. Once the video card driver is installed, you may
be able to adjust the resolution of the screen, using the
default display control panel. But you won't see any special
feature tabs in the control panel.
c) Video card control panel. When you install this (and it could
be part of the installer used in "b" above) - you should see
extra tabs in the Display control panel. In the case of the
ATI installer, there is something called SmartGART, which is
used to adjust the video card features.
d) Install the version of DirectX you've decided to use.

At this point, you've installed all the software. If you install
the software in an order other than the one above, the software
will tell you what it requires as prerequisites, during the install.
For example, with ATI, the control panel will refuse to load unless
an ATI driver is found, enforcing the driver before control panel
rule.

The first time the computer boots, after the ATI control panel is
installed, SmartGART code will run, just as the Windows desktop
begins to appear. SmartGART tests the AGP slot! The screen will
blink a couple times. If the interface between the AGP slot and
the video card is not stable (lots of parity errors or bus
timeouts - whatever protection features the slot is equipped
with...), the software will reduce the transfer rate. Even if
the video card is rated at 8X and the motherboard
is rated at 8X, SmartGART may test them and decide they can only
run at 4X. And, in cases where certain chipsets are known to have
defects at 8X, SmartGART will just select a lower rate without
even running the test. (Since you didn't name the motherboard,
we cannot tell you if your motherboard is suspect.)

To really be sure that what you select in SmartGART is stable,
reboot a second time after the settings are changed, then
verify the settings by opening the Display control panel and
looking at the SmartGART tab. It will tell you what the current
settings are. If the current settings have changed, then it is
probably still having some trouble.

You can verify the settings with Powerstrip from entechtaiwan.com .
Powerstrip has a taskbar menu, that will display the video card
options. It will indicate transfer rate, sideband addressing,
fast write, and whether texture transfers are enabled (via DMA
or DIME - that is direct memory access or direct in memory
execution - those are options for texture transfer, and only one
of the two methods needs to be enabled for best performance).

Depending on how messed up your current OS disk is, will determine
how well the install works. I have an old install of Win2K, and
no matter how many times I install in the order above, I cannot
get DMA/DIME enabled. Transfer rate is 8X, but I cannot get
texture transfer enabled. I have run some cleaner programs
(Detonator Destroyer, one from ATI, and one from Matrox), to
try to remove any residue from previous video cards, but still
I have the problem. A fresh install of the OS, plus the drivers,
works 100%. So, if all else fails, you may have to do a repair
install or a full reinstall, if you want to get full functionality.

With your transfer rate problem, I recommend downloading the latest
video card driver, from ATI, Nvidia, or Matrox directly. For example,
my ATI video card had such a bad driver on the CD that came with
the video card, that the computer would crash at boot. Once I
downloaded a later driver directly from ATI, things worked much
better. So, do not depend on the CD in the video card box, for
a good driver.

Depending on the age of the video card, some owners of the card
find a certain version of the driver is "the best". If you see
comments like that in Google, then it can pay to find the same
version for your install. My old Geforce3 was like that. Some
Matrox cards had better older drivers as well - newer drivers
were over-optimized (bloatware).

HTH,
Paul