AGP 2.0? Problems using new GeForce 6800 GT

[nucleicoutfit]

Hi,

I just bought a BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC but upon booting with it I get a long motherboard beep along with the error code 25 (i have a 3 year old motherboard - the Epox 8kha+). I'm almost certain I have AGP 2.0 compatibility since most of what i've read online says that AGP 4x is AGP 2.0, and I'm certain that my motherboard supports AGP 4x.

Has anyone run into a similar problem?

Another source of the problem may be the power plug I'm plugging into the back of the card. I have an Antec 480W power supply. I haven't yet tried using a dedicated cord straight to the card... I might've daisy chained it off of something else. I'm at work right now so when I get home I'm going to test this.

Any information or tips greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[MX2]

I run a 6800GT with an Antec 480 and zero problems. That being said, make sure the power plug is all the way properly seated to the video card.

 

[Jeff7181]

Try the obvious... make sure it's fully seated. Sometimes because of slight differences in the size of the PCB and the locking tabs that are on most motherboards require a little more force that you might expect.

 

[Fallengod]

If I had to guess, you didnt plug in the additional power cables it needs. I believe agp needs 2 additional power connectors doesnt it?

 

[MX2]

Originally posted by: modempower
If I had to guess, you didnt plug in the additional power cables it needs. I believe agp needs 2 additional power connectors doesnt it?

Not on my card.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Awesome. Right when I got home I messed around with the power cable connection, and yes, I did have it daisy chained. It now works.

Although performance has definitely increased (especially when playing F.E.A.R.)... There's tons of stuttering whenever I turn any corners in Half-Life 2 and pretty much every other game I've tried. I figure that's kind of odd since this thing has 256mb of RAM. I'm running the latest Catalyst drivers and I've configured the card options for performance over quality.

Any suggestions for this?

Thanks guys.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Oops not Catalyst drivers... Omega drivers.

 

[MX2]

Did you do a clean drivers install?

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Nope... just ran the Omega installer... seemed to uninstall my old drivers first though because Windows rebooted at 640x480 and a 'Device Found' window came up, then the Omega installation continued, then Windows rebooted again.

 

[Markbnj]

Some people will swear this has no effect, but it made a huge difference for me in BF2. Go into the BIOS and set the AGP aperature size to 256 megs, see if it improves. You might also try enabling fast writes, and see if it is stable on your system. It isn't on mine.

 

[MX2]

I would start from scratch then with a clean drivers install.

1) Uninstall drivers, reboot.
2) Run Driver Cleaner specifying removal of Omega leftovers and Nvidia leftovers.
3) Reboot.
4) Install whatever drivers you wish, reboot
5) Let us know how it went

http://www.drivercleaner.net/


Also, the above poster gave you some good advice as well

 

[fliguy84]

Originally posted by: nucleicoutfit
Nope... just ran the Omega installer... seemed to uninstall my old drivers first though because Windows rebooted at 640x480 and a 'Device Found' window came up, then the Omega installation continued, then Windows rebooted again.

you said omega driver? IIRC, the last omega driver that ever came out for nvidia is the 66.93. i suggest using the latest driver to eliminate the stuttering problem. for modified drivers, XG and DHZeropoint are the ones you should be looking for

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Ok I uninstalled all drivers completely with Driver Cleaner and did a clean install of the latest official Nvidia drivers.

I'm still getting multi-second pauses when turning most corners in F.E.A.R. as well as major stops in the Serious Sam 2 demo. Day of Defeat (half life 2) is also somewhat dissapointing performance wise.

I think a big factor may be the fact that I'm only running 512 mb of DDR pc2100 RAM.

Possibly another stick of 512 will help with this stuttering/pausing?

Thanks for helping me out guys. I really appreciate it.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Oh and I also did experiment with the BIOS settings mentioned but didn't notice any difference... although I may have gotten a slight, very slight boost from disabling Fast Writes.

 

[SolMiester]

You dont say what res u r using when u get stuttering problems, this usually happens when agp drivers not installed, what was previous card?. Do not enable fast write. open agp aperture size to at least half card ram size. re-install agp port drivers.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

I'm usually running at 1680x1050... I still get stuttering at lower resolutions, though.

I downloaded AGP drivers for my motherboard (Epox 8kha+) and installed them but I'm not even sure if this did anything.

Is it possible to download universal AGP drivers or do you have to get ones specific to your motherboard?

 

[Pulsar]

Check to make sure the refresh rate on your monitor is running at least 80hz in game and try turning on Vsync. Also try turning on mouse smoothing.

 

[Markbnj]

[I think a big factor may be the fact that I'm only running 512 mb of DDR pc2100 RAM

Well, that will make a big difference in most modern games. Also, ignore my earlier suggestion. You don't want to open up the aperature size with only 512m on the board. Battlefield 2, for example, really _needs_ 2 gigs to run smoothly.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

So I should turn my AGP aperture size down from 256mb since I only have 512mb of system RAM?

I'm getting another stick of 512 this afternoon so hopefully that'll help.

 

[Ryland]

1GB seems to be the new "minimum" for most new games. Can you post more system information, motherboard, cpu, etc to help us out? The extra 512 should make a world of wonder for you though.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Okay off the top of my head here are my system components

Epox 8kha+ mainboard (VIA KT266A chipset)
Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8ghz, yes it is old)
BFG GeForce 6800 GT 256mb (AGP 4x)
512MB DDR PC2100 RAM (this will be 1 GB tonight)
Windows XP SP2
Latest official NVidia Drivers

I'm fairly sure I've installed the latest BIOS update and AGP driver updates as well.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: nucleicoutfit
So I should turn my AGP aperture size down from 256mb since I only have 512mb of system RAM?

I'm getting another stick of 512 this afternoon so hopefully that'll help.

I'm selling 1 GB of OCZ RAM if you're interested.

 

[nucleicoutfit]

Appreciate the offer but I've already purchased the stick of 512. My motherboard can't handle anymore than 1.5 gb unfortunately.

 

[Markbnj]

[So I should turn my AGP aperture size down from 256mb since I only have 512mb of system RAM?]

Absolutely. AGP aperature is a system memory address range that the graphics driver (or the card bios, not sure) can allocate and use to store textures and whatever. I don't know if it allocates everything everytime, or uses some strategy that takes available ram into account, but I have read in various places that you don't want to open it up if you don't have much system memory.

 

[ElFenix]

that stuttering does sound more like it's trying to load from the hard drive than anything else. i imagine the added ram will clear the majority of it up.