AGP Aperture at 256MB causes my PC to crash

[Doggiedog]

I'm having tons of problems with this PC I just got.

One thing that has been bugging me is that whenever I set the AGP aperture to 256MB, the PC locks up and I have to do a CMOS reset to get it to even start again.

Any idea what might cause this? Does it even matter if I leave it at 64MB or will I see a performance improvement at 256MB?

My system is an A64 3000, Asus K8V Deluxe, Radeon 9800 Pro, 1024MB Kingston DDR400 and some other junk running at stock speed.

 

[EeyoreX]

Google turned up quite a few articles about AGP aperture size. I read a couple, and all seem to agree that for the most part, the setting doesn't really matter all that much in real-world usage.

\Dan

 

[BFG10K]

Leave it at 64 MB, going only to 128 MB if you have problems.

 

[Viper96720]

Update your bios that's a bug in the bios the board comes with
Bios is up to ver. 1004 was fixed in ver 1003

1. Fix when aperture size set 256mb system may hang

Asus Downloads click the more to see fixes of the bios

 

[JBT]

No real point of having that at 256 I leave mine at 128 but 64 is probably good too.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: JBT
No real point of having that at 256 I leave mine at 128 but 64 is probably good too.

Yup.

 

[Doggiedog]

Thx guys.

This PC has been nothing but a nightmare. Now I have to figure out how to get XP to install onto a SATA HDD. Been reading the threads on how but still can't seem to get it to work.

 

[thorin]

A patient goes in to a doctors office.

Patient: "Doc it's hurts when I move my arm like this" <moves arm>
Doctor: "Then don't move your arm like that"



Thorin

 

[WebDude]

Originally posted by: thorin
A patient goes in to a doctors office.

Patient: "Doc it's hurts when I move my arm like this" <moves arm>
Doctor: "Then don't move your arm like that"



Thorin

One week later patient receives doctor's bill for $400.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Doggiedog
Thx guys.

This PC has been nothing but a nightmare. Now I have to figure out how to get XP to install onto a SATA HDD. Been reading the threads on how but still can't seem to get it to work.

When the install first starts off of a CD you need to "Press F6 to install a third-party driver..." then it will ask for the SATA drivers. After it installs them you will be allowed to install Windows.

-Por

 

[Doggiedog]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo

Originally posted by: Doggiedog
Thx guys.

This PC has been nothing but a nightmare. Now I have to figure out how to get XP to install onto a SATA HDD. Been reading the threads on how but still can't seem to get it to work.

When the install first starts off of a CD you need to "Press F6 to install a third-party driver..." then it will ask for the SATA drivers. After it installs them you will be allowed to install Windows.

-Por

I did that but it still says no HDD found. I took out all my other HDDs just to play it safe. The funny thing is, when I use an old Win98 boot disk, it finds the HDD no problem. I was even able to fdisk, format and activate it.

When I try to install off a CD, I load the drivers in at F6 but when it gets to the point of installation, it says no HDD found.

 

[InlineFive]

Is your hard drive using SATA1? In the BIOS do you make sure to have your SATA adapter and BootROM (if it has this last option) enabled?

-Por

 

[Viper96720]

on the cd the board came with. Look for makedisk. For the promise controller and the via one. It'll make a floppy to install those sata drivers.

 

[tallman45]

With a 128 graphics memory on a separate card (9800) you will likely never use the Apeture memory allocated. Set it for 64mb, even then that amount will not ever be used.

 

[Doggiedog]

Thanks for all the advice.

I will try them out tonight.

 

[mechBgon]

Look at page 2-2 of your motherboard manual, and you see four SATA ports labelled SATA1, SATA2, PRI_SATA and SEC_SATA... which one is your drive on? The SATA1 and SATA2 ports are native to the VIA southbridge, while the PRI_SATA and SEC_SATA belong to the Promise SATA controller.

If you're using the Promise then you will probably need to either set the Promise to "Onboard IDE mode" (see page 4-23 of the manual) and use the F6 technique described earlier, or else set it to RAID mode and go into the Promise's BIOS and define your SATA drive as an array (see page 5-27), so the Promise has something to offer to Windows Setup.

If you're using the native VIA SATA ports, then make sure that the "On-chip SATA Boot ROM" is enabled (page 4-23 again) and follow the instructions from page 5-20 to set it up. Remember, you need to define the drive as an array so the controller can offer it to Windows Setup. It isn't enough to just have the drive recognized by the controller, you need to tell the controller what to do with it.

In either case, I see instructions for making the necessary driver floppy on page 5-33 of the manual... there's a Makedisk.exe utility on the mobo's CD-ROM that will cook one up for you. Use that with the F6 technique.

 

[howdyduty]

Find the setting that works for your vid card and mobo combo. I had a system that could set at 256 and the vid card was a ATI Radeon 32Mb. Changed the card to a 64Mb Ti200 and it would not boot at all at 256 but 128 worked fine. Gotta go with what works. Sometimes it can take some trial and error. Hope it works out for you.