Asus P5A problem with AGP?

[Mavrick007]

I know this is an older board, but is there a way to fix the board to utilize AGP 2x? I really get annoyed to the fact that my old board is not able to use 2x AGP but only 1x. I read in the newsgroups in the past that this was a voltage problem with the AGP socket on that super 7 board but I don't recall any fix whether it be a bios fix or a mod or whatever.

Anyone have this problem and fix it? I haven't upgraded my machine yet and would like to get a bit more juice out of it(am about to upgrade if I have to but would like to wait til the Thoroughbreds or the Bartons come out).

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I had a P5A, it was a compatibility nightmare. I was able to get it to run semi-stable but never really satisfactorilly. I gave it to a friend and I think NASCAR Heat is locking up because of the AGP issues (I don't have a PCI card w/ 3D accel to try out)

 

[Iron Woode]

I just finished repairing a system with that board. Demon-Xanth is correct. It could have been a great board, but it's just crappy. Try putting a 40 gig drive in one and you will see. I used a beta BIOS to make it work. Still, the video seems to be working OK. Games like Q3 and Serious Sam work fine.

My own Epox G-M board is way more stable and has support for huge hard dives. It can't do the 768mg of ram that the P5A does but that doesn't excuse the instability of the board.

 

[Mavrick007]

Arggghhhh!! hehe I thought just as much from it all. I know what you mean though, it could have been a great board "for its time". I haven't had any problems with compatibility per se cause everything I've ever thrown at it works well, just that games run slow and not even close to what I want. Hehe I have the bucks now, but I want the technology to be there so that I don't have to upgrade all the time.

I do have an old voodoo 1000 12 meg(voodoo 2 remake by 3dfx) that I could test(it's PCI). I haven't tried that so I'm not sure if it would get better than the 32Meg TNT2 Ultra at 1x AGP. Any ideas?

I had to search hard to find a decent bios that would update "issues" with the mobo such as larger than 32gig drives. I found a good beta bios too and it seems to run great with my old IBM 75GXP 45Gig drive. The bios didn't seem to do anything for the agp slot though cause it still couldn't do 2x AGP. I don't know if I could use this card in an Athlon board and get fairly decent framerates or not. A friend of mine has one in a T-bird 800 and he said it is very smooth, so who knows.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

The P5A can only really take 128MB, over that there is a massive slowdown (I tried 384, it sucked hard)

 

[Mavrick007]

I have 256Megs in mine right now(a stick of pc100 128Meg and a stick of pc133 128Meg) and it works better than it did before so I wouldn't say that it has a problem with extra ram.

 

[AA0]

P5A works fine with lots of RAM, I had 400+ megs in it, no problem.

I don't know of any AGP problems, I put my Radeon 8500 in it, worked fine, it also held my Rage Fury MAXX and Voodoo Banshee fine. I think the board should be able to use 2x though, I remember seeing it somewhere.

I've put in a lot of HDs and never had a problem with , but it does have an ALi chipset, and there was a lot of compatibility problems with it. ALi still hasn't shaped up their chipsets.

 

[MrBumpy]

<< I know this is an older board, but is there a way to fix the board to utilize AGP 2x? >>



I have a motherboard based on the same chipset (BCM VP-1541, with ALi Aladdin V chipset), and I have no problems using AGP 2x mode. Make sure you have the latest AGP drivers and utility from the ALi website. Install the drivers first, and then the utility. The utility should give you the ability to switch between 1x and 2x modes. If you have any stability issues, make sure that the GAT mode is set to 0 or 1 (0=normal, 1=safe, 2=turbo, as far as I can tell). If you are still having issues, then try setting it to 1x (oh wait... that would be back where we started, wouldn't it?).

Some boards may have issues with the voltage, but I do not think I have experienced this firsthand. I have had three AGP cards in this system, and here are the settings I've had to use:

Card#1: Elsa Erazor III (nVidia TNT 2)
<> AGP Data Rate: 1x
<> Sidebanding: Enabled
<> AMD K6EWBEC: 3
<> GAT Mode: 0 or 1
<> Frame Buffer size: Default (disabled)

Card#2: Creative Annihilator 2 (nVidia GeForce 2 GTS)
<> AGP Data Rate: 2x
<> Sidebanding: ? (can't remember)
<> AMD K6EWBEC: 3
<> GAT Mode: 0 or 1
<> Frame Buffer size: Default (?can't remember size)

Card#3: Visiontek Xtasy 6564 (nVidia GeForce 3 Ti200)
<> AGP Data Rate: 2x
<> Sidebanding: N/A
<> AMD K6EWBEC: 3
<> GAT Mode: 0 or 1
<> Frame Buffer size: Default (16 MB)

It seems as though the board is more compatible with the newer GeForce 2 and 3 cards than the old TNT2. From what I have read, you should stay away from the TNT2 and GeForce (original) cards when using Super Socket-7 boards, as these seem to have the most compatibility issues.

 

[MrBumpy]

<< P5A works fine with lots of RAM, I had 400+ megs in it, no problem. >>


This depends on two things:

1) How much L2 cache exists on the motherboard. If there is 512K of L2 cache onboard, then only 128 MB of RAM will be cacheable (anything above that will be slower as a result). If there is 1024K of L2 cache onboard, then 256 MB of RAM will be cacheable. Since Windows loads from the top of memory down, the speed hit will be noticeable right away, not just after 128 MB have been used, for example.

2) The CPU used. If you have an AMD K6-2 processor, then the speed hit will be considerably more noticeable than if you have an AMD K6-III. This is because the K6-III has an on-board L2 cache, making the motherboard's L2 cache an L3 cache instead.


<< I don't know of any AGP problems, I put my Radeon 8500 in it, worked fine, it also held my Rage Fury MAXX and Voodoo Banshee fine. I think the board should be able to use 2x though, I remember seeing it somewhere. >>


The main compatibility problems with the ALi Aladdin V existed with nVidia TNT2-based graphics card. Despite this, I was able to get my TNT2 card working flawlessly as long as I used AGP 1x data mode. The TNT2 should work fine as long as you have chipset revision E or later (might be fine with earlier revisions, but I don't know for sure), and the latest AGP drivers from ALi and the latest BIOS from your motherboard manufacturer. The only other potential problem might be voltage issues that might exist on some boards. This, however, isn't ALi's fault.



<< I've put in a lot of HDs and never had a problem with , but it does have an ALi chipset, and there was a lot of compatibility problems with it. ALi still hasn't shaped up their chipsets. >>


On the contrary, I have read many good things about the C revision of the ALi MAGiK 1 chipset (ie. XP-333) both speed- and compatiblity-wise. Also, the reason I currently have an ALi chipset in my computer is because the VIA MVP3 chipset that I had before caused all kinds of crackling problems with EAX (Sound Blaster Live!). Being a musician, I obviously need perfect sound, so I went with the ALi Aladdin V, and have had perfect sound ever since!

 

[Mavrick007]

Hehe Yes, I have mine working flawlessly with AGP 1x too, but that makes the card worthless considering I can't get any use out of it since it's 2x AGP. Originally I had mine set to 2x AGP, which the board supports, and it froze. I went to the newsgroups then and asked everyone around. They said that Asus P5a with revision 1.03 or before had problems with the AGP slot and voltage.. it couldn't get the required amount of 3.3Volts to power it up. I thought this was strange cause I could read that in my bios(correct voltage? not sure) and even after getting the latest AGP, board drivers and updated the mobo bios, I still couldn't get it to work. I installed the newest Creative drivers, the Nvidia drivers, but I didn't flash the bios on the card. I tweaked it around every which way I could outside of a mod to the boards and it just wouldn't give me AGP 2x without locking up. I gave up. Then I just found out about this and another forum and decided to join and ask some questions.

I do have a k62/350 with 256Megs ram in it and it's not the fastest machine, but it played my games ok(cept that I get fragged alot now cause it hangs and slows down when too much rendering is involved in 3d). It does have 512K cache but the extra ram has never seemed to make it worse than it was before I added the extra stick of 128Megs. I almost went with the Epox and the Via chipset at the time cause I heard it had like 2Megs cache but I also heard other problems with it and decided that the Asus one had a great layout with what would be good for awhile and I should be fine.. and it would have been if not for the AGP problem. I didn't want to go with Intel at the time either cause of their stupid "slot 1" franchise(I have had a 486Amd, K5Amd, K62Amd), but this was before the original K7 came out, so I went with the Super 7, which allowed me to use alot of what I still had. I got a great TNT2 Ultra card at the time from Creative and I thought I was all set. Hehe If I change vid cards now, it sure won't go in this old board. I'm just about to order an XP board and the XP 1800+ cpu, I have new ram, a good hsf and case/psu.

 

[AA0]

The Aladdin V is one of the chipsets to suffer from the Live! problems, it was one of the first ones known.

If you are talking about windows not using the RAM properly, that is a lot different than the board not working with it. The board has no problem using lots of RAM.

 

[Jace]

The board Does have "issues" with more than 128MB of Ram, just as MrBumpy wrote. Read the white papers on the chipset. That board, with only a 512KB cache can only cache up to 128MB of memory, unless you are using a K6-3 processor. It is not related to Win9x problem that has been beaten to death regarding using more 512MB or more memory. I had that same motherboard myself and regard it as my second worst motherboard purchase ever; it slow IDE performance, pitiful drivers, TNT and TNT2 issues that were never fully resolved, etc.