ATI Smartgart messing with me

[Tomassetti13]

Hello,

Long time listener... err, reader; first time call... erm, poster. 😛

Recently I reinstalled XP Home SP2 (my disc only has SP2 🙁) on my PC. Now everything went well up till I went to tweak the Catalyst 5.7's. For some reason smartgart is now insisting that I have AGP off and fastwrite off. Funny that on my last installation they would both be 8x/on. The worst part of this is the fact that I cannot turn them on as Smartgart deems that its unsafe... I tried back drivers (all the way down to the 5.2's), but to no avail.

Specs:
AMD 64 3200+
Radeon 9600XT
1024mb Corsair
120gb POS HD 😛

XP Home SP2

Any solution to this?

-Eric

 

[BFG10K]

Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed for your system?

 

[xtknight]

Check the AGP settings in your BIOS and see if you notice anything odd. Enable fast writes in BIOS and make sure it's set at 8x (if that's even settable in BIOS). If it still persists, "Driver Cleaner" your video card drivers and reinstall the latest. I'm guessing it's the AGP GART driver that needs a reinstall and that should do it.

 

[Tomassetti13]

Tried the driver cleaner way... and went installed some old cat's. Still no luck. Checked my BIOS, says AGP 8x is on, no option for Fastwrite. Funny thing is when I tell smartgart to "retest" IT does the normal settings, but then it asks me to restart the computer to double check the settings, and it'll revert them. 😛

I get the feeling smartgart hates me 😛

Not exactly sure what a AGP Gart driver is BTW... i suppose I'd find that on my MOBO utilities CD? (Gigabyte KN8S Pro)

 

[Auric]

SmartGart falls back when detecting a problem. If it worked normally with same XP SP2, BIOS, CMOS Setup and Catalyst previously, then most likely it is a mobo chipset driver issue as BFG10K suggested -particularly if SP2 was finalized before it could be included. If so, it should be on your mobo CD or alternately check with giga-byte and/or nvidia for the latest 'n' greatest.

 

[Tomassetti13]

Well, after updating BIOS, Chipset, GART Drivers, the kitchen sink... the problem seemed to disapear.

Thanks all 🙂