How do I enable fastwrites and SBA?

[rogue1979]

I have a Geforce3 Ti200 running 30.82 dets in Win98SE. With older dets I have been able to turn on fastwrites and side-band addressing no problems. I can go into the registry and see the values for both categories. I use NVmax to turn them on, but Sandra tells me they are supported but not enabled. Like I said, with older versions of dets and NVmax I could get them working according to Sandra, any ideas?

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

You could go permanent and flash the card bios with it enabled. Use ray adams bios editor. Download the bios for your card or you can copy the bios you have. Load it in the bios editor and turn on the fast writes and sba. Flash it and you'll have it enabled.
You could try rivatuner it has a setting to enable sba and fwrites

 

[Viper96720]

Wow I hit reply just once

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Viper96720
Wow I hit reply just once

LoL...you goin for Platinum member in one post???

I don't think NVmax has any support past like 28.xx, which is very sad b/c I found it to be the most elegant and easy to use tweaker out there. I went to RivaTuner but just didn't like the interface, and now I'm using coolbits, which just enables tweaks in Windows. RivaTuner has the options for fastwrites and SBA as well.

Chiz

 

[EglsFly]

What kind of performance difference do you see with fastwrites and sba turned on?

 

[rogue1979]

OK, not sure what I was doing but I downloaded Ray Adams Bios editor and went to work on the same bios file I was using. I enabled fastwrites and sba and Sandra reported they were working! But I also tried to change the clock speeds from the bios defaults of 200/460 to 240/500, and while the values were changed the clock speed stayed the same. Oh, well doesn't really matter as I use NVmax or coolbits to run 250/518. Thanks for the tip. Does anyone have any details on how or what to change all those columns for the core and memory speeds?

 

[Dulanic]

You should beable to enable fast writes through your MB bios. As for SBA well that Im not too sure, Mine enabled by default with the 40.52 and GF4.

 

[Flightsim]

What exactly are fast writes and SBA??? Do they improve performance? I've never heard of SBA before, but I have the option to enable fast writes in my BIOS. Right now, fast writes are disabled, but should I enable them for my GeForce4 Ti4400?

 

[BFG10K]

AGP fastwrites allow the CPU to communicate directly with the GPU without touching the system's main memory. This can help performance in situations where system memory bandwidth is limited.

Sideband addressing allows AGP to create 8 extra address lines that can be used while data requests and transfers continue on the usual 32 address lines. This increases bandwidth and reduces latencies.

 

[EglsFly]

Are there any potential pitfalls in regards to enabling these via the Ray Adams video bios editor?

 

[rogue1979]

Under certain circumstances it can cause instability, but mine runs rock solid.

 

[vss1980]

Are there any potential pitfalls in regards to enabling these via the Ray Adams video bios editor?

Yeah, thats why the graphics card manufacturer disabled them in the first place. Actually, its not that they will guarantee an error, but the manufacturer has to ensure that 99.99% of the people will not have problems, and the easiest way is to turn off the fastwrites (no big loss without it IMHO) and sidebanding (the cause of some amazing instability problems on some machines).

Sometimes is not just the card design or motherboard that is the determining factor with stability and sidebands/fastwrites. Graphics chip BIOS revisions can help out a lot in some cases.

 

[tcsenter]

And remember, Sandra is not always correct nor accurate.