Incompatability with Radeon 9700 and Asus A7266DM

[rkoenn]

I just assembled a dual Athlon MB using the Asus A7M266D motherboard and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card. The system starts the BIOS but once the two CPUs are identified, it locks up. At first I thought it was a keyboard problem but after putting in an old ATI Rage card, it booted fine. It appears that there is some type of incompatability issue and I wonder if there is any solution to it. I anyone has any similar experience or a solution, I would gladly like to hear of it. Thanks in advance.

 

[Rand]

It's perhaps the obvious question but... have you considered the PSU?

Dually AthlonMP's can get awfully demanding, not only in terms of sheer power draw but also in terms of a steady and reliable power source.
The situation is only likely to get worse with the R9700 which has already shown itself to be extremely picky about the PSU in use.
I've seen a number of cases in which even 350W PSU's with a fairly generic setup besides the graphics card were entirely incapable of running an R9700 reliably.

On the flip side I've seen a few high quality PSU's of only 275W that managed an R9700 without any issues at all.

Dually AMP's + R9700 is bound to create an awfully stressful situation for any PSU however.
Both are well known to be extremely picky about the quality of the PSU even more so then peak/sustained power output.


Regarding the A7M266D... it's not exactly the most robust AGP implementation I've ever seen and is very well known for being incompatible with a large number of higher end Pro3D graphics. But then, that's been an issue with most Asus boards, most noteably those that support AGPPro.
Nonetheless, I've never heard of any specific compatibility issues between the A7M266D, and the R9700 Pro or any other excessively power hungry -mainstream- graphics card like the classic GeForce DDR or more recently the Parhelia.

I have seen one A7M266D operating with apparent reliability with an R9700 shortly after it's initial launch, though that was in a system ATi' was doing a tech demo on. Still, one would think ATi would choose a mobo that was generally trustworthy when paired with the R9700.


Does it operate long enough for you to get into the BIOS..., if so then...
does it operate reliably so long as you remain in the BIOS?
Has AGP VCore adjustment yielded any benefits?
Tried disabling FastWrites etc?
Dropped AGP Aperture to 4MB or less?


I recall a few A7M266D's I've encountered had troubles booting from an AGP graphics card, have you tried booting from PCI and then initialising then AGP R9700 after BIOS POST?

I presume you are using the most recent BIOS release for the A7M266D?
It may be worth updating the R9700's BIOS also... though I would strongly recommend you exhaust all other possible solutions before doing so.

 

[rkoenn]

I have an Antec 550 watt power supply in the system. I through in a Radeon 7000 and the system boots. I went into the BIOS settings with the 7000 card and set some AGP settings lower. I will try a couple of those you mentioned as well. At the moment, it is still hanging right after identifying the CPUs. Breezes right on through that with the other Radeon board. Thanks and if you have any other ideas let me know. Very frustrating as I am building this system for a real rocket scientist and have to ship it to Atlanta tomorrow for delivery Saturday so he can use it on a job. He will probably end up with my Radeon 8500 for the interim. Another funny you may be interested in, when I first fired up the box with the Asus 1006 BIOS, it identified both CPUs as 2200 MPs but said the second one was MP incapable. Flashed to 1008 BIOS and that problem went away. Maybe Asus will release a BIOS fix soon as it appears to be a problem during the video card checks.

 

[rkoenn]

A couple of other things that have happened tonight. I was getting shutdowns continuously during WinXP Pro install as soon as the hard drive format started. System would just turn off. This apparently was attributable to a USB MS Office Keyboard. Or, possibly, the fact that I had 4 1GB ECC/Registered memory modules in the system. Either way, when I removed the keyboard the system would continue with the Windows install. So I popped the Radeon 9700 back in and the system went through the BIOS. However, next thing I know when Windows tried to continue with the install the machine shutdown again right after install started. So I went down to 2 GB memory and install continued. This system is becoming very frustrating. If anyone else has built a system like this and got it to work smoothly, please let me know. Still continuing on here but going more frustrated by the hour.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

One thing you shoulda realized when you bought the mobo is it only supports 3.5GB of registered memory not 4GB. I can't find any specs on the AGP slot, can you confirm that it is 1.5v and not 1.7v(most agp pro's are the 1.7v kind), the radeon 9700pro can go bonkers if overvoltaged, and will fry if you leave it in too long. Rocket Scientist, Engineers, and CAD developers would have been better off with the fill rates of the latest Quadro's and FireGL4's than the Radeon 9700, 1 its not a professional graphics card, it's an enthusiast gamers card, and is not optimized for heavy on-demand rendering and redraws. 2 It's drivers aren't the best in the world, tends to lock up occasionally in loops, and these types of people want stability over sheer performance anyway. They can be very picky as they want the fastest of the fastest with perfect stability. Good Luck. p.s. sale on of the 1GB registered and buy a 512MB registered if you want to max this board.

I'm not just pulling this info outa my @ss, I have several friends that use CAD as a living, one designes diesels engines for Caterpillar it Atlanta GA, another designs IC's for T.I. in Sherman TX, and my Uncle in Law is a Rocket Scientist Professor at Berkley.