my elsa mx and epox 8kta2 have big problem

[Kingofcomputer]

Just got the elsa mx from onvia for $94.
Now my system always freezes when surfing (either ie or netscape), starting pond demo.
I can press c-a-d to warm boot, will see the blue screen about system is busy.
I've of course installed via agp driver. I've tried all solutions - add EnableVia4x to registry, set agp to 2x, 1x, set agp drive value manually (I tried every value from E0 to EF) - none of them helps.
Does anybody have such problem too?

 

[cool]

be sure to have the newest BIOS: http://www.epox.com/html/english/support/motherboard/bios/8kta.htm

and get the detonator 6.35 at zoiah.m3dzone.com

consider asking at the alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.epox - newsgroup

bye

 

[Kingofcomputer]

new via agp 4.04 driver and nvidia 6.49 driver give a little improvement,
can run pond demo now, but it still freezes suddenly while surfing.
(4x, agp drive value auto, fast write disable)

 

[Sporko]

Hey King, I think we have the same problem. Check this thread and see if it sounds similar:

Thread on Anandtech Operating System Forum

It must have something to do with the Epox board and the MX video card. I've been trying to figure this out for two weeks and have formatted, installed, uninstalled, and installed again over and over with no results. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this problem.

 

[Warhead]

I dont know if we talk about the same problem here, but that was my problem:
IE and Outlook Express kept crashing when i scrolled with the cursor keys. Only solution was to downgrade the BIOS to 11/10/00, now it runs fine.

But another question:
You have a Epox and a geforce2 card like me. Do you have no problems with games? I got white flickerings in D3D and now a really strange bug in HL:

I get high FPS as expected, but the whole animation is absolutely choppy. If I strafe to the side before a wall/crate, it seems to be jumping constantly back and forth, instead of moving smoothly in the right direction.

Maybe any ideas on that?

Let me know if my BIOS tip did help you.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

for my system, the only programs that never freeze are:
3dmark 2000
neorage (neogeo emulator)
snes9xw (snes emulator)

I don't want to spend $50 more to get ati or v5, but this seems to be the final solution.

This problem should be caused by via's agp implementation (reverse engineering from intel's agp design, it could be not 100% same as intel's) and nvidia's greedy design of geforce to get higher performance.

If the price of p3-800 is like duron 800, I'd definitely get intel cpu with intel chipset mb.

I don't want to downgrade the bios, only 11/22 and after allows my Crucial pc133 cl3 to run at 133, older versions had problem - the system freezes at "verifying dmi pool" if set to auto detect spd or 133, need to downgrade the ram to run at 100.

I know 2 friends - 1 is using Abit KT7 with Inno3d, 1 is using Abit KT7-Raid with Inno3d, both don't have any problem. I know someone else who is using Epox 8kta2 with Asus V7100, the monitor always goes to standby mode.

So there is possibility Epox has fault.

Now I've a thought about getting v5 pci,
since the via agp implementation problem is not solvable,
and our Epox mb could have faulty agp,
so it's better to get v5 pci as voodoo doesn't use agp texture,
agp or pci doesn't matter, and you can re-use the pci v5 in old system without agp or future system without agp or a server mb without agp.