Ok who's lying? nvmax or sandra?

[RgrPark]

I have 4x agp, side band adressing, and fastwrite enabled via nvmax...
just decided to snoop around with sisoft sandra and it tells me my agp is 2x and even though my card is capable of both, neither sideband addressing nor fast writes are on...who's lying?

 

[Ronin]

Check in your BIOS. Both settings should be visible there, and give you the proper reading regardless.

 

[RgrPark]

do you mean the system bios?
wouldn't programs such as nvmax load up after the bios?

 

[vss1980]

You have to remember the relationship that tweak programs have to the graphics drivers and hardware functions.

The ultimate 'decision' to activate a setting is actually up to the graphics drivers and hardware. The tweak program like NVmax merely set a parameter which tells it what you want it to do. The graphics driver can still ignore this suggestion.

As to the reason why the setting doesn't work is a bit difficult to say.
Maybe your graphics card does not literally support it (either through the card's BIOS or some other hard-wired switch) or the drivers are having a slight hang-up over the settings in your computer's BIOS.

EDIT: Also, get a second opinion from another program. PCIList is a program from the PowerStrip makers which is a free utility and lists all the PCI/AGP features of devices connected to the bus.

 

[RgrPark]

ok under my system bios, it says fast writes are on but both powerstrip and sandra says they aren't...
powerstrip doesn't offer an option to turn on my sidebanding and fastwrites...and nvmax claims to but according to these utilities, it's not...any ideas?

 

[vss1980]

Hmmm, strange. In pretty much every case the tweaker will enable any option if the hardware supports it regardless of whether it will make your system unstable or not.

Maybe there is a BIOS upgrade for your graphics card which will allow these options to function (not sure whether fastwrites and sidebanding can be restricted by the graphics card BIOS) or the drivers you are using for your graphics card or AGP (VIA 4in1) driversdrivers will not allow it.

Hopefully another person with your card may be able to tell you if they can get theirs to work and see if there is a difference somewhere in the cards.

 

[*kjm]

Make sure your AGP Aperture in your system BIOS is set higher than the amount of memory on your video card. If your video card has 64meg set it to 128meg or 256meg.

 

[RgrPark]

hm...i have a Gainward Golden sample ti-450...i think my aperture is set to 64...will try upping it

 

[ginfest]

A couple of things: Sidebanding is disabled in the all shipping GF3 ti BIOS. You can edit the BIOS to enable sidebanding and re-flash your vc, but nVidia doesn't recommend it due to stability concerns. I have never seen a real-world difference AFA FPS in either my GF1 or GF2 both which ran with Sidebanding enabled on my P3V4X.

Fastwrites have also been known to cause instability, although my current mainboard doesn't support Fastwrites, my old P3v4X didn't show any FPS gain with it enabled.

The AGP aperture question: it doesn't have to be set higher than the memory on the vc, in fact, I have mine set at 64 MB, with a 64 MB vc, no problems running any D3D or Open GL game at 1280+ with great fps. In fact, most tech sites recommend 64 MB, or at most 128, if you check out the BIOS Guide on Adrians Rojak Pot, higher AGP Aperture #s only create a "bigger" GART table which can actually be a detriment to performance.

 

[RgrPark]

ok i'm not sure what's really going on but after i upped my agp aperture to 128, sandra actually says it's agp 4x and sideband is enabled. weird

 

[*kjm]

I dont know what is wrong but for some reason DirectX seems to be doing something. Your the 3rd person (my system to) that this is the fix for. My BIOS dont have a AGP setting in it so maybe that has something to do with it.... not sure.