problems with 9700 pro

[Bac0nYo]

Hey all. I just bought a used 9700 pro from a trader here on anandtech. I am replacing my 64mb ti4200, which has served me very well. So I install the 9700 pro and all hell breaks loose. I stated using the current 4.9 catalyst drivers. I couldn't play doom3 for more that 10 secs without vpu error. I couldn't run 3dmark 01 or 03 for more than 5 secs without vpu error. Here is my setup: msi pt880 mb, p4 2.4a prescott oc to 3ghz on stock air, 2x256 pc3700 kingston valueram dual channel, built by ati 9700 pro....

So I am reading and reading about different people have problems with 9700 and via chipset mb's. I tried all sorts of things, disabling vpu, fastwrite, blah, blah. I reverted to version 3.9 of ati drivers because someone suggested that it may be the drivers, no help. So then, while still at 3.9, I went into the bios and disabled fastwrites, changed agp to 4x from 8x and changed agp apeture to 128mb, should that have been 128 anyways?

Everything worked perfect after that, 14k on 3dmark01, doom3 runs fine, 45.1fps at 8x6, medium. I updated back to current 4.9 catalyst, still all good. So I am kinda scared to go change things to try and find the actual problems. I will eventully. Any best guesses as to whether it was fast writes, which I doubt, 4x agp or the 128mg apeture? Should the apeture always match memory of vid card? Thanks for your feedback.

Oh, side note, doom3 looks like dogshit when you use ati 3.9 drivers.

Bac0nyo

 

[BFG10K]

Early 9700 Pros had problems running at AGPx8 so running them at AGPx4 is the way to get them working.

 

[Bac0nYo]

Has anyone else had a problem running the 9700 pro at 8x agp? Is there a bios update for the 9700 pro at all?

Thanks,
Bac0nyo

 

[McMadman]

It could have been a combination of fast writes or agp 8x.

From what I've heard fastwrite has virtually no performance boost on atis hardware, and a little bit of a boost on nvidia's. But it can cause stability issues.

agp 4x or 8x is basically a tossup, most of the time there's hardly any noticable change. I've ran my 9700 at 4x and it's been just fine.

aperature size is the amount of your systems memory that can be shared as video memory if needed, 64 or 128 will be fine. An old recommendation was for it to be half of your system memory, but this was back when video cards had much less memory onboard (8-32mb) and 128/256mb of system memory was common.

Since you were also switching from nvidia to ati, did you run drivercleaner to fully remove any of nvidia's drivers?

I'm amazed that doom3 actually ran on the 3.9 cats, I tried to play on the 4.3s and it hardlocked the system after ~20 mins (beta 4.9s solved that issue) I didn't even get through the basic introduction.

 

[Creig]

I believe the current setting for AGP aperature is 1/4 system memory. And when going between ATI/Nvidia I would DEFINITELY run the drivercleaner. For some reason Nvidia and ATI don't play well together (go figure). Disabling fast-writes was one of the stability-enhancing settings people have used as well.

Did you try setting your BIOS back to defaults and start your OCing from scratch? You may not be able to OC your 2.4a to 3.0 with the 9700 Pro. Also, you didn't mention your power supply. That 9700 Pro is going to suck a lot more juice than your Ti4200 ever did so you might want to check your voltages.

 

[carldon]

I agree with fastwrites being turned off. Also, you'd want to disable VPU recover. Heard it causes some stability issues. Running a 9700pro on Abit NF7 and Cat 4.7's with AGP aperture size as 128MB. Couple of months back I had problems with getting the card to run at 8x. I would switch to 8x from Windows and then in the bios but it would just keep getting back to the lowest setting. Seems that conflicting drivers and the way the drivers are installed cause that.

You should have no problems changing the setting right now. They should work just fine.

 

[ronnn]

I get about 2% gain from fastwrites, is stable so I take it, but many gain stability and extra overclocking room with fastwrites off.

 

[Bac0nYo]

Thanks for all the responses everyone. My power supply is a generic 400w, not even sure what the brand is. Since I switched to 4x agp and fast writes off everything has been perfectly stable. Still oc'd to 3ghz no issues at all, played doom3 and farcry for a combined 4+ hours and had no issue...for the price of a used 9700pro I am quite impressed with the card so far.

Thanks,
Bac0nyo

 

[Mem]

The good news is running at 4x AGP and with fastwites off doesn`t effect your performance,infact if you benchmark it you`ll have a hard time seeing any real difference, fastwrites disabled can improve stability on some systems as you`ve already found out.