Radeon Video Card (FIC A97 9700np) incompatible with Nforce2 mb's (8rda+, a7n8x)?

[ectx]

I got a FIC 9700 np (a97) recently and got this very strange problem:

(1) 9700 runs great in a p4 setup (MSI 845 ultra)

(2) Move 9700 to a 8rda+
(a) got the boot error code "7F"
(b) reset bios and got error code FF
(c) Put in a 8500 DV video card and it boots up ok.

(3) Move 9700 to a a7n8x deluxe board (running fine with 9500np)
(a) the boot was going (lights/beeps on on various devices) - but no post messages!!
(b) then "boom" the widows log on screen shows up.
(c) reboot- the same thing. Get in windows and I could surf.
(d) re-install cat 3.4 becasue I could not oc (*see below)
(e) boot when driver installtion tells me to reboot. It did boot, but this time I cannot see any images.
(f) I put in the 9500 and re-boot, finising driver installation
(g) Put in 9700 again and expect to see the winows. But no luck this this time. So I put 9500 back and it ran fine.

(4) Move the 9700 back to MSI, it is still ok.

(A) I am 100 % sure all boards/mb are ok. The 9700 is simply not compatible with the 2 noforce-2 boards.

(B) I have farily new bios's in both boards (I checked the Epox and Asus sites and saw the releases notes of the more recent bios releases and did not see the new bios solving this type of problems).

(c) Searched various sites and saw a few people having similar problems (9700 pro, np, 9500 pro, np and 9200?) but no real solutions. Intertestingly one person says it will boot ok if he keeps a pci video card in there too.

(D) It seems that the VGA mode of the 9700 is not compatible with Nforce-2 chipset but once windows takes over and switches to it's own drivers, it is ok??

(E) I did flash the a97 video bios to allow overclocking. Would this be a problem?

Sorry for the long note. In my many years of dealing with PC, this is by far the strangest problem. Hope I can find some advice here.

 

[ectx]

Anyone?

 

[ponyo]

Did you set AGP to 4x or lower? I remember 9700 having problem with 8x setting.

 

[ectx]

Tried that (diable agp8x) and it did not work.

 

[Mem]

The only thing I can think of is PSU and BIOS settings,you could try going into BIOS disable fastwrites, disable video ram cacheable,disable all video shadowing,disable system bios cacheable as well,,leave PCI slot 1 empty(nearest to AGP).

Try using a power lead to the 9700 card that is not shared with anything else,you could also remove some hardware to reduce the PSU load and see if that helps.

Also don`t overclock anything and see if it works.

 

[ectx]

I'll give it a shot on BIOS settings.

I use true control 550 so I do not think the power is a problem.

As far as oc. - one system is being worked on (8rda+) so it was not oc at all. The other (a7n8x) is a system subject to very rigorous tests (36hr p95, 12 hr memtest86, 18hr of 3dmk looping), then I back off from the maximum allowable setting. Never had it given me any problem - every crash will be investigated to make sure it is not oc related). The testing is taking all the fun out of the oc. I wonder why I bother doing that.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I'll set teh BIOS stuff. Back to swapping video cards again.