The GF4 cards are nothing but trouble
some mobo only supply .9V at bootup, bios fixes are to come (these wont even boot)
some mobo bios have timing issues with AGP calls
there are some rather exotic ACPI and APIC conflicts, primarily in XP with non compliant BIOS that can be
cured by installing as MP single proc HAL, but a bit complicated for here
Theres nothing wrong with card itself, just interfacing issues
what nvidia has done is to force people to use very current mobo with very current vidcards
the days of firing up your p233 and running the latest and greatest geforce are over, for the most part
One tiny example here:
(Quote)
Source: NVchips-fr
Hardware.fr has posted two short articles about problems many MSI Pro2 owners are encountering when they've placed a GF4 MX based card in their system. The first article. They were unable to get MSI's KT266A-based K7T Pro2 to boot with either Sparkle's or Leadtek's GF4 MX based cards, yet both components would function
with other configuurations.
The second article where a reader tested a variety of mainboards with his Leadtek GF4 MX. His test was very thorough, trying a variety of different motherboard chipsets.
Yet this odd bug seems to be fine with other combinations as a PixelView GF4 MX card has been reported to work with the MSI Pro2. Gainward's and PNY's cards fail to boot 10 to 20% of the time too. Hardware.fr experienced no
problems with Abit's GF4 MX on the Pro2.
So Leadtek, Sparkle Gainward, MSI, PNY and PixelView cards have reported some problems with the Pro2 while Abit's card has yet to experience a boot failure.
The above text was all translated from Hardware.fr.
I'm lucky enough to have an MSI Pro2 in my main system (not that lucky actually
. I've been experiencing failed boots with my eVGA MX 440 and Creative MX 440 as well. From the wealth of info becomming available, it seems
like all the blame rests in MSI's court. MSI do something!!!
TomsHW..............
I have a Tyan Trinity K7 motherboard with a Slot A Athlon 750mhz which uses the VIA KX133 chipset. I'm running XP Home Edition with a clean install. I have a hercules GeForce2 card that works great. But for some reason when I tried using a PNY GeForce3 Titanium or the GeForce4 MX440 PNY card my system locks up. The GeForce3 card takes at least, until I do something graphical to lock up.. including just browsing the web. The GeForce4 card locks up as soon as windows starts to load. I noticed a tiny colored pixel in the top left of my screen when the GeForce4
locked up. Before when I tried to get the GeForce3 card to work I did absolutely everything, upgrading powersupply, setting every possible bios setting imaginable, you name it. There was only one situation where I got the GeForce3 card to work and that was when I pulled out every single PCI card in my system. If I so much as put a NIC card in.. it would lock up.. but with no PCI cards in my system I could run the chameleon color changing 3D demo and the GeForce3 wouldnt lock up. I wasnt about to pull out all my crap to see if the GeForce4 would work.. probably wouldnt
Is all of this just because PNY is crap? Should I try a hercules GeForce3 card? Or is this a chipset/motherboard problem?
I have 384 MB Ram so thats not the problem, I have all of my pci cards but like i said it crashes if I put just a NIC card in (tried 3 kinds) and if even I put just my pci soundcard in.
I updated my VIA chipset drivers, USB Filter driver, tried Nvidia drivers.. you name a version and I tried it, the PNY drivers that came on the cd, I have the latest bios version for my motherboard. And as I said before I tried every single bios setting you can think of, and I have just about any setting available that you can think of.
Well i called FIC the other day on this subject.It seems you have to install the pro drivers,right after you install windows (excsept for XP).Even before you install any drivers.Seems you have to do this on All Via 133s.No matter
who makes it.Seems if you install the PRO drivers first,you are building on them.Where if you install them after, it sets up not allowing you to put new Cards,except what brands you are using.Which makes sence.Since i can put any voodoo card in without a glich.Ive had 2 nvidia cards.Gforce2mx400,and the new 1 i got,Gforce2TI500 Golden series Dont install.They also said that A lot of the new Gforce cards are not tested on FIC mobo's.Or recomended.
Hi,
I tried a couple of newly bought GeForce 4 MX440 video cards. These cards have a definite problem with VIA KT133(A) chipset based motherboards. I tried them on two motherboards one with KT133A and the other with KT133. On the first one none of them booted and on the second one only one (gainward) booted with a
garbled output. On the other hand they all work fine on an Intel motherboard. Has anyone else tested G4MX cards with these KT133 boards? I tried three G4 cards of two different brands and from 2 different sources and they show the same problem. So it is surely not a coincidence or a problem with one card only. Other cards like Radeon and GF2MX, SiS etc work fine on these boards. There is definite issue with G4 and KT133. Or at least with the FIC based KT133 boards that I have.
Following is the configuration I tried with -
Motherboard 1:
VIA KT133A chipset FIC AZ11EA brand motherboard
Athlon XP 1800+ CPU, 1GB PC133 SDRAM, 40+60GB Maxtor HDD
SB Live!5.1, Realtek N/W card
Motherboard 2:
VIA KT133 chipset FIC AZ11E brand motherboard
Athlon 1.3 GHz CPU, 384 MB PC100 SDRAM, 20GB WD HDD
Realtek N/W card, Trendnet WinModem
The Intel board I tried was on a standard Dell Precision 220 Workstation.
The cards I used were Leadtek and Gainward G4MX440 ones
I hope some other folks out there can verify this. Its a shame that they didn't do a good job of compatbility testing.
Also most of the reviewers seem to use only high end VIAKT266A based boards.
I'd warn anyone with a KT133 based board to think seriously and do some testing before buying a G4MX based video card.
Quote:
Compatibility list between motherboards and GeForce4MX from Sparkle and Leadtek:
AOpen AK77Pro(A)-133 (KT266A) : Ok
ABIT KG20 (AMD 761) : Ok
ABIT KR7A-RAID (KT266A) : Ok
ASUS A7V266-E (KT266A) : Ok
ABIT VH6T (Pro133T) : Ok
ECS K7S5A (SiS 735) : Ok
Leadtek 7350KDA (SiS 735) : Ok
ECS K7VZA/100 (KT133) : Ok
Gigabyte GA-7VTX (KT266) : Ok
Gigabyte GA-7VTXE (KT266A) : Boot en AGP 2x
MSI 845Ultra-AR (i845B) : Ok
MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU (KT266A) : Problème de boot aléatoire
MSI K7N420 Pro (nForce 420) : Ok
Supermicro P3TDDE (Pro266T) : Ok
As you can see, everything's ok except for the MSI and the Gigabyte, with Sparkle and Leadtek's GeForce4MX.
Tests with the PixelView didn't show any problem. Tests with Gainward and PNY shows problems on 10 to 20%
of cases.
You can check it out on
www.inpact-hardware.com and on
www.hardware.fr. (translate)
http://pub41.ezboard.com/fringofvalor44669frm1.showMessage?topicID=515.topic (get dev 5 caps)
http://www.3dupdates.com/forums/drivers/messages/2117.html(get dev caps fail at step 5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please try do the following for the A170 card.
- Put the PC when Windows is loaded into standby mode (ALT+F4)
- Then press "up arrow key" one time and press enter
- The PC is now in standby mode
- Press any key to get the PC out of standby mode
You have to do this every time when you start the PC mode, and this is the only remedy
The card does have conflicts with the following mainboard:
MSI:
K7T266 266 Pro 2
ELITEGROUP:
K7S5A
ASUS:
A7V
A7V266-E
ABIT:
KT133 A
BL7
TH7II
GIGABYTE:
7EXE4
GA6VTXE
EPOX:
8KHA
If your mainboard is listed here, these motherboards have memory conflicts with the Leadtek card and will NOT work. Please check at your mainboard manufacturer for an update. If your mainboard has a conflict please notify us about it and call the manufacturer or they know anything about a problem with the chipset.
Best Regards,
Robin van Beveren,
Leadtek Europe.
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