TNT2 Ultra (AGP) at 133MHZ FSB

[Gunthr]

I think I've got a sweetheart P-3 700 mhz chip that immediately went to 933 mhz when I raised the buss on my Abit BX6-R2 mobo with stock fan and heatsink. It booted up and started windows fine, but had lock ups after 15 mins of a flight sim. My case cooling is great. I run it open with extra 80 mm case fans and a desk top fan blowing directly on the innards.

I took off the thermal pad that came with it and put on Arctic Silver thermal grease and then tried to run 3d2000, but it locks up soon after the first helocopter test begins. I'm also unable to open ?Display? in control panel when the FSB is raised to 133 mhz.

I?m using 128 mb Mushkin pc133 cas2 ram. I?m pretty sure the Diamond 770 ULTRA 32 mb card is the problem, but just in case, I set the HD PIO MODE to 4,3,2,1 and zero in succesion. It didn?t help.

After reading about the tweak for AGP cards, I disabled SIDE BAND ADDRESSING using Powerstrip, but that didn?t help me get there either.

AGP Aperture is set at 64mb.


Any ideas?

If it turns out that my particular card is one that just wont do it at 133mhz, what would be your recommendation for a good AGP video card that will?

What are the pro's and con's of going with a PCI Video card?

Wild guesses accepted. Thanks...

 

[Aboroth]

My Viper TNT2 Ultra won't do 133MHz FSB either on any BX boards. My V5 does, though, and it has much better looking 2D than my friend's Geforce DDR and is more than I need for 3D also.

 

[vss1980]

You may be able to get more out of the card at 133. The fact that it boots is helpful as it shows the card MAY be able to work at 133.

Firstly, if you can, lower the AGP aperture to the lowest setting - this effectively lowers the amount of memory available for AGP texturing, and hopefully to 0. Also, run with Side-Band-Addressing off.

Also, dont overclock your card as the interface with the motherboard is already overclocked (at 89 MHz), in fact you may have to underclock it (but if it works, that is no big deal is it?!?).

You could go with a PCI card but it has the drawback of not being able to use features like AGP 1,2,4x texturing (so if the card runs out of memory it can use system RAM). Apart from that there would not be many other differences - textures may take a tiny bit longer to load, big deal.

 

[Gunthr]

Thanks svss1980, your suggestions improved my Viper 770 Ultra's stability.

I set my AGP aperture down to 4, the lowest it would go.

I discovered my card was a bit overclocked at Turbo level 2, so I lowered that to level 1, which seemed to be the lowest setting. (I'm using the older 4.01 driver)

Side Band Adressing was off.

I was able to open "Display" in control panel whereas it wouldn't open before at 933mhz.

I was able to get farther into the 3d2000 benchmark... to the third helocopter test at high detail where I could see the card begin to stagger and then lock up.

I just remembered that I meant to try going from AGP X2 down to AGP X1 to see if that helps. I would also like to underclock the card but don't know how to access that ... is it via powerstrip? Thanks again for your help, svss1980.

Gunthr

 

[Kanly]

ok, my system 1st:
600E@831
Diamond 770 Ultra 32MB
AGP Ap. 64
Soyo 6BA+IV
128MB Infineon memory

Do a fresh install of the Detonator drivers.
I've used everything from 3.8 to 5.32 now.

http://www.reactorcritical.com
add the coolbits registry entry that there too.

You are on the right track with disabling SBA. I couldn't get mine stable at anything over 733 Mhz until i found that tip.

And definitely don't oc the card at first. leave it at default speed until you are stable with everything else.

WHen I was fooling around with it, i didn't find much difference either way between 1 and 2x AGP.


One other thing i also did was flash the Card's bios with a Nvidia reference bios. You can really screw your card up if you do this wrong so be careful.

There is also a way to run the bios without flashing the card.

All the details are here http://www.xs4all.nl/~bmsmit/

 

[Gunthr]

Thanks, DukeLeto.

1. Cool sites. I couldn't locate the coolbits registry entry on the site, although I did find oblique references to it in the forum. What will it do for my card's performance?

2. I've been using the 4.01 drivers because they have the overclock applet, and because I'm also told that they are the best for Direct 3d programs like the on-line flight sim I'm addicted to. Will the reference drivers help me run the card overclocked via the FSB?

3. How do I underclock my card?

4. Lastly, I didnt even know that I could flash the tnt2 bios. I am leary because Im not sure which flash utility and upgrade file to use.
Could you clarify that for me?

Thanks for any tidbits you can give me...

Gunthr

 

[Kanly]

Coolbits should be in the files or download section at reactorcritical.

As for 4.01 and all: The coolbits registry setting is what will add the oc bars to the Nvidia display panel.

For D3D, dunno. I mostly play in OpenGL so ..... ?

Reference drivers are usually more stable in ocing, so
why not try the Dets. and if you don't like the D3D perfomance switch back to the 4.01

Have no idea how to underclock the card.

FLashing the bios is risky, I had a couple of cards lying around and was bored one day so I thought I'd try it.

I'd say try everything else to get it stable at 133, then maybe flash it.

There is also a way to run a refernce bios from the harddrive using a program called VGABios.


for my, getting SBA off was the biggest thing.

Is your powerstrip a demo or full version?
If it's demo, it reverts back to defaults every once in a while so SBA might be back on.


Good luck.

 

[vss1980]

I was able to underclock both mine and my friends TNT2 card (his is Ultra, mine is a PRO). Using the Coolbits tweak the apeed sliders were available and I just throttled them back just to see if they worked like that.

 

[DeadlyKnight]

mine does 133 i got a creative labs tnt2 ultra 32 meg i put a s370 style cooler on it and heatsinks on the memory like the geforce guys r doin

 

[Gunthr]

DukeLeto: I'm going to take your advice on the Det. drivers and will leave the bios flash for last. Thanks

vss1980: Thanks again. Didn't know it was that easy

DeadlyKnight: Let's trade!

Gunthr

 

[DeadlyKnight]

hahaha it take a little wrestling to get the card up there but youll be happy once you do get it there oh bye the way my tnt2 ultra is on my kids sytem and they are the first to tell if there is a problem cuz they are stuck on the gameing from dawn until dusk got 3 of them on it all day long