Video performance degradation with 'upgraded' motherboard

[cdawson]

Hello.
I have just 'upgraded' from Asus A7V8X-X motherboard with Athlon XP2700 to a ECS KV2 Lite with Athlon64 3800. I have kept my ATI Radeon 9800 graphics card.
I tested the system with Aquamark 3 benchmark and was very supprised to find that my GPX score had dropped from about 5000 to just under 3000. I was not expecting it to have changed much.
I have reloaded Via Hyperion drivers v5.10 and reloaded graphic drivers, latest v7.3 and an old version v5.10 I had, but no effect.
The settings in the Bios seem OK
Is the ECS board that much worse than the Asus board design, or can anyone suggest another cause.
Can anything be done to restore the graphic performance?
Testing with 2x512MB matching ram. Windows XP2 SP2
Also flashed BIOS to latest
Regards

 

[cdawson]

More information:
The problem seems to stem from the fact that in DirectX 9.0c Dxdiag, AGP texture acceleration is not available. I have tried uninstalling the ATI graphic drivers, and the Via chipset drivers, and then installing Via drivers, tried both v4.56v (from the ECS website) and the newer v5.10a from Via, before then installing the graphic drivers.
I suspect the problem seems to be that when loading the Via drivers the AGP Gart driver does not appear to be installed, I assume because it doesn't think that a AGP card is fitted.
What are the best BIOS settings inorder to get the Radeon card recognised
Regards
Clive

 

[PFCWintergreen]

Did you reinstall Windows when you upgraded the motherboard?

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: PFCWintergreen
Did you reinstall Windows when you upgraded the motherboard?

I think it was FlyingPenguin who used to point out all the time that simply uninstalling the previous chipset drivers isn't good enough...a clean OS install is the only way to guarantee performance when swapping mobos

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Slugbait

Originally posted by: PFCWintergreen
Did you reinstall Windows when you upgraded the motherboard?

I think it was FlyingPenguin who used to point out all the time that simply uninstalling the previous chipset drivers isn't good enough...a clean OS install is the only way to guarantee performance when swapping mobos

I've always been able to get it working (well, twice, but I've only done two motherboard swaps on my own systems. 😛) I have done a "repair" installation on my upgrades, though, which removes all the drivers and registry hardware configuration. You might want to try that if you just swapped drivers out from Device Manager.

But first, give this a shot:

1) Use Driver Cleaner to scrub the video and chipset drivers, and go back to the default VGA drivers that come with Windows (it comes with instructions on what to do.)

2) Reinstall the chipset drivers.

3) Reinstall the latest DirectX.

4) Install the latest video card drivers.

This usually does the trick when the video drivers are confused about the motherboard's capabilities.

 

[froglegsisme]

Hey CDAWSON, do yourself a favor and DON'T update your BIOS on the KV2 Lite. I did, using the supplied EZ Flash program, corrupted my BIOS (have found at least 2 other people who did same with same results), was told to use the as-advertised-on-the-box-and-in-the-manual TopHat Flash, only to find that ECS used the name KV2 "Lite" to mean: "Oops. We didn't include the TopHat Flash BIOS recovery chip. Sorry. You should have bought the KV2 Extreme."
I know this wasn't part of your query, but these are some words to the wise.
BTW, let me know if you (or anyone else!) HAS the KV2 Extreme with the advertised TopHat flash chip. I'll pay for shipping both ways to borrow the chip. Otherwise, I have a dead board....
Thanks for listening.

 

[ch33zw1z]

froglegsisme: why would you try flashing the BIOS from Windows in the first place? Anyone who tries that deserves what they get..

 

[Slugbait]

frog, you get my vote for Random Bump of the Month.