What is it with ATI cards and Fast Write anyway?

[InlineFive]

I kept having stability problems with my system, my computer kept crashing in games, Windows wouldn't boot, etc. So when I turned off Fast Writes the system works perfectly! Even AGP Voltage bumps didn't help. As this happened on another system with a different ATI card also I am starting to wonder!

However, since I found the culprit maybe I can try to OC a bit more now that the system won't crash all the time!

-Por

 

[VIAN]

Fast Writes suck. They were thought of to improve performance, but all they do is make your system less stable and may actually lower performance. Any performance increase is negligible.

 

[Megatomic]

I have been able to enable Fast Writes on all of my recent video cards (GF and later). This includes Radeon 64 VIVO, Radeon 7500, Radeon 9500 Pro, and Radeon 9600 Pro. Some motherboards have problems with FW though. Your A7N8X should not have a problem with it. I did have to do some funky things to install my Radeons on NF2 boards such that I could enable AGP8X and FW.

 

[Keysplayr]

I can speak for the Intel 865PE mobos. I own 2 of them and they both have problems with ATI cards and fast writes on. GeForce cards dont seem to care whether fast writes are on or not. THey work fine in both boards either way.

I have an ASUS P4P800 and an MSI NEO2 and both have 865PE chipsets. FYI

 

[capodeloscapos]

I had always enabled it, with Epox 8KHA+, GeForce 256, GeForce 2 MX, GeForce FX 5200 (128 bits) and ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
I have never had any problem with it.
My Brother's Asus A7V and GF 2 MX also has it enabled and he had no problem.

 

[BFG10K]

Both nVidia and ATi fully support fastwrites and it's an established technology. If your system is having problems with it enabled then it's probably something else at fault such as configuration or similar.

Start off by having the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed for your system and don't overclock anything.

 

[Mem]

Eitherway fastwrites only offers a very small improvement if any.

Fastwrites is enabled on my PC(which has an ATI card) with no stability problems,however I`ve not notice any real improvement,so it`s one of those settings you can try and see how it goes for stability and performance on your system.

 

[InlineFive]

I would much rather go for more OC then Fast Writes, but that's my opinion.