Ok, I'll need someone to help me out on this.
I've read a few articles on Microsoft's web-site regarding the functions of PCI-e, and how the OS deals with the technology.
I need someone with Service Pack 2 installed, a Motherboard within the ASUS A8N series (preferably A8N-SLi Deluxe or Premium), and any type of PCI-Express Graphics Card.
Just please go to your Device Manager, and look at the tab where everything on your computer is listed, is should be named "System Peripherals".
Now just please list every single thing mentioned you see about PCI and NVIDIA.
Then, for each of those, please list me the version and name of the Driver used.
For example, in my case, I can see "PCI-to-PCI Bridge", and it repeats five times in the peripherals list. I right-click on the first, and look at its listed driver, and it reads: Manufacturer -Microsoft- / Driver version 5.1.2600.0 / Driver date 2001-07-01
Etc.
So, as you can see, I believe now the problem I have might be caused by a very, very similar problem I had way back one year ago, when I had that Motherboard with a VIA Chipset, ASUS A8V Deluxe.
The problem I had was that, under Service Pack 2 only, the AGP driver from the VIA drivers package, wouldn't apply, and Windows would consider any AGP component as a regular PCI component, and thus it ran my 9800 Pro as a PCI card. The driver from Microsoft (that was over-writing VIA's) was actually listed under "PCI-to-PCI Bridge" as well.
The ONLY known and working way to fix the problem, and make your AGP products run as 8X AGP speed as it should, was simply to avoid SP 2 at all costs when using that Motherboard.
Now, I believe that my current problem might be caused either by: 1) Extremely old version of PCI-to-PCI Bridge driver 2) The very fact that I'm using SP 2, and should just un-install it 3) The absence of an official driver from NVIDIA for PCI-to-PCI Brige if any does exist, and am instead using an old Microsoft build that I shouldn't
Or who knows, might be something else.
So, can anyone help ?
Thanks.