VIA vs Videocard Troubleshooting Guide

Hilbert Hagedoorn · 01-28-2001, 17:50 | posts: 16,989 | Location: Guru3D testlab

Please place your remarks. ideas, suggestions and comments on this article in this thread.

02-05-2001, 18:40 | posts: n/a

FINNALLY!!! Thank You. Someone put it all together in one neat package. Was hoping for specifics but this has been the best article yet.

02-06-2001, 00:43 | posts: n/a

I upgraded to the KT7A Raid, w/ 768mb pc133 ram mx300 sound Rage Fury 32mb AGP video AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz no/overclock my problem is this. when first booting machine I can see the checksums go and then I go into the BIOS and configure the softmenu to use the full 1Ghz for the cpu. This is all I do. I save and restart and then I get nothing. I cant see the checksum or anything. I can hear the machine reconfiguring < the crunching > but I cant see anything. I have taken my video card out and put it into another machine, on first bootup it doesnt work, no signal is getting to monitor. On restart it works just fine. This repeats itself from one machine to another. I plan on upgrading to the Radeon 64mb video. But I am wondering why this happens to the Rage Fury 32mb video. Thanks ahead of time. Nice article though, good things to know.

02-06-2001, 01:01 | posts: n/a

this site was _very_ useful in getting my kt7-raid up and running: <A HREF="http://www.apushardware.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://www.apushardware.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm</A>

02-06-2001, 01:03 | posts: n/a

Thanks Godflesh I will give it a try...

02-06-2001, 01:48 | posts: n/a

I have a friend who has a new 1 gig athalon copaq that expierienced the same probs you are talking about, I mean lock ups galore using a new GeForce2 Ultra. I tried everything alot of which was discussed and no go, finally as a last resort thinking it an AMD compatibility issue I told him to disable the enhanced cpu instruction set in the Nvidia drivers and bingo works. I have two questions though how will this effect his performance and why after everything else would this work?

02-06-2001, 02:39 | posts: n/a

Its just very fustrating. You buy all new equipment. And all your old stuff worked great before, but now.. eh... Godflesh.. that link is very informative.. but it really doesnt go into the inital black screen. It says to go into the system under safe mode.. but I dont get any screen at all... Thanks guys.. its been all helpful

02-06-2001, 06:55 | posts: n/a

Nice article but I have a tweak tip that will help 90% of anyone who has had windows installed for more than a day.1. Boot to safe-mode. 2. Go to Device Manager 3. Check for duplicate or non-existent devices (everyone has them) 4. Delete the "Ghosts" 5. Reboot to normal Windows 6. Let windows redetect everythingI don't suggested deleting everything!

02-06-2001, 06:58 | posts: n/a

And, this will fix most any problem with driver issues, lock-ups, poor performane. Almost anything!!And this has been known to improve 3D-Mark Scores!!

02-06-2001, 08:03 | posts: n/a

Hi, good article that will help many people out of their probs, but there is one thing which let me say is not totally correct. Setting the AGPDriving VALUE =EA invoves the risk of burning your videocard and/or chipset. EA gives 9.16A to the AGPslot, with B9 it is 7.23A. Not all boards need the same. For Example with Epox boards try BA(recommended by EPOX)or CA if you have a Geforce2GTS. Tyan recommends DC for Biosversions before 02/15/00, for later CC. So i think you have to add, that changing the DrivingValue may be risky, and from all what i know this starts with values higher than DC. RFR

02-06-2001, 23:02 | posts: n/a

Hi Guys, Never, but realy NEVER put your "Graphic aparture size" at [256MB] in the BIOS even if you have 512MB of RAM. The Hercules Ultra can not handle that amount of RAM and goes creazy. It doesn't want to do the DirectX tests, funny things happen to your drives and even the printer gives garbage. It took me about 2 days to locate what went wrong. 128MB works fine. I introduced that value because I read somewhere that this value could be set to half the amount of ram.

02-06-2001, 23:45 | posts: n/a

Hey guys, I have a real problem. Since this is the info on the VIA vs. video card article, I thought this would be a good place to post itI'm running a fairly old AMD K6-2/500 w/ 128MB SDRAM, its running a Via MVP4 chipset with AGP 2x support. I just bought an ATI Radeon 32MB DDR about a month ago. One interesting thing is that my motherboard reports the processor running at 400MHz, but it's actually going at 500 (this I know thru various benchmarks) Now here's my problem...My system performs like a dog. I get a TERRIBLE frame rate and even things like MPEG-4 decoding are horrible. I popped my Radeon into a friend's computer that is the *EXACT* same setup -- AMD K6-2/500 on Via MVP4 w/ 128MB SDRAM...and it ran BEATIFUL! I was wondering if anyone knows exactly what could cause this problem? Or could help me fix it? e-mail me at ironhelix01@icqmail.com (ICQ#: 9530826, AIM: davejs202). Thanks!

02-07-2001, 19:52 | posts: n/a

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by DMFiend: I have a friend who has a new 1 gig athalon copaq that expierienced the same probs you are talking about, I mean lock ups galore using a new GeForce2 Ultra. I tried everything alot of which was discussed and no go, finally as a last resort thinking it an AMD compatibility issue I told him to disable the enhanced cpu instruction set in the Nvidia drivers and bingo works. I have two questions though how will this effect his performance and why after everything else would this work?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I had the same problem with my Compaq 5000 series running an Athlon chip and a Asus GeForce2GTS V7700. After 2.5 months of Compaq tech support (we replaced power supply, motherboard, reformatted drives...)they finally gave me a RMA on the box. They replaced it with a P3 and gave me about $500 worth of free stuff to compensate for my time (512MB RAM, Klipsch THX 4.1 sound system, DVD drive...). The P3 worked beautifully from the start. Doesn't really help your friend but maybe he feels like armwrestling with Compaq to get a swap. Also they suggested going to the 7000 series since nothing is integrated on the motherboard (such as the sound card). You can build your system as you like it.Good luck!!

02-07-2001, 22:24 | posts: n/a

AWESOME !!!! Nice Work !!!!!!!

02-08-2001, 02:27 | posts: n/a

Thanx for the info BlackStrat I will pass it on, Unfortunately he seems happy now. I wouldn't be after spending the money that Compaq rapes you for on a system it had better work without any work arounds or they would be getting it back!!! I would still like to know how diabling enhanced cpu instruction set affects his overall graphics performance! clues anyone?

02-08-2001, 03:58 | posts: n/a

heh, not everyone has duplicate devices.. funnyCompaq, horrible PCz. They are sold at places like best buy, to show off their cheap price tag, because they are made of crap componants. Mainly RAM and Motherboards... And, they pay less to get crappy CPU's from manufactuars... there is a reason they are so cheap

02-08-2001, 08:16 | posts: n/a

Hi I am here just for a stopover, because i am searching the net for an information. First I wanna help this guy with the AMD500: You have a VIA Chipset and therefore you need to install the agp driver from via. Try to get the 403d the 404 gave me many troubles. First uninstall your old or maybe new one. Uninstall your videocarddriver. Remove all registry entries of your card. Install the via 403d in normal mode and not turbo mode. Dont wonder if the agp transferspeed is 1x thats normal since agp402. It gives you better performance and stability. Now install your videodriver. Test it and if thereis no improvement uninstall via403d and install it again. Some people say the via driver wants to installed every time a change of the videodrivers occure (I dont believe this, but try). I am looking for a solution for my problem. With enabled AGP2x OpenGl Applications don't start or crash after a while. With AGP1x everything is fine. This occurs on TNT2 and Geforce2 MX on different systems, but all MVP3. There must be a bug in the Nvidia driver, the same like Overlay doesn't work and crashes since Detonator 3.65 If someone knows something about this please email me: peter.maier@web.de

02-09-2001, 23:46 | posts: n/a

hello all, thanx for the replies. I will be out of town the 10th-16th of feb. Feel free to keep e-mailing though, as my colelction has grown to 70 questions in the past 5 days. I will get around to them a.s.a.p. Thanx, Punky

02-10-2001, 05:28 | posts: n/a

I have a 1000Mhz Classic Athlon, 300 watt p-supply, Abit KA7-100, Sound Blaster Live! 5.1, Intel Pro 10/100, Western Digital Firewarden, WD 20 Gig, USR 56K Performance Pro, 256 CAS2 PC133, GeForce 2 GTS 64DDR.I had problems with lock ups in DirectX powered applications, (funny, none in OpenGL). I tried many things to work around this but what finally worked was disabling "Fastwrites" in my BIOS. I have been running stable in AGP 4X with NO AGP Bus Read/Write delay.

02-11-2001, 22:20 | posts: n/a

Hi, hi have a ABIT KT7-RAID, and the option is in auto, win2k here in my system is simply a @#$@ , it hangs with the Tv-tunner, games. winme is more stable. I have a hercules GTS2 pro the new revision. what could be the better agp driving value for abit KT7-raid?if this true that guide posted in guru3d will blow my video card? he didn't know about the agp driving value, he just was playing with the bios and it put the EA option and worked. well trying to read more dude. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by RFR: Hi, good article that will help many people out of their probs, but there is one thing which let me say is not totally correct. Setting the AGPDriving VALUE =EA invoves the risk of burning your videocard and/or chipset. EA gives 9.16A to the AGPslot, with B9 it is 7.23A. Not all boards need the same. For Example with Epox boards try BA(recommended by EPOX)or CA if you have a Geforce2GTS. Tyan recommends DC for Biosversions before 02/15/00, for later CC. So i think you have to add, that changing the DrivingValue may be risky, and from all what i know this starts with values higher than DC. RFR<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Martys Web · 02-15-2001, 05:54 | posts: 7,446 | Location: USA

Hi it was a verry good article BUT it is wrong in one place see thread here <A HREF="http://www.guru3d.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000740" TARGET=_blank>http://www.guru3d.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000740</A> ps the ubb code is a little buggy LoL having a little trouble with it for the link..