Mr. Gaydos,

I'm not ruling out that there's some kind of problem with the 9700 Pro hardware or drivers, and given that you're still having lockups with it even with the new motherboard, I'm sure there's a problem somewhere. The Radeon is a likely candidate, especially given ATI's shaky history with drivers. I was just pointing out that there definitely is a bug in the 7205 chipset support for AGP 3.0. There doesn't appear to be as many people having the problems with the P4C800 and 9700 Pro combination as with the P4G8X and 9700 Pro combination.

I have my fingers crossed, I hope the 9800 Pro fixes your lockups. I almost wish my 9700 was crashing & locking up with my new motherboard, it would make it a lot easier for me to talk my wife into letting me get a 9800 Pro! Ah, well, the 9700 is good enough I guess...

Badkitty, I just wanted to ask if you did test your system with some serious graphix-killing games? Like some shooters or even Flight Simulator 2002 with overkill graphix? I'm running both 3dmark 2001se and 2003, both are working fine, and more than just fine...none whatsoever crash...just damn FSIM keeps crashing after some time. Sometimes 10min, sometimes 1hour.
Greetings all
Kosta

Mr Songy,
I just re-read my last post....all I can say is EEK! It almost sounds like I was being critical of your opinion. To the contrary. I apolgize if it came accross that way to you. Actually, truth be known, I appreciate everybodys input on this. Even any far fetched obscure detail (like mine) could be taken into consideration. Once all the facts are gathered, a person can come to a logical conclusion.
Its the price a person pays for being on the cutting edge of technology. There are bound to be a few bugs here and there. On the other hand, it's a shame we have to endure them because we payed the most for the better hardware. I almost feel like a beta tester. You would think we could get the hardware for free in exchange for all the brainstorming this forum has generated.
What do you say guys? We all get with ATI and try and get a credit voucher or something when the latest card ships? possibly getting one at half price or something? Its the least they could do.

Is there a good reason for me NOT to upgrade to the P4C800 Deluxe? I would rather spend the $$ than continue with headaches.

> turn the fastwrite on badkitty, u may see the crash more often ....

Kuman, that was my point, that the problem is fixed by turning off fastwrite, which suggests that the problem does indeed lie with the E7205 chipset and not with the 9700 since Intel has admitted that fastwrite didn't work properly.

badkitty109

Badkitty,

I disagree with your statement about the fastwrites being the answer. If you read all of these posts carefully, you will find slight differences in what everyone is saying. Some people say that turning fastwrite OFF fixes the problem. I did not find this to be true for me. I tried every combination of settings I could think of trying to fix the “infinite loop” lock up problem. I finally got in touch with ASUS and they suggested raising my AGP freq to 67 Mhz. I did this and it didn’t help a bit. I then tried raising it some more and my system seemed to lock up less frequently. After setting it up to 70.26 Mhz, my system has not locked up one time since April 20.

I then stated this fix several times on this thread to see if it helped anyone. One person said it did, and another said it didn’t. The intermittent nature of this problem and the peculiarities between each system seems to indicate that the combination of the E7205 (and it seems also the 875) chipset with the ATI Radeon sets up a system that is on the ragged edge of stability. No two systems are identical, even if built with all the same parts. This is inherently true with all electronic systems. This is why some people do not have this problem at all, others can simply turn off fast write to fix it, and others can do anything and everything, including buying a new P4C800 motherboard, and find out they still have the same problem. It just depends on which side of the ragged edge your system is on.

As for the new 875 chipset, I dare say that it is practically the same chip as the E7205. You should read this article at Tom’s Hardware to see the similarities:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030429/index.html

I am happy my system is running stable, and I wish I had a solution for everyone here, but it seems THE one and only answer to solve everyone’s ills is not to be had. Hopefully the new ATI Drivers with solve this issue as ASUS suggests, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I know how annoying this problem is, and I wish everyone luck in getting their systems to run stable.

If anyone is interested, read my previous posts to see my battle with this problem.

Regards,
DE Laminack

to Kosta:

Does Max Payne count as graphics intensive (with all settings on high, antialiasing set to 6 samples, filtering set to "anisotropic" and color depth set to 32 Bit)

badkitty109

The best thing about the P4C800 over the P4G8X is there are more settings in the BIOS you can tweak so it takes longer before your hope is crushed.

Hmmz,
Badkitty: I don't know Max Payne, I never played it. But my guess would be that's enough graphix. So you got no crashes?

I was just on the phone with my computer shop where I bought the P4G8X and they told me that both P4G8X and P4C800 are uncompatible with Radeon cards. I asked the guy does he know if this can be repaired in the future with new drivers or BIOS updates, he explicitly said no. Hmz.
But I must say that tonight I left my system running at following settings:
AGP 8x
1.6V
Fastwrites ON
USWC
Radeon 9500 modded to 9700 (by driver) and even overclocked from 275/270 to 325/295 and 3dmark 2001se was still going on in the morning.
Does this mean that I got no compatibility problem, somehow? That the problem has been solved? I will keep it at this setting now for some time...
Also I can say that I played yesterday FSIM for more than an hour online, though with the simple A/C and it also worked pretty much. I still gotta make parallel tests with some other aircraft, and try to track down the problem...(acgenral.dll, ntdll.dll)
I hope the whole thing gets solved with FSIM 2004 and new drivers and bios updates.
Kosta

TO: DE laminack

I wasn't saying that turning fastwrite off would work for everyone, just that it worked for me and that since Intel stated that fastwrite was a problem it suggested that the fault lies with the chipset rather than the 9700. When I said that the problem was fixed by turning fastwrite off I was referring to my own system in response to a post that was directed to me. Sorry if I came off as saying that this would fix everyone's problems, it wasn't may intent.

badkitty109

Does anyone know anyone who is running the 9700Pro on a board that has a chipset other than the E7205 or 875P? Are they having the same problems? I was just wondering if we could definitively narrow this down to a chipset compatability problem or if there is a problem with the 9700 itself. I have heard a lot of speculation, but would be curious to hear from anyone with 9700 experience outside the Intel chipsets.

badkitty109

Hi friends,
I have also suffered the ASUS/ATI 9700PRO phenomenon, my FSIM cldnt even move... Does anybody know if GFORCE FX crashes with ASUS P4G8X DELUXE?
Best regards and keep up the spirit

Yeah, I have an ASUS P4SDX (SIS 655 chipset) and a Radeon 9700 Pro. After updrading my new MB and booting, I received a post error beep. One long beep, then a pause, repeated over and over for Award bios indicates a memory problem, but I believe the issue is related to the vid card.

The workaround for me is to boot, receive the post beep, then hit the soft reset button. The system then boots normally and runs great.

The problem is that I also have Crucial TWINX PC2700DDR and there is a known issue that can occur with Crucial mem and some ASUS mb's, however, in every description of that issue, no one match's my boot/post prob as well as it is described here. Nost of the issues were with 512 sticks and I have the 256 sticks. Quite a few other differences as well.

As far as I could find out from the ASUS website, there isn't a bios update available for my board. I'll find out what my bios version is and post it.

PSU=Antec 400w
CPU=p4 2.66 533
MB=Asus P4SDX
CHIPSET=SiS 655
RAM=2x256 DDR PC-2700 in TWINX Config for Dual DDR channels.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas... this is a frustrating problem, but at least for now a simple push of the reset button corrects it. Once I do that everything runs great, but still, pretty annoying...

In reference to my previous post...

I have not had a auto-reboot since swapping 9700 pro cards, but I did receive a total of (3) seperate lockups and (1) instance where the screen resolution and color depth drop to the lowest posible setting. Immediately following, a report was generated within XP and sent off to Microsoft. I traced the error report to Microsoft's bug tracking website where the error being reported was the following:

Error Message: STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER

This article was previously published under Q293078

SYMPTOMS
You may receive one of the following error messages on a blue screen:

STOP 0x000000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
-or-
STOP: 0x100000EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M

CAUSE
This issue can occur when the display driver is caught in an infinite loop, typically waiting for the video hardware to become idle. This usually indicates a problem with the video hardware or with the display driver not being able to program the hardware correctly.

RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, obtain and install the most current driver for your video adapter or replace your video card.

WORKAROUND
To work around this issue:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Display.
On the Settings tab, click Advanced, and then click the Troubleshoot tab.
Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to None, and then click to clear the Enable Write Combining check box.
Click OK, and then click OK.

NOTE: This procedure prevents the display driver from programming the hardware incorrectly, but results in a loss of some display functionality and performance. Although you can increase the hardware acceleration settings to a point above None to regain functionality and performance, this increases the chances of the issue reoccurring. For maximum stability, leave hardware acceleration off.

Just this afternoon, I replaced my 350W power supply with a new Antec 480W unit. No lockups thus far, I will report back on the outcome.

Regards,
Chris

Asus has released a new bios version for the P4SDX but the file that the link on the asus homepage leads to doesn't exist...

One of the things you can read about this new bios is:
"Improve AGP card compatibility"

im hopeful.

Haven't read it all yet, but sure sounds exactly like my problem ...

System freezes for 5 to 10 seconds and then gives me the same error about device failure etc ...

Up front: "Try another video card other than ATI" won't go for me ...

I'd like to know what the final resolution is!

System:
Asus P4G8X Deluxe
P4 2.66 Ghz
2x512MB PC2100 DDR-DIMM
Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro
Zalman 400W PSU
Windows XP Pro

9800Pro on backorder until may 18th.
Stay tuned for an update.

I've decided to return my P4G8X, and go with an ABIT IC7 (Intel 875 chipset). I've read some good reviews of this board, and it should get along with a 9700 much better than the ASUS boards. The ATI customer service rep I talked to also confirmed the buggy intel chipset on the P4G8X, so I'm saying goodbye to ASUS.

Not to continue ranting but I think it really sucks to pay top dollar for equipment only to find out that it only performs sub par, or worse yet, doesn't really perform at all. And whats worse is I'll probably have to pay restocking fees to learn this lesson. Well this is the second time I'm being burnt by ASUS so I'll probably never buy their boards again.

I noticed that Asus has new BIOS revisions for the P4C800 already out on their website specifically adressing video card compatabilty problems. In particular, I noted that the 9700 pro card was mentioned. The new bios rev is 1006, which means that they have gone from 003 to 006 in only a matter of days.

My system update... I have achieved complete stability following the video card swap, the power supply upgrade and now after turning off Fast Writes.

I dropped down to AGP 4x just to run 3DMark 03 on my system at the 4x baseline. Virtually no difference in performance. First pass yielded a vid score of 4679 and a CPU score of 555. This was with 8x enabled. Then 4676/555 respectively at 4x.

(see my past posts for any missing or additional details.)

I also wanted to comment that I have a friend who purchased the exact same setup as me and has has not had a single lockup or failure. He even has his 2.4 overclocked at 2.8 and says that he can reach 3Ghz, but wants to increment slowly for stability reasons.

Good night all,
Chris

The new 1006 Asus bios for the P4C800 did the trick. No more lockups and Fast Writes have been re-enabled and running at 8x AGP. I am even overclocking my 2.4 proc to 2.88Ghz.

Complete and total stability.

Chris