I heard that ATI are going to release the Catalyst 3.4 today instead of the 15th. Anyone know if there is any truth to that?
If not... I guess its just to wait and see

damn... the first post got posted anyway... I thought I pressed stop in time :\

To Mike Gaydos & Alex Colderbank:
If what you're both saying is true (even after many hours of testing), namely P4C800 + R9800Pro (=Mike's setup) and P4G8X + R9800Pro (=Alex's setup) works without hassles, then I'm convinced that the biggest problem was the (maybe older boardrevisions of) R9700.

Makes me a little bit relieved as well, since I'm using P4G8X (and cannot return it for other mobo) and receiving a Hercules R9800Pro sometime next week.

8^D

WTF is this???
I try to set 8x and Fastwrite ON on my brandnew P4C800 Deluxe, and all the driver is doing is jumping back to 4x and OFF?????
Anyone having this?
Should I admit that I did not reintall the WinXP, but just booted and it recognized the devices and that was it.
Kosta

Kosta....read my above post. Same thing happened to me. I am 99 percent convinced it is a ATI revision issue.

You admit not re-inst. XP after replacing your motherboard, and then whine because it doesn't work....hehe.

Agree that early revision radeon's are a part of the problem though.

But this thing was not happening on P4G8X.
I just installed XP new, installed driver and Control Panel: it was by default on 4x and FW OFF. So I set AGP 8x and FW ON, and when I rebooted, AGP stayed on 8x and FW OFF.
Mike, I don't see what your posts above have to do anything with this issue, I simply say that I'm *unable* to set Fastwrites. It's always off. I also can't seem to find USWC in the BIOS, since now I got AMI bios and not Award.
Kosta

Hi All, thought I'd make one last post with the results of my new motherboard. I recently exchanged my ASUS P4G8X for an ABIT IC7, and got some better corsair memory. So far my system has been working PERFECTLY. I've only been testing it for a few hours now, but nary a crash or glitch or any of the things I was seeing with the ASUS board. 8X and fast writes are enabled (I didn't even have to set these they were set by default) I'm already seeing 2000+ more points in 3DMark2001 (I'm about 15200 now) and that's without any tweaking or overclocking (P4 3.06Ghz)

The ultimate test for me seems to be Dungeon Siege. It's always been the most flakey and unstable game I have, and even that ran flawlessly for the 45 minutes or so I played it. The asus setup couldn't even get past the intro, or even the main menu most of the time. I also played FS2002 for about an hour without any problems. Q3 ran a sliky 200+ FPS at 1600x1200 with everything at max.

I understand that my memory upgrade has a lot to do with the speeds, and maybe even some of the higher stability, but I give most of the credit to the ABIT board and its better intel chipset. Everyone boycott ASUS and trade in your boards. Let them know we're not going to pay top dollar to beta test their crappy boards.

Thanks ABIT, I finally have the system I've always dreamed of =)

Russ

P.S. Anyone who hasn't already, download the PipeDream Demo from the ATI website. It's the AniMusic realtime rendered music video. It totally rocks to see something like that rendered in real time.

Btw. it's not an "older" Radeon:
Revision ...xxx-30
It worked on P4G8X more or less, with very little problems. With only Fastwrites OFF and new 550W PSU, the things were fully resolved. I even clocked my card a lot.
And concerning the issue on the P4C800 now, I reinstalled XP and I still wasn't able to change the Fastwrite option.
Is there some setting in BIOS for that???
Please help, I just want to have all my options for the high-dollar I paid...
Kosta

Now, there's an interesting thing:
In Smartgart, which installs only if you install a driver officially, over Setup.exe, I was not able to change the Fastwrites. Or at least, it was always on OFF.
Now I updated driver manually, Smartgart disappeared, and I ran Sandra 2003, and a bit looked in the Info modules and so, it says that it's running with FW enabled and in AGP 8x.
Maybe the thing is solved? Anyway, I'd be very interested into similar experience from another user who has Radeon and P4C800.
Thx
Kosta

RUSS PRINCE:

What type and revision Radeon are you with? I've ordered the IC7 same as you, but I have 11 as the two last digits.

Mine is a rev 3, but I get the feeling even with the rev you have you will not have any problems.

Sorry don't mean to be off topic, but I'm so excited I have it working well I just wanted to share pics and specs of my new machine.

http://ww2.russprince.com/NewComputer/

Nice! What cooler are you using in there?

Actually just the heatsink and fan that came with the P4. I haven't tried monitoring the temps yet. What is a good app to do that with? I'm assuming P4 motherboards have heat sensors built in them that can display an acurate temp?

Tnx

Now, this is a bit off-topic, but:
Did any of you users who bought P4C800, managed to install Intel Application Accelerator (any version)? When I try any version, RAID or the normal 2.2.3 one, it tells me I have incompatible hardware. How can that be??? I did read in the manual, and I don't have this s**tty thing in the Device Manager.
So any help would be appreciated.
Kosta

Thank you everyone for all the input. My system is considered stable now. Since people are starting to change the subject on this thread rather than starting a new one, I am not going to post on this thread any more.
Good luck to you all.
pc4800 bios 1006
radeon 9800 pro.
No crashes, no glitches, no random restarts.
8x, fast writes, everything enabled.

cheers

Hello everybody

I just saw a new beta bios revison ( 1005.003 ) on Asus www... Can't find what's fixed etc....
Anyone got more info?

Anyway I will update to this bios a bit later today...

Just a bit update...When I had P4G8X, turning FW solved the thing completely. Of course, I also bough 550W Noiseblocker PSU - after that I didn't have any 640x480x8 crashes, just slowdown-lockup, and without FW, it was peaches.
I have revision -30 card.

Greeting and good luck also to you all.
Kosta

Btw. running P4C800, runs smoooooth with all settings maxed and overclocked.