This may help. I got curious and checked out ECS Taiwan website. Well this website has later drivers than the ECSUSA.com website. Jesus! They have a version 1.16 AGP driver. that came out in May 2003 the USA website only has the version 1.10 driver that came out late 2002. Hopefully this will help. I'll let you know.

Hi Guys,


I had the same problems like all of you. The only exception is that for me it is all about CC Generals. The rest of the games (Gothic 2, Rise Of Nations ... , CS, ... ) is working fine.

As some inspirations of this forum I took the fast writes thing and the OMEGA drivers with me. I installed the current OMEGA drivers (normal mode - did no further tweaking in its options), enabled the fast writes in bios and driver (by the way ... in the same turn I disabled AGP READ SYNCHRONIZATION in bios) and installed the new v4.49 VIA driver too.

Now ... generals does not hang any more. I dont know which of those actions solves the problem alone, but all together worked for me.

My Computer:

Athlon XP 2400
MSI K7T266 Pro2-A (Via KT266A)
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Ultra (Powered by Ati)
(Ultra: the Pro Version with some MHZ more
512 MB RAM from MDT (CL2)
SBLive 1024 Player
Samsung Harddrive
Logitech Mouse ( I dont think this has something to do with this)
Windows XP Pro (SP1a)


AND ... all the other problems with my RADEON 9600 PRO are gone too:
- poor opengl performance in games
- windows sucks with fast writes enabled

So guys .... THANKS A LOT !!!

I know, this is not part of this thread, but i never heard about those OMEGA drivers before. So, whats this about ?

Greetings ...

Robert

Hi,


me again. I tried to enable the READ SYNCHRONIZATION again, to test wether it has something to do with it.

But, with this option enabled CC Generals works fine now too. This options seems to be without interest for this problem discussed here.


Greetings ...

Robert

WOOT!!! Got it Working. I have a K7S5A ver 3.1 MB. and a Radeon 9600 Pro. Warcraft was hanging like other games that people have commented on. I went in and uninstalled all the AGP drivers for the motherboard and I used the ver 1.16 AGP driver installation program (latest ECS AGP drivers on the Taiwan site) and used the uninstall function under setup.. So I dont have any MB AGP drivers running atm. Then I installed the Cat 3.X whatever came with my video card. Now there is no more freezing. I do have to manually resize the screen in Warcraft on my monitor but its no biggie for now. At least it works and it looks great and is fast at 1024 X 768 32color.

Ok Warcraft III works fine with performance at full but now Planetside will crash to desktop if performance is at full. However, Planetside will work fine by lowering performance by one notch. I have to reduce resolution in game to 800X600 to be very smooth but 1024 works pretty well. Must be due to the performance reduction. However, I have both games working now with very little negative effects.

Hi everyone.

I just bought a new system:

Sapphire 9600 Pro
MSI Delta-ILSR mobo (nForce2 chipset.. so not only a VIA or SIS problem)

I found (perhaps) something interesting. The original SimCity worked fine, but the patched version hangs after mouse-movement (the usual problem)..

A list of updates to the game in this patch: http://simcity.ea.com/patch/index_patch.php

Most relevant probably is: "Addressed issue related to SIS video chipsets"

Generals works great with the VIA patch now, but IL-2 is a bit sketchy.
I played it for an hour one day without issue, and then another day lost the textures, and played an hippies LSD dream, with day-glo colors, and misapplied textures....trippy.

The Battlefield 1942 secret weapons demo runs great, while the game itself caused a reboot whne I tried to launch the game. Menus seemed OK, but it shut the system off when it was going to load.

Frustrating stuff, but I'm sure it's no longer a hardware issue. I'm 98% sure it's driver/patch related.

Some hardware settings have shown to reduce issues, but few have eliminated them, or some have even created new ones.

OK.. so Neverwinter Nights also causes a freeze. I think Warcraft III worked fine with me.

Very frustrating that it seems to be only the good games that crash....

Sorry for flooding a bit, but my solution was setting both the BIOS and SmartGart to AGP4x and FastWrite on. But it shouldn't have to be this way...

yeah...
i having similar problems with that too
but after getting those VIA drivers
everything is OK
but
c&c generals performance is still abit slow...lag...
motogp 2 is perfect...
btw
the fan from the video card is quite noisy during bootup..but everything is fine after awhile, when reaches windows....it is normal?
and...
does ur card shows the BIOS during boot-up?
mine doesnt
thanks


amd xp 1900+
epox mb
512mb

I think it does show it's BIOS during startup. But it happens quite fast, and usually while my monitor hasn't fired up yet. I have no problems with fan-noise, though.

Mine doesn't show the BIOS at all.
I've rebooted with the monitor warm, and it goes straight to my ASUS logo screen.

There is a new patch for Battlefield 1942.
Thought I'd give the heads up, and see if it helps.
Ever since that VIA Hyperion update, I've had minimal issues with my system, and been able to play all my games.
Battlefield was the only sketchy one, so lets hope it helps.

Hi!

I have AMD chipset and Radeon 8500

on windows 98 Age of Mythology works fine,
on WinXP freezes every 5 sec.

all updates and drivers are up-to-date

i think Windows XP is our problem

The problem with Age of Mythology and Command and Conquest: Generals is related to the cursor acceleration. As soon as you pull back hardware acceleration* you should be fine. I suspect this is a driver problem (Catalyst), and hope Ati resolves this is the next driver release.

(*) to do this, right-click on the desktop, choose properties, go to tab 'settings', press button advanced at the bottom, go to tab 'troubleshoot', and set the glider at most one notch from the right.

oh, yes !

When i remove mouse cursor hardware acceleration i must move a mouse all the time. if i stop even for a 2 sec. game freezes for 10sec.

In C&C and Neverwinter Nights, I've found that by enabling mouse trails in the Mouse section of the Control Panel both of these games play fine without having to drop hardware acceleration down a notch. The cursors in the games are a little bit corrupted and flicker a bit, but the games are still playable. Lets hope the next release of Catalyst sorts out this problem.

Well, I have same problem as most people that already posted here. Mentioned workarounds are effective, but none is ideal:

1) BIOS AGP fastwrite on: games stop freezing, but there are noticeable graphics glitches both in games and in windows
2) performance/troubleshooting graphics: accelerator down one notch - makes cursor flicker, and unpleasant to use in games like c&c or warcraft
3) mouse properties: turn on mouse trailing - same effect as turning off mouse hardware acceleration in 2nd example

So that is definitelly not final solution, and it seems to me that ATI is one who can make final solution with mouse hardware acceleration in next drivers.

For reference, my configuration:

Sapphire Radeon 9600 pro Atlantis
MSI KT3 Ultra (MS-6380E) BIOS v. 5.7 2/27/2003
AMD 2400+ (2000)
Mouse: ps/2 Microsoft, ps/2 A4, USB Logitech - with and without mouse drivers, all tried
win XP: ATI catalyst divers 7.91(3.6), 7.88 and 7.84 (all tried)
win 98: ATI catalyst drivers 7.91(3.6) and 7.84 (both tried)

In all cases there is same effect (bug) - on certain games while 3d scene is shown, moving mouse will cause PC to freeze.

Games that did NOT work for me:
C&C generals
Warcraft III frozen throne
F1 challenge 99-02

Games that DID work for me:
MoHAA - spearhead
Unreal 2003
Battlefield 1942 The road to Rome (yes, it worked even if some ppl report freezes , but even those ppl reported not usual freeze as soon as you move mouse, but later during game, so i guess that is different problem)

I am having the same deal as all of you. Battlefield was locking up 10 sec into the game. medal of honor was locking up everyonce in awhile, and so was castle wolfenstein. I have the Asus P4SDX motherboard with sis chipset as well. I have the 256 meg version of the 9600 card, 512 DDR pc2100 ram, 2ghz p4. I have all the newest patches and everything. I swiched over to run at 4x agp but battlefield is pretty much unplayable. It skips all ove like i have a bad ping, when ever lots of people are around. This is wrong! I should have that problem. I have another computer that has 256 ddrpc2100 ram and a 2ghz celeron with a 64 meg radeon 7500 pci vid card, and it runs better than the faster one. ATI needs to fix this. as soon as anyone sees and new things post here, whether it be the new bios for the sis chipset or the 9600 vid card. thanks.

Ryan,

Which AGP drivers for the SIS chipset are you using? I'm running the AGP drivers that came with the motherboard, but I've downloaded the 116a drivers off of the SIS web site. I have yet to install them, though.

Which are you using? Have you tried the 1116a AGP drivers?

Let me know.
Dave.