An important thing to consider is that the 8X-APG spec is still quite new, and wasn't fully ratified when companies started to ship 8X-AGP compatable mobos.

For the most part the benefit is currently zero, as virtually all the current games don't even come close to maxing out the bandwith offered by 8X-AGP.

I'd settle for running the board at 4X, and having stable gameplay, than to set it for 8X and see both no improvment in both performance or stability.

It will take not only ATI driver rev, but also game patches, chipset drivers, and BIOS updates to iron out the bugs in what is essentially a fairly new technology.

In the meantime, if you can't run it in 8X-AGP, don't worry about it, you won't notice it for a while anyway......until Doom III, and HL2 that is.

Surprisingly, it just fixed itself =/

Most things tend to run stable for me now with the 3.8 drivers, 3dmark03 isn't having any errors anymore which is good. Latest score is 3790 =)

One thing I have noticed though is that I can't set my Athlon XP2800+ to 200mhz fsb. When I do my system will run fine for a while until I get into a graphics intensive program (like 3dmark) where it will either reboot, crash to desktop or freeze my system after a while. The CPU is supposed to run around 2.1ghz, so I use an external frequency of 200mhz and a multiplier of 10.5 but this causes nothing but the problems I just mentioned until I switch back to 166mhz and 12.5x.

Setting the memory timing to Aggressive didn't help either. I know it's a bit off topic, but any ideas on this one? Mobo can support a 200mhz fsb I know that much (A7N8X2.0 Deluxe)

Well, the AGP 4x issue... I can live with that. I set it to 4x and most things work. Still I've to say it's a joke: a new AGP 8x board and a new AGP 8x graphics cards don't work together: that's just stupid.

However what disturbs me is that I can only run all 3d stuff with Catalyst 3.6, while the newest Catalyst 3.8 doesn't run all 3d stuff correctly (Jedi-Knight-3 for example doesn't work).
Anybody else noticed such unusual behaviour?

Somebody asked whether to go for an ATI Radeon 9600: I wouldn't advise to. I am pretty disappointed. Use an Nvidia Geforce4 (Ti4600 or Ti4800): it's not high end anymore but it is roughly equivalent to ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. The Detonator drivers are *much* better and the Gf4 runs without any problem with AGP8x, at least on my board it did so well. On the same board the Radoen 9600-pro doesn't want to run with AGP8x, what a mess.

You can only set the memory timings to agressive if you are running memory branded as CAS2.5 or better.
Generally speaking, expecting your system to be stable when overclocking either your CPU or your RAM is not very realistic.

The card should be tested and run using nothing but default settings, and running at it's proper clock speed.
If, later on, you can overclock and get stability, then great. But otherwise, there's really very little to complain about.

My processor claims it has a 333mhz front side bus, and my board supports at least up to 200mhz, why would it be overclocking to adjust the fsb from 166 to 200? The manual for the processor says it operates at 2083mhz, if I set the fsb to 200 and use a 10.5x multiplier it would run the processor at 2100mhz, is this already too much overclocking? Would my system perform better at 200fsb 10x multiplier (2ghz) than at 166fsb 12.5x multiplier (2075mhz)? Thanks for the help Jason =)

I was thinking that the 9600 pro was a good deal...but after reading these multiple pages of problems, I think I'll hold on and see how the XT 9600 works out. I'm sure as heck not preordering one. lol

If you can adjust the multiplier to maintain the default core speed, but raise the FSB speed then that would imply you have an unlocked processor, or that you've used the unlocking kit.
While my board is an Asus A7V333, and it implies 333FSB support it really only runs at 166 double pumped. My XP 2100+ only runs at 133(~266) double pumped, but I can get it to 166(~333), and it runs like a 2700+
Trying to clock your system from 166 to 200 is really going from 333(166x2) to 400(200x2). And that is likely more than your system can handle.

You'd need a 400 FSB certified chipset, and minimum PC 3200 RAM to run at those speeds. Plus your CPU has to be able to communicate to the chipset at the faster rate, which might cause data corruption as well.

Hey,

I've been reading these posts for weeks now. Ever since I bought my radeon 9600 pro. I still don't have my system working. I tried a lot of things but managed to get my win xp f**ked up and had to re-install. We'll had problems installing windows with this card. Problems with crashing while trying to install xp.. Well eventually I got it. Still here. I can play moto gp2 for 20 mins with luck before it either freezes, throws me in to windows or restarts my computer. I bet before I finnish this post this computer just might reboot. I'm terribly tired of trying allready. I wish I wouldn't have bought it in the internet I would storm back to the shop and demand a different card. Well using the newest driver of pretty much everything I have. I even re-flashed my bios. Using the ati catlyst 3.8 drivers now and have mediocre stability. But seriously how can ati launch a card that isn't stable when surfing the net and doing word processing?

anyway my specs:
OS: win xp (with all updates)
board: Epox 8k5a2+
processor: 2000+ xp
card: HIS 9600 pro excalibur
RAM: 512 + 256 DDR

I would very much appreciate a few more tips to try to get more stability. I don't mind loosing some power. Everything is in it's default settings now. Haven't even done anything about fast write. So a few small tips would be appreciated from ppl with similiar specs and a more or less working system.

Thanks
-Eldis

Oh I forgot maybe the most important thing my mobo doesn't support agp 8x do using 4x. cheers

-Eldis

Further more. Still more about my problem. Well the smartgard: agp wite off + fast write off allarround helped windows stability. I don't get freezes or explorer crashes anymore nor does my computer reboot. But if I try to play a game it crashes right away. Well I've been fiddling arround with everything a lot again but nothing much has helped.

The ppl who have it working don't read this thread so much anymore I suppose.

I mean it should damn it work. I'm using a VIA 333 board and only 4x agp.
Oh well I think I will ship this piece of crap back too. If you think about the hours I've but into this I could have bought 500 € card by now. This is even a bit into my field of work and I still can't get it to work. Go figure.

-Eldis

Well those omega drivers did it for me. Yet it shouldn't make damn difference. ATI should step up and tell the users that they made unstable card and so on. But then again imagine if they did and would have to take back all 9600 models? Would be bad pr for them but hell imagine how bad PR this is? I bet many ppl will stumple on this monster of a thread and change their minds about what card to buy.

I'm running now a very stable system with 4x AGP and omega (newest) drivers. fastwrite is off in all places.

-Eldis

I don't think it's a bad batch guys, I just bought a 9600 Pro a week and half ago and am having the same god damn problems. This is incredible. I find it hard to believe none of the review sites EVER came across this and could have warned us about this. I've tried everything to get it to work and nothing works. I had a rock solid system before this. p**sing the hell out of me, ATI better fix this.

I feel like s**t buying this faulty 9600 Pro. I mean I'm a ghetto student and have barely any money and i've wasted 200$ on this faulty card that I have to use for a long ass time. The even s**ttier thing is, these artifacts that i'm getting on my 9600 Pro WITH a vantec iceberq4 WITH AC3 might be damaging my card so who knows how long this POS is going to last. I cant even get the newer drivers to work which puts the icing on the cake. =[!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like s**t buying this faulty 9600 Pro. I mean I'm a ghetto student and have barely any money and i've wasted 200$ on this faulty card that I have to use for a long ass time. The even s**ttier thing is, these artifacts that i'm getting on my 9600 Pro WITH a vantec iceberq4 WITH AC3 might be damaging my card so who knows how long this POS is going to last. I cant even get the newer drivers to work which puts the icing on the cake. =[!!!!!!!!!!

Well my problems are back again. Strange it worked just fine last night with omega drivers. Hmm. I wish we could bin down the problems.
No windows freezes or crashes but games still crash.

Oh wel. It's just stupid having a new card and all but not getting any games to work.

-Eldis

Fully agree with nearly all of you.
My system (Epox 8rda) did run rock solid with a Geforce4 TI4200-8x, but doesn't with Ati's Radeon 9600-Pro (a Sapphire Atlantis).

In the following I always mean AGP4x, because AGP8x doesn't work at all for me with the 9600-pro.

Eldis, you experience similar problems with the new Catalyst 3.8 than I do: some games still crash, although the desktop runs. Lol.
Have you tried the Catalyst 3.6 driver? Strangely enough, this one works for me. I don't have got many games, but even those few who crash with Catalyst 3.8 (and 3.7) do run with Catalyst 3.6 on my system.

I've knocked my bus speed down from 133 to 125MHz and I was able to play for a full 2 hours last night without any problems. Stupid that I have to lower my system speed just to get this supposedly high end card to work.

Michael, have you set your BIOS to AGP8x or to AGP4x ?

A Peter i got an HIS card too and turning the AGP writing off solved the hanging problems for me even tho i still get s**tloads of issues on alots of my games, Did you try with the 3.6 catalyst drivers ?
Cause the 3.7 didn't do s**t for me still got the freezing and crashing, the 3.8 gives me corrupted textures !!!
I'd suggest you give the 3.6 a try hope this helps !

I don't even have AGP8x on my board. I have an ASUS A7V133 (KT133A chipset). So I only have 4x with 512MB of high quality SDRAM. I tried fast writes on and off, different AGP aperature sizes. UC, USCW video modes, Omega drivers ... everything results in the same thing. The only thing that has made a solid difference is the change in bus speed. Ran a looped UT2003 benchmark at 1600x1200 for 20 mins (which was unheard of before the bus speed change) and played dungeon siege for a solid 2 hours without a single crash.