AGP not on?!?!

[crownjules]

I've had this problem for awhile now, and its never really manifested itself. Video games work perfectly fine, including the new Doom 3. But I figured I'd try and figure this problem out. Here it is...

Under the ATI Control Panel SmartGart feature, it reports that my AGP is OFF. Sliding it to 8x and restarting seems to do nothing, nor does sliding it to 4x. It still reports as OFF. In Run->Smartgart, the PCI Read/Writes are ON and AGP Read/Writes are OFF. Same thing goes here. Selecting ON and restarting doesn't turn them on and the computer continues to report that they are OFF.

I have AGP 8x enabled in my BIOS settings. Is there something that I'm not thinking of? Like I said, this doesn't seem to effect performance, but then again I've never seen my games run with these actually "turned on" and so who knows if I am missing out or not. All my system specs are in my siggie.

Thanks.

[maximus7001]

Are the nforce drivers installed before the ati drivers?

[ositos]

I just want to add that I am having the same problem as crownjules.

My specs:
Lanparty NFII Ultra Edition
AMD Athlon XP 2800 Barton
1GIG Geil Perfomance Dual DDR( Platinum Ed.)
Windows XP PRo
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB

I have already tried:

Turned Bios Settings AGP set 8x / Fast Write turned on
Upgraded to Directx 9.0c
Uninstalled and reinstalled Latest ATI Catalyst as of 8/14/2004
Tried sliding agp to 4x ( max setting on ati control panel even though my card is 8x max) ** after reboot it resets back to turned off agp and turned off fats write.
and verified that AGP texture acceleration under directx diag is " not available.

I know this is not an anwer but like I said I am having the same issue and have tried theses steps.

-- I am trying to get most performance out of my DOom 3 --- I can play the game at 800/600 and medium quality settings but my frame rates is poor and I think I am lacking since my ati control panel keeps telling me AGP is turned off. Any help with this is appreciated.

[AsianBatman]

um, did you install the latest chipset drivers..? Cause i have the same problem then i uninstalled the ati drivers then install chipset drivers then reinstall ati drivers. Try that.

[ositos]

Thanks for the feedback, I was able to resolve my issue last night before I saw this posting. Actually - I didn't have to uninstall my ATI drivers. All I did was, install the orginal chipset drivers that came with my lanparty NFII ultra mobo (nforce 2). Then I downloaded the latest drivers at the Nvidia website. After I rebooted I went back into the SMARTGART option for ATI and enabled fastwrite and enabled agp to 4x ( max on the slider) and--BAM - I'm back in business. This did help increase my frame rates for Doom 3 and with help with the beta catalyst on ATI site for Doom 3 - the game is as good as its gonna get with my 9000 Radeon 128mb card. I am so glad to get that over with -- to think all this time i wasn't working with my agp texture acceleration on.

>>Just one thing---- Why does the ATI SMARTGART option only allow me to slide the agp acceleration to 4x? I checked on the net and my card should have 8x option. My mobo Bios has it set to 8x enabled? Any clues?

[AsianBatman]

Um i don't think your card is 8x..or your mobo isn't 8x...but...you get better performance when you uninstall ati drivers..then installing chipset..then installing ati drivers again...i said it in that order for a REASON.

[wayout44]

Originally Posted by ositos

>>Just one thing---- Why does the ATI SMARTGART option only allow me to slide the agp acceleration to 4x? I checked on the net and my card should have 8x option. My mobo Bios has it set to 8x enabled? Any clues?

Double check your cards specs again as I've 2 R9000's here and both are 4x AGP cards (only a few very late ones maybe 8x AGP though basically the R9200 introduced 8x AGP compliance).

[ositos]

Thank you Wayout44. I just checked my original 9000 radeon cd -- and on the maintenance program on that cd it read my card to be 4x max. I guess its time for me to take advantage of mobo's 8x power by upgrading to the latest graphics card. Thanks again.

[crownjules]

Originally Posted by ositos

Thank you Wayout44. I just checked my original 9000 radeon cd -- and on the maintenance program on that cd it read my card to be 4x max. I guess its time for me to take advantage of mobo's 8x power by upgrading to the latest graphics card. Thanks again.

Be aware that there is very little performance boost between 4x and 8x AGP. If you're going to upgrade, make sure you're getting you money's worth (ie buy something like a 9800 that will really improve performance). Or even better, upgrade your mobo to something with a PCI-X port and buy a compatible card. :)

[AsianBatman]

Not really..pci-x isn't complete gonna give you an advantage...either a 9800 pro for 200 or few more bucks for a 6800 gt..NOW THATS A BOOST. :)