KT400 chipset and Radeon graphics cards

agw_01 · 25 Jan 2006 at 13:13

Any incompatibilities between these?

I built a system for my friend a year ago... using an Asus A7V8X KT400 motherboard with a Radeon 9600XT.

The machine would crash almost all of the time. I tried various things but couldn't solve it. He took it to another friend of his who said that he changed the AGP mode in the BIOS from 8x down to 4x.

How he managed this, I have no idea as the option was greyed out in the BIOS and was permanently set to 8x. I even tried changing it in the ATi Contol Panel, to which there was no difference.

Anyway, I've come up against the same thing with another friends PC. He was using a Geforce 4 Ti4200 with no problems, and the AGP mode could be changed in the BIOS. It's currently at 4x.

As soon as I fitted the 9800, the option to change it was disabled and the machine now crashes/reboots as it likes.

I swapped the 9800 with my sister for a 9700 Pro and it does exactly the same thing?

Anyone have any hints on how to gain access to the AGP settings in the BIOS? I've not tried a BIOS update yet.

Thanks.

Topitoff · 25 Jan 2006 at 18:50

Have you turned "Fastwrites" off in the BIOS?

This could cure the problem.

agw_01 · 25 Jan 2006 at 19:52

Yep, tried that.

It's definitely down to the AGP mode... I just can't figure out why it's greyed out

Topitoff · 25 Jan 2006 at 20:05

A7V8X BIOS 1014
Update AGP Capability in DMI Information to 8x support

Got this from the ASUS site; could be BIOS update required.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A7V8X

agw_01 · 25 Jan 2006 at 20:13

Stupid me not checking the damn Asus site!

Thanks Topitoff

I'll give that a try.

agw_01 · 28 Jan 2006 at 15:11

Right, well the BIOS update seems to have worked a treat.

Thanks very much Topitoff

mark128 · 11 Apr 2006 at 03:51

Hey, i have the exact same problem, however its not letting me update by BIOS. I've downloaded the file and put it on a floppy. Opened the EZ flash utility by pressing alt and F2 and typed in the file name. It loads the data off the floppy but then i get an error message sayin "WARNING, This BIOS does not match with onboard, Press a key to reboot." Any ideas what could be causing this? Any help would be greatly appriciated. Cheers... Mark

mark128 · 11 Apr 2006 at 03:53

Urgh i don't beleive it! i've tried updating the bios with the previous version. Had the same problem but then it gave me the option of continuing, I had a bad feeling about this but i gave it a go. Now when i switch ma pc on all i get is a blank screen. Have i ruined my motherboard! :mad:

mark128 · 11 Apr 2006 at 04:57

Ignore the last few messages I have now got it working again! I honestly thought i'd killed the system then. I'm not sure what went wrong the first time, could have been a corrupt sector on the disk maybe or a corrupt bios file. However the booblock feature allowed me to boot the system from a windoze boot disk and run the aflash utlity which in turn allowed me to flah the bios with the latest version. Ah its soo good when a plan comes together lol. While this may have caused a few hours of frustration it is all experience I suppose.