Asus A8V Deluxe and Radeon 9800 Pro - help please

[SumoHamster]

Hi All,

I've been reading these forums on and off for a year or so, but have finally encountered a problem I need to ask for help on.

I built a new system this weekend, mainly consisting of:

Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
Corsair Twinx1024-3200LLPro ram
Athlon 64 3500+ cpu
Audigy 2 ZS soundcard
Antec TruePower 430W psu

When I built it, I had a 6800 GT video card I was testing. I had absolutely zero problems with anything. However, I was only testing the card and had to return it. I then installed my ATI 9800 Pro card and reformatted. Everything went great until I started playing games (UT2004, FarCry, Tiger Woods 2004, etc..). Then I'd get computer crashes at random times during the game. Occasionally I'll get a VPU recovery, but after that the screen locks and sometimes recovers, or it just crashes after I lose my signal to my monitor. Often these crashes are preceeded by odd noises coming through my speakers. I've also had one crash while doing non-gaming things, like surfing.

Just for testing purposes, I got hold of a new 9800 Pro and put it in, and it also had the same problems, so I believe I have eliminated the video card itself as a problem. One oddity I experienced with both 9800's is that when I went to install the ATI drivers, the ATI background image that appears during the install process had a grid-pattern to it that shouldn't be there. It's normally just a nice picture with no lines on it. Since everything worked great with the 6800 GT, I believe I've also eliminated the RAM and CPU as the problem as well. Just to double-check the memory, I ran memtest86 and encountered no problems. The Corsair forums also mention that this memory should work fine in this motherboard, though I may want to change the DIM voltage to 2.7 (which I did).

Does this sound like a motherboard compatibility problem? Or did I just get a flaky board? Any advice/recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Michael10]

My advice is free and probably worth what it cost you but I would make sure all of the drivers for both video cards are uninstalled. I would then use reg cleaner (I usually use the auto features) to clean unused keys, shortcuts, whatever. I would then reinstall the ATI drivers.

Just don't disable your native VGA support. I did this once and ended up having to reinstall my drivers by listening to the disk and flashing my BIOS.

Michael10

 

[SumoHamster]

Hi Michael10,

I reformatted after switching cards, so had a fresh install of WinXP and no remnant drivers

Thanks for answering though!

Since I posted this, I have found more than a few posts by other people having problems with their 9800 Pro cards with this motherboard. Hopefully a couple suggestions I found will have a positive effect when I get home to try them.

 

[CROSSeyed]

I have Asus A8V Deluxe, 3500+, 2xCorsair 512MB (TwinX1024-3200C2PT), ATI 9800 Pro 128MB and when I launch BAttlefield Vietnam, I get the splashscreen, then returns to desktop without error message. Doom 3 give splash screen, then returns to desktop with Doom3 has had critical erro, do you wish to send error report....

So where do you find some answers????

I'm fairly desparate and pissed.

Thanks!

 

[smoothmove]

CURE FOR THE VIDEO ISSUE


1. Take out 9800 Pro
2. Buy big, Ball-pien Hammer
3. Smash numerous times..
4. Go Buy Nvida Card- 6800OC at Bestbuy $299- includes Far Cry and Doom3



Actually, in the bios set the AGP Mode to 4X and the Fast Write to DISABLED. Solved my 9800 Pro problems.

Try it. I have hated this board since getting it, but it is the best show in town for the time...


Hope this helps,



Stan

 

[CROSSeyed]

I tried AGP at 4x and disabled fast writes and still cannot run games (looks like openGL games, since I get 20059 in 3dMark 2001SE (which uses D3D I believe)).

edit: The hammer is looking pretty attractive right about now! Thanks for the reply!

 

[T5KCaNNoN]

Hi SumoHamster,

I have almost the same rig as u, and also had the exact same issues.

Make sure u have the latest bios. First set ur current bios to default; then flash to the latest. Even if u have bios 1.006, flash it again. I'm using catalyst 4.7 for the 9800 pro.

My problem was solved by going into bios, setting the AGP slot to 4x, and disabling 'fast write.'

THen hit F10 to save changes and exit.

As far as I can see, 9800 pro and asus a8v owners have issues: These two items don't seem the best of friends.

I am gonna go for a 6800GT very soon. In the meanwhile, I hope the above will address ur issue.

Late,

T5KCaNNoN

 

[Maniac618]

i have a 6800 gt and i have had a random restart while playing unreal tournament 2004, i have a feeling it's not just a compatibility issue between a 900 and the asus board.

 

[Michael10]

I built my 3500+ ASUS A8V system yesterday. Running an overclocked 9700 with no problems. Do you have the first version of the A8V or the revised version (no wi-fi).

Michael