rec.autos.simulators

- Asus A7V8X (purchased 11/2002) with 1.09 BIOS
- 512mb PC2700 (one stick)
- AMD XP1900+
- Enermax 430watt PS
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (retail card, purchased 11/2002)
- Win2k/SP2 (*** install on a new hard drive)
- DX9.0a
- Catalyst 3.2
- VIA 4.45

Nothing has ever been overclocked in this system.

When I got the hardware listed above, DX9 and the Catalyst drivers
had not yet been released so I installed the 6793 drivers on DX8.1.
When I initially built the system, the Radeon card worked fine, all
of my games ran great. Somehow I did something to my system that now
prevents me from installing or uninstalling any new software (a
system DLL somewhere got munged up), so I figured I'd just do another
*** install of Windows, and start over.

First, I used Ghost to backup my existing Windows partition, and then
I *removed the hard drive* with the working copy of windows on it,
and installed a brand new *** hard drive. Swapping hard drives is
a non-issue because some time ago, I installed a removable drive
caddy that lets me swap drives in less than 30 seconds.

Anyway, I've tried pretty much every combination of install order,
and many combinations of via drivers, video card drivers, and DX
versions, but when I try to run ANY game (Quake, Quake2, Nascar
Racing 2002 and 2003) the computer freezes up on me about 15 seconds
into the display of the first 3d object.  However, the ATI DX9 demos
work flawlessly.

I've even restored my ghosted windows partition to the new drive, and
everything works again. However, my newly created *** install
refuses to budge.  I even tried duplicating this install point with
the same versions of everything, and even THAT refuses to work.

I'm completely out of ideas.  Can anyone help?

I would be willing to entertain changing motherboards if someone
could name an AGP-8x capable board that uses AMD processors and that
is proven to work with the Radeon 9700.  I know there's an updated
version of the A7V8X available, but I don't know if updating the
motherboard to a newer version of the same one would help.

I can offer no more help than that :-(

Hope you get sorted soon.

Regards,

Mark Davison
OVAL Deputy Admin
Car #69
http://www.markdavison.clara.net/OVAL/

What are you doing for sound?

I had a similar issue (in N2002) on a work supplied Compaq PC.  Do the
DX9 demos have sound?

I could play the 3DMark2001 banchmarks all day every day, had no
problems in the N2002 menus, but crashed out once I got into the car.
Sometimes straight away, sometimes after a couple of laps...

My problem went away when I disabled on-board sound and installed an
SBLive.

As it happens, when it was time to remove the SB and I re-enabled the
on-board sound, Win98 detected new hardware and the subsequent driver
install fixed the issues I'd been having.

I'm no expert when it comes to IRQ assignment, but doesn't the OS
assign them by default?  Did you manually configure IRQs differently
on your working build?

Regards,

Mark Davison
OVAL Deputy Admin
Car #69
http://www.markdavison.clara.net/OVAL/

Seeing as you seem to have one working install and one that does not
work, have you tried the following:

Running dxdiag (start, run, dxdiag) on both installs and comparing
version files of all the dx components.

If that reveals nothing, you can go one stage further.  On the "More
Help" tab of dxdiag, you can start the Microsoft System Information
Tool.  Again, do this in both installs and compare.  You can save the
info to a text file, IIRC.

Ian
--
Ian Riches
Bedford, UK

1)  You seem to think the problem involves the videocard and/or the
motherboard.  Have you tried a different card of whatever make to verify
this.

2) Install the latest bios (1011) and via (4.46, new agp code) drivers.

3)  I helped someone else that had issues with the 9700pro and the A7V8X and
the one thing that made a major difference was raising the agp voltage.  Try
1.6v or even 1.7v.

3)  Smartgart and agp8x itself (as opposed to 4x) can cause issues in some
mobos.  I believe Cat3.2 disables write combining and puts the agp speed at
4x, but check these settings in display properties.

rms

Now, here I sit - wondering if it's gonna hurt anything to go ahead
from here without installing the Via stuff.  I mean, Via must have
had a reason for coming up with these drivers (other than for the
reason of making my system unstable), so I'm kinda worried that
something isn't gonna work at a critical point. :/

In case the system goes***up again, I'm mentally prepared to
replace the Asus board with an Expox 8RDA+ (nforce2 board).

The 4.46 drivers must be new as of today, because I downloaded 4.45
on Monday (and they didn't help).

I've tried changing the voltage on the AGP card, the DRAM, and the
CPU core.  No workee.

I'm using omega drivers, and yes, FastWrites are off and AGP is 4x.

I've tried any number of combinations of installation order, adn
nothing has changed.

Tried it - no change.

I've already steeled myself to purchase a new motherboard if needed.
I was looking real hard at the Epox 8RDA+.

I've already tried this test, and the drives aren't the problem. I
restored the ghosted win2k image from the working drive onto the new
drive, and it worked fine.

   My kinda guy....welcome to the club.  :)
dave(who's ignoring Goy's poke just to drive him crazy)henrie

4-1....the reason I'm "less than impressed with VIA based MoBo's, you
can imagine just how much I dislike them by the fact that for a while I
actually had an nVidia product in my system as a replacement ....

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

"The Pits"    http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--