| Author |
Message |
Brett
| | Posted on Saturday, January 3, 2004 - 12:08 am: | |
I have researched long and hard to no avail, hoping the kind people here can lend a hand to me. I have a simple question... and an explanation of my situation.
I bought a new motherboard that supports 8X AGP. Great... now I want a new video card capable of 8X technology. It will be GeForce4 Ti4600 (or 4800 SE) because this is a high end video card that I like.
My situation... my motherboard only supports 1.5 Volts to the AGP. I bought a video card which states "0.8 Volts @ 8X AGP" when I attempted to use the card everything ran smoothly during a graphics intense game (Command & Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour) and suddenly about 15 minutes into this game the monitor went into standby mode and said no signal detected. I could still hear music from the game for roughly 3 seconds, then the sound froze (assuming the computer locked up)
I immediately suspected (yes I was aware) the video card may be getting too much voltage (1.5 Volts @ 8X) and was about to fail. I shut off the main power from my surge protector and removed the card immediately. It wasn't super hot, just a little toasty... but not serious at all.
What I did was a test to see if my card would blow up or not receiving 1.5 Volts at 8X speeds. It ran fine until I played a graphics intense game. The specs of this video card is a VisionTek Xstasy 9200 SE (ATI Radeon) 128MB DDR, 8X AGP card. very powerful but did not run properly in most games... needed to download a ton of stuff and still it was messed up displaying 3D games but after a few minutes it would slowly display everything properly.
My motherboard is a Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum Socket A w/ Athlon XP 3000+
This new ATI Radeon (VisionTek Xtasy) card is new, and double the performance of my older video card (GeForce4 MX440 64MB DDR, 4X AGP) yet my GeForce outperforms the new one.
My main problem: I know 4X AGP runs @ 1.5 Volts (adjustable in BIOS I know) but my new card says 0.8 Volts @ 8X. If I spend $200 on a new card with 8X I don't want to feed it 1.5 Volts and have it shut down like the previous one. Someone please explain this Voltage to me at different X speeds on the motherboard. Is it safe to feed 8X 1.5 Volts? How can I know which video card is safe to do this to?
Some computer retailers do not offer technical advice... that's why I'm here. All help is appriciated greatly. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 1:57 pm: | |
All I can do is agree. I looked at the online manaual. It does not say if your motherboard is AGP 3.0 compliant Some 3.0 slots will support the 1.5V and 0.8V, But apparently this one doesn't.
1/2x (AGP 1.0) was usyaly 3.3V, 4x (AGP 2.0) was for 1.5V -- 8x I always thought was 0.8V, but your manual says 4x and 8x at 1.5V. maybe your board doesn't really do 8x ????
The AGP buss speed is 66MHz. at 1x it is 66MHz , multiplies to 133 at 2x, 266 at 4x and so on. The transfer rates are found by multplying by 4 i.e. 2x is (133 x 4 = 533MB/s.)
I hope you card isn't fried.
good luck
|
Moderator (Es)
Username: Es
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 30, 2004 - 8:34 pm: | |
The KT400 VIA chipset has some difficulty with 8X agp cards running at 8X AGP mode. Problems ranging from frequent lockups and instability to flat out not running at 8X at all. The KT600 actually improved on this by using the same architecture as their 64 bit interface on the North Bridge. VIA updates the chipset drivers quite frequently to add stability to various platforms perhaps you need to update the Hyperion 4 in 1 drivers to clean up some of the issues with 8X AGP. |
oRioN
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 7:02 pm: | |
I'm following up on my original post... everything has worked out great. Thanks for all your help.
I contacted many a company and vendor, to no avail... however through some research on Google I found what I was looking for.
Earlier I had mentioned my MOBO was the Soyo KT400, when I am pretty sure it is the KT600. Regardless, I found out that my video card (PNY Verto GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) takes 1.5V on 8X AGP and steps it down to 0.8V through a built-in transformer. I connected it to the AGP slot and started playing a graphics intense game, and a dialogue box came up and said the "On-Board Graphics Card Sentinal has reported low voltage to the video card. Performance has been adjusted to prevent damage to the system".
........
I'm actually happy because this card has some kind of brain that does this crap. It was worth the hundreds I spent for it, believe me.
So I saw my MOBO has an AGP Pro Voltage Supply. But don't use this, this is only for AGP "PRO". There is a voltage connector on my video card, simply plug the power supply into it and you're ready to go. Problem solved. No smoke, fire, or damaged computer parts.
Just a sick card on crack that works beautifully. |
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