What should I do? (x1600 and nforce4)

boardlord · Nov 24, 2006, 08:03 AM

Hi to all! It's good to be a member on DriverHeaven!

I hope one of you will be able to help me...
I have an Asus A8N-E with nforce 4 ultra chipset with latest bios, Athlon64 X2 4400+, and a Connect3D Radeon X1600Pro 256Mb PCI-E card. With the known problem of not being able to use Catalyst >6.4.
Now, in XP this is no big deal, as I don't play games. But, in Vista the card just flat out refuses to function. The Vista Ati Radeon drivers don't work, even Vista's own doesn't. It says that there was a problem, and the driver was stopped. Now, the Catalyst issue is fixed as far as I know with Sapphire models via a Biso update, but Connect3D hasn't done this so far, and I'm not holding my breath. Now, a studid question: is it possible to flash the Sapphire bios to my Connect3D card, or is that just plain stupid? Or should I just give up, and buy an Nvidia card?

Thanks for your help!

aNy_oNE · Nov 24, 2006, 02:04 PM

Well.... it is probably possible.... but I would HIGHLY recommend you don't try it unless you are absolutely sure the card will work with the new BIOS (so basically, never =P).
By that I mean, make sure all speeds (core/mem), number of pipelines, memory timings, etc. are the same (although there shouldn't be tooo much difference except maybe in the clock speeds (factory overclocked), or memory, if the manufacturer decided to use better or worse memory than usual).

Either that or make sure they aren't too much different, so the card won't crash, but that you can CHANGE them to their default values (what I did - the default clocks for my 7000 are 150/150 and default for the new bios was 167/167 with medium mem timings, which made me get artifacts, sometimes even in windows until I changed the clock down :/ ).

I flashed my Radeon 7000 to try to get it to stop crashing, and the bios got corrupted :/ Luckily, I have integrated graphics so I was able to get a new bios and flash it again, and now NO CRASHES. So, there is a chance to screw up your card, but also a chance to get it to work.
Up to you if the risks outweigh the rewards.

boardlord · Nov 29, 2006, 11:49 AM

Hi!

Thanks for your suggestions, I think I'll try to do the experiment on this weekend, I hope I won't wreck it...

Thanks again for the comments!

H3X4D3C1M4L · Nov 30, 2006, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boardlord

Hi to all! It's good to be a member on DriverHeaven!

I hope one of you will be able to help me...
I have an Asus A8N-E with nforce 4 ultra chipset with latest bios, Athlon64 X2 4400+, and a Connect3D Radeon X1600Pro 256Mb PCI-E card. With the known problem of not being able to use Catalyst >6.4.
Now, in XP this is no big deal, as I don't play games. But, in Vista the card just flat out refuses to function. The Vista Ati Radeon drivers don't work, even Vista's own doesn't. It says that there was a problem, and the driver was stopped. Now, the Catalyst issue is fixed as far as I know with Sapphire models via a Biso update, but Connect3D hasn't done this so far, and I'm not holding my breath. Now, a studid question: is it possible to flash the Sapphire bios to my Connect3D card, or is that just plain stupid? Or should I just give up, and buy an Nvidia card?

Thanks for your help!

If the PCB layout of the cards is different or if they have different anything (esp. memory timings I think manufacturers can change that around without violating their OEM licence agreements) then it won't work or worst case it'll fry.

boardlord · Dec 3, 2006, 09:29 AM

Hi!

Reading your reply, I think that I'll just have to cope without Vista for a while... Maybe this will be resolved anyway

Thanks!

H3X4D3C1M4L · Dec 4, 2006, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boardlord

Hi!

Reading your reply, I think that I'll just have to cope without Vista for a while... Maybe this will be resolved anyway

Thanks!

Probably by the final revision it should be

Beta software can be funny like that

Metalman · Jan 16, 2007, 09:00 PM

There are too many driver issues with Vista right now, best to wait until there is service
pk 1 at least before any hopes of driver problems solved. I was wanting to buy Vista but a friend of mine is on the beta testing team and he told me to wait until Micro soft addressed some of the problems, as with FSX, MicroSoft released that one with a lot of issues, so if you can forget about Vista, consider bumping back to XP, just an opinion.