ix9

Hello,

I can't seem to get 3d games to work with this new card I just bought, an asus ah4650. I guess it's a re branded ATI HD 4650 card, in an AGP flavor.
And yes, I know AGP is dead

So, I got a couple of questions before I RMA this thing to newegg, in hopes of someone maybe catching something I'm missing because I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue.

I had an old Nvidia 6800 GT go belly up, so I bought this thing, installed the driver's off the ASUS cd, and everything appeared fine. But then I noticed my computer seemed sluggish and my CPU was at 40-50% all the time. Then when I tried to load a 3d game like left 4 dead, it will run fine for about one minute then lock up.

That's it, I have to do a hard reset everytime once it freeze's.

-(Please keep in mind this is an AGP card.)-

So I used driver cleaner and got rid of the Asus drivers and tried using the ones off ATI's website. Same thing. Rinse repeat. This time tried the Omega drivers and they didn't work at all (I guess my video card is too new??) Rinse, repeat. Tried using the latest 4000 series hotfix, no effect. There are non AGP 4600 series hotfixes, but again, non agp only.

I think this may have something to do with my nforce 3 motherboard, I don't know. I have the latest drivers for it. Below are my system specs.

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System Specs:
AMD 64 3500+ cpu
1 gb crucial ballistix ram
550w Antec True Power PSU
MSI K8N Neo 2 platinum mobo
Win XP
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I think I may need to wait for an AGP hotfix from ati for the 4600 series, or am I wrong? It just dosen't make sense that a brand new videocard for the agp slot won't work for 3d gaming as it's designed for...?

Anything you guys can think of?
Thanks!

ix9

Update:
Ok reformatted, installed fresh the latest NForce 3 5.11 chipset drivers and the latest AGP hotfix for the "4000" series radeon cards. also went ahead and downloaded the motherboard firmware again to be safe, so it's the latest. I must mention that this motherboard is one of the premier final motherboards to support AGP8x...

---Again, everything fine until you load up a game, works for a minute, then BAM! freeze's up! and now the CPU is higher then ever at 60-70% utilization off a fresh reformat!

WTF. This is total BS.

I checked the system requirements for my card: ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series - System Requirements

It says:
400 Watt or greater power supply (550 Watt for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode) is recommended

I have:
550 watt antec true power with up to 30amps on the 12v rail.

It says:
1GB of system memory recommended

I have:
1 gb high quality Crucial Ballistix RAM that passed MEMtest.

When my Geforce went out it was due to screen tearing, even in standard 2d use. I don't get that now, I just can't play 3d games, which tells me it's either the card or a driver issue.

What's funny is the "AGP hotfix" is only for the 4000 series cards, they have a 4600 series driver download, but it's not AGP.

I guess I need to be patient and wait.

It just pisses me off that they are selling something that dosen't work correctly with AGP right now.

any thoughts?

Tipstaff

First up, welcome to the forums.

To clarify: support for the 4000 series in the hotfix drivers includes the 4650. It's for the entire HD4000 series of AGP cards along with the entire HD2000 and HD3000 series of cards. The thing about picking the 4650 from the driver selector is that you are being taken to the latest driver supporting the 4650, however they are not "specific" to just those cards, it encompasses a number of different series. Problem is that the selector always takes you to the PCIE drivers unless it's an older AGP card (pre-HD2000 series).

Of interest is that this isn't the first time I've heard this story, or have run into this problem personally. I've seen similar posts from people that had the exact same motherboard (or very similar), and were trying to install an HD2600, an HD3650, or an HD4670.. cards from pretty much all the AGP HD2000-HD4000 lineup, all in conjunction with high CPU usage (I remember a post on Asus' forums about this). It appears that the problem, at least with the high CPU usage, is tied to the either the onboard Realtek HD audio chip that is on the video card, or the HDMI port itself (if your card has one). If you are using it, there could be conflicting with the onboard audio of the motherboard, which is a Realtek chip too, or some other issue altogether, possibly tied to the Microsoft UAA Bus driver that is installed to support HD audio devices. Another possibility is an IRQ conflict, especially for cards that have an HDMI port on them.

One suggestion I've read was to go into Device Manager, and disable the ATI Audio listing under "Sound, video, and game controllers". Another would be to go to Realteks website, and download the latest ATI Audio driver (it's under the High Definition listing). Another suggestion was to double check the sound settings within Control Panel, and to make sure that the default sound card is set to the proper one, your default card.

The last suggestion, which I know has worked for me in the past, is to go into Device Manager, open up the "System Devices" listing, and disable the listing that says, "Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio". The catch is that if you are using the motherboards onboard audio, you can kiss it goodbye (unless your onboard audio is an AC97 chip). If you have a dedicated PCI sound card however, then this should work for you.

__________________

CitySlicker

If I recall right with just 1gig ram you got some 550MB left in XP - I would say that is a bit thight for onboard sound and a demanding game. The HDD is probably constantly rolling in your box?

ix9

Thanks for your reply, Tipstaff. I'll give those a shot and let you know and thanks for the welcome also.

To Cityslicker: The HDD does have some activity, I increased the page file and that helped alot though.

ix9

FINALLY! Thanks to you Tipstaff everything is FINALLY working! (I DO have an x-fi pci card, so thankfully onboard sound wasn't an issue to disable...)

-Ok, this is for all you Nforce 3 (AGP) motherboard users out there, this is what I had to do to get this AGP HD 4650 card working and if you dont rely on onboard audio this will work:

(WIN XP:-!!! also use driver cleaner to clean out ALL old display drivers BEFORe attempting this

#1-In BIOS: Turn AGP aperture to 256. (I'm not sure if this made a difference. It was set to 128 and was crashing alot. This is a 1 gb vid card, so I think it helped. Also, turn AGP Fast Writes to OFF in BIOS. AC97-disabled (if you have an X-FI).

#2-install latest nforce 3 drivers (5.11) off nvidia legacy section of drivers page (very last one.)

#3-set page file to 3072.

#4-Install latest AGP hotfix drivers from ATI site for the 4650 card.

#5-Go to device manager. Under sound, video, and audio controllers diable anything with ATI in it. Under system devices, disable Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for HD Audio. Anything audio with a yellow ! point DISABLE.

#6-Make sure realtek on board soundcard disabled if shows up.

#7-Go into CCC and disable system tray icon under options (top screen of program), also disable catalyst A.I. (hard to find, under 3d settings sys tray right click)

#8-Start game. In game like left 4 dead, turn off multicore rendering (if singlecore proc), set display driver to HIGH on memory usage (under video options).

#9-cross fingers.

Tipstaff had mentioned if you have onboard audio, you could try disabling the ATI's on board audio and/or downloading an updated REALTEK driver for the ATI card from the realtek site.

Thank god it's finally working, it's a shame I have to go through this many steps to get a brand new card to work, but then again, I am still using AGP and this is a very old chipset. It might be more amazing to say they can get a card of this caliber to even WORK on AGP.

Major vouch for Tipstaff!

Tipstaff

Not a problem man. Glad you got it working.

__________________

ix9

Hey, well after this I started getting the well documented ati2dvag.dll error. Basically, I could finally play my games for like about 20 minutes, and then my computer would freeze and eventually this error "ati2dvag.dll" would pop up. Afterwards a forced restart was required each time.

I am attributing this to the Nforce 3 chipset. I'm not blaming ATI anymore because at least they offer drivers for their hardware. nvidia pissed everyone off because they dropped the nforce 3 and 4 way too early, stopping support when it's obvious it still needed supporting.

Well anyways, if you got a Nforce 3 motherboard and the above ati2dvag.dll error is happening to you, AND you followed all the steps above, do this to fix everything:

#1-GO into BIOS. I changed my AGP aperture to 32. (it was 256) I'm not sure if this helped, but my system is stable finally, so it couldn't of hurt. I also upped the voltage by a hair on the AGP voltage. Maybe the card needed more voltage, IDK.
#2-For AGP speed, set to AUTO, not 4x/8x. (I think this is what fixed it...I'm afraid I may be running at 4x...but hell, it works great and is stable, so I don't care!) Also, make sure "System BIOS cacheable" is ENABLED. Hit F10 and SAVE those settings.
#3-Here's the big one. Uninstall CCC. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall CCC only, not the ATI display driver.
#4-Go to Device manager, under "system devices", find Nvidia Nforce 3 AGP Host to PCI bridge. Click that, choose update driver, choose not this time, choose "i'll select". Choose "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge" choose ok, RESTART. After restart, go back to device manager, under system devices, choose the "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge", choose update driver, etc. This time, instead of selecting PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge, choose the 4.6.70 Nvidia Nforce 3 AGP Host to PCI bridge driver again. RESTART!
(GEEZ, right?!)
#5-RESTART.

Like I said, I was getting that stupid ati2dvag error over and over while playing games. By doing the above steps, I now have a stable system. I played Doom 3 for 4 hours, not one crash. Left 4 Dead, 2 hours, NO crashes.

It's almost unbelieveable I had to go through all this to get the damn card working...but atleast it's.... WORKING, right??! (maniacal crazy laugh)
Hope that can help. And thanks again to Tipstaff, because I never would of gotten this far had it not been for his suggestions!