disabling AGP sidebanding

[Ex Inferis]

Does anyone know how to disable AGP sidebanding for the G400 23mb DH? I've clocked a P3 550E@733 (133 (1/4) FSB) and I'm having problems with 3d-apps and games. Sidebanding might be it. Disabling it with Powerstrip doesn't work.

[cancer]

Ex Inferis
we need a better idea of your hardware, your motherboard would be a good start.
cheers.

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[Gurm]

Have you ever considered that YOU'RE OVERCLOCKING TOO DAMN FAR?

If you disable sidebanding, you effectively disable AGP transfers. If you don't want an AGP card, go buy a Voodoo.

OR CLOCK YOUR MACHINE AT A REASONABLE SPEED.

Duh.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[cancer]

I disagree Gurm, i have a similar system to that of Ex Inferis and my system performs quite admirably, i think you are being a little harsh.
cheers.

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[cancer]

sorry about the double post...
cheers

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[Greebe]

cancer, there is this thing called edit, from there you can simply delete any post you make. It's not neccessary to say I'm sorry and add an addition post, when you can do this.

BTW, I agree with Gurm.

[Gurm]

Cancer:

Your system performs well at these settings. His does not. Neutering his video card is not the answer. Something else in his system cannot handle this speed, and it's probably his RAM or CPU.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[cancer]

fair enough Gurm but we still didn't have enough information to go on either way. for gods sake it was the guys first post and SHOUTING at him isn't going to give him a favourable impression of murc let alone convince him to come back any time soon. i just think a proper inquiry in to his hardware would have been preferable first before judging his actions...
i don't want a flame war, i just don't think that was fair.
cheers.

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.




[This message has been edited by cancer (edited 20 April 2000).]

[paulcs]

Ex Inferis, sometimes you can mollify an unhappy AGP board on a severely overclocked bus by forcing AGP 1x.

Download and unzip this file into it's own directory:

http://www.murc.ws/Utils/PD5RegHacks.zip

The hack to force AGP 1x will be obvious. (It's called ForceAGP1x.reg or something like that.) Double click on it. Windows will prompt you a couple of times. Reboot.

You can confirm whether or not AGP 1x has been successfully forced with this program:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/cgi-bin/...es/pcilist.exe

Good luck.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[cancer]

paul to the rescue again... i swear you are a bottomless pit of infomation sometimes.
cheers.

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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[birdy]

Is it me or are the people on this forum getting tetchy?

[Gurm]

Sorry. Perhaps I should have patiently explained that:

1. If your system gets unstable at high overclocking speeds, it is probably NOT your video card.

2. Neutering your video card offsets the speed gains from overclocking your CPU.

3. Something else in the system is unstable, and even if neutering your video card did what you wanted, the machine would exhibit other bad behavior after a few hours (or sooner).

So, having said that, yes - try forcing AGP 1X. If that works, then great! You win! If not, you are going to have to either clock down, or get better RAM, or something. If the AGP sidebanding doesn't work, it is an indicator that your system RAM can't handle the stress of 133Mhz transfers. If that is the case, then it will not only fail in 3D, but also under normal operation at some point.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Ex Inferis]

OK, thanx for al the tips but you were right about that I gave to little info, so here it is: Abit BE6, Matrox G400 32mb DH, sblive (does NOT work at 133 Mhz FSB, I have to pull it out), seagate Barracuda 20g, WD Expert 9,1 g. PC133 7,5 ns Hyundai RAM. For the testing, I disconnected my cdrom and writer, put my harddisks in PIO mode 4, pulled out my sblive and modem, set aperture size to 64 mb, set AGP to 1x. I varied te voltage and the system boots at any voltage (so I don't think cooling or voltage is a problem). I'm using a very good Global Win type FKP cooler, and I've made sure there is sufficient coolant paste on the cpu. At 3dMark2000, the system hangs consequently at 64 mb texture rendering (with 128 mb or higher aperture size), so I suspect an AGP problem. Mostly, the system hangs after 5 or ten minutes of 3d apps. I was dissapointed, because it is almost guaranteed that the 550E (for those who don't know yet, coppermine 256k ondie) would run at 133 Mhz FSB. Someone told me that my G400 would run at that AGP bus speed (2/3 * 133 = 89). I'm dissapointed to read at Tom's hardware guide that both G400 and G400 Max failed to run at a 89 Mhz AGP bus (I read this after buying the cpu). Disabling sidebanding was something I read about for extreme overclocking (I was actualy hoping for a 140 or 150 Mhz FSB). But looking at the constant hangups at 64mb texture rendering, I think my G400 is the problem. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Cancer has a 550@733 with a G400 Max, and I'm very interested in how he did it, so let me know. I'm very satisfied with my G400, and I wouldn't like to trade it for a videocard that can cope with a higher AGP bus just so my cpu can run faster. If anyone has tips, let me know

By the way, I've tried to run the system at 550 Mhz (100 Mhz FSB) at an AGP/FSB divider of 1/1, and suprisingly, it worked fine. So my G400 works at 100 Mhz, so is the AGP not the problem? I'm lost here, if it can run at 100 Mhz dan surely it must run at 89 Mhz?

[cancer]

Ex Inferis

i'm not quite sure how to solve you problem however i'll give you some details on how my system works. for specific tech issues paulcs is probably the man to see.

the abit be6 mother board is an intel bx chipset. although it a great board (i used to have a bh6 with a celery 300a@450, didn't everyone!) it has some inherent issues running at 133 fsb due to its 2/3 divider as you know. although some bx boards rock at 133 as seen in the tomshardware article, your other components (agp & pci) have to handle this higher clock hence you have problems running your soundcard. its very odd that your g400 runs at 100 (1/1 divider) but i guess you'll have to ask paul about that one. with your agp aperture size, matrox recomends 256 set in the bios but then again sometimes its good to experiment. there is a good source of faqs on murc & it always pays to glace thru them as they answer many common questions. i must say i still have my old bh6 board and i ain't about to toss it yet. i plan to hang onto it until the celermine II come out. hopefully breathing some life back into the old board with the cheap cpu.

moving on, i think if you are determined to overclock your system successfully you should probably think about a new motherboard and put the be6 on the back burner until the celermine comes out in numbers. if you are willing to wait maybe a intel solano 815e is what you need. this offers all the goodies like ultra66, 133fsb with 1/1, 2/3, 1/2 dividers, 4 usb, agp x4 etc. the only problem with this is intel is hesitant to release this board in numbers as this would be basically saying the world that our rambus is a failure. if this is true the board might be hard to get and probably expensive compared to other alternatives out there.
this leads to, if you are not willing to wait, maybe you should get a via apollo 133a chipset motherboard. these boards offer pretty much all the same things the 815e with offer and are readily available now and have been well accepted in the pc community for stability & performance. if you haven't already seen it check this review from tomshardware
this will give you a good idea what the via apollo 133 & 133a offer.

when i needed to upgrade (a relative term), i didn't have much choice but get a via board as intel was dragging their heels on releasing a viable chipset that didn't include that damn rambus or that stupid 810 with a on board sound & graphics decelerator. i very happy with my asus p3v4x board and according to tom, the best viable (excluding the o/c bx boards) board for the p3 coppermines.
so now i'm running my p!!! fc pga 550e (on a socket adaptor rated at 133) on my asus p3v4x motherboard which is a via apollo 133a chipset. i went with this board (not only for all those reasons above) because the features on it were enormous. these same reasons are probably the things you are having issues with at the moment however you have the advantage of already possessing pc133 ram (i currently have pc 100 ram but i've just ordered 2 sticks of 128 pc133 stuff from crucial/micron). this board has all kinds of nifty things like ½ agp divider, agp x4, ultra66 & the opportunity to run the memory +33/-33 the fsb (this is why I can run my processor at 733 while my memory chugs along at 100fsb, until I get my upgrade of course…) .you can also adjust the vcore from 1.6 – 2.6 in .05 increments (that’s if you have a slot 1 cpu that is, otherwise the vcore is set on the adaptor) this puppy is no slouch in the benchmark department even with my current ram!

if you are willing to spend the cash on a new board like the asus, I would definitely recommend it, this board is the bees knees, better than sliced bread etc and it ain’t that expensive (course that depends on where you are and availability of the board itself). if you are worried about the abit board gathering dust, the celermines aren’t too far away. You could get a 566(66 x 8.5fsb) & o/c to 850(100fsb x 8.5), not a bad upgrade for just over $100(at a guess) & it works out to be the equivalent of a p!!! 650. Pretty good for a second system…

anyway i hope i have helped you some and i apologise for not being able to answer your questions in this specific case. good luck in what ever you decide to do.
cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.




[This message has been edited by cancer (edited 20 April 2000).]

[Gurm]

Ex Infernis:

Have you not been listening? No, the AGP is NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem is undoubtedly your RAM or your CPU. I know you may THINK you have spiffy nifty RAM. But the truth of the matter is that a LOT of PC133 RAM doesn't actually work at 133. Or it could be your CPU not handling 133 properly. But you are entirely correct - the AGP is NOT THE PROBLEM.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.