Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: SunKing on December 03, 2003, 11:30:15 PM

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: SunKing on December 03, 2003, 11:30:15 PM

My motherboard is a Albatron KX400-8X with the latest bios. In bios I have the APG Aperture Size set to 8x. When I go to the "Smartgart(tm)" tab it shows my APG Speed with the slider at "off". I try to move it to 4x or 8x and each time I reboot the slider goes back to OFF... Any ideas to get this to work at 4 or even 8? Thanks.

My system

WinXp Prof.
ATI 9700pro cat 3.9 w/COD hot fix
Albatron KX400-8X mobo
2100xp AMD @ 1.7mhz
60gig IBM HDD

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: mrblack on December 04, 2003, 01:38:30 AM

Set you apeture to 4 you'r motherboard may not support 8x AGP.
Check you'r manuel.

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: FOGOLD on December 04, 2003, 01:58:08 AM

AGP won't work at Aperture=8.

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: zmeg on December 04, 2003, 08:19:39 AM

Reload your chipset drivers.

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: Skuzzy on December 04, 2003, 11:25:55 AM

Aperature size is the amout of AGP memory space that can be used on the system side SunKing, it has nothing to do with the bus speed.

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: SunKing on December 04, 2003, 07:58:41 PM

so which one really needs to be set to 4x or 8x? the mobo bios or display drivers?

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: FOGOLD on December 05, 2003, 01:51:18 AM

You should have a setting in BIOS SETUP  CHIPSET FEATURES or similar.

On that list is "AGP MOde" usually its "Auto" ""2x" "4x" or "8x".

Set it to Auto. Further down is "AGP ApertureSize". Set that to 64 or 128.  THESE ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I would set AGP mode to Auto or at most 4X just now and see if everything is ok.

Have a look on the web for BIOS set up guides.

Try http://www.rojakpot.com

Title: Bios at 8x but smartgart stuck at "off" . I'm stumped
Post by: bloom25 on December 07, 2003, 02:04:33 AM

Your video card is running in PCI mode because the aperature size is set too low.  It should be set to either 64 or 128MB.  (As correctly noted above.)

As for the AGP speed, you might be able to set the max transfer rate in the bios, and adjust it in Smartgart.  There's currently no significant performance benefits to AGP 8x versus 4x, so don't worry about it too much if you can only get the card to run at 4x.