ASUS K7M + ATHLON 550 + G400 problems

[Tero Lehto]

I have the following configuration:

* ASUS K7M motherboard with BIOS v1.007 (the latest on ASUSS's web site)
* 128 MB (SDRAM, PC-100, rather old) RAM
* Millennium G400 (AGP, 32 MB, single, drivers vers. 5.50.005)
* SB Live! VE with the latest LiveWare
* Windows 98 SE

Windows and basic software run just fine, there aren't any lockups or problems like that. The problem is, however, lousy Direct3D and OpenGL performance.

I've tried many games and the 3DMark 2000 benachmark software. The test runs like a slide show (at 2-10 FPS) and the final score with default test settings is about 600 3DMarks! - I believe it should be something very different (2000, 3000 or even more?).

I've tried Half-Life with the TurboGL drtver set with the TurboGL manager. I've also tried many Direct3D games. Overall, they all run very slow no matter what resolution I'm using.

I've set the AGP Aperture Size to 128 MB. I also tried 256 MB. 2XAGP support is enabled according to WCPUID (test software). Here are the results:



AGP info:



I've heard many others having same kind of problems, but has anyone of you got ideas how to fix this? Should I suspect a faulty G400 card? Incompatible memory? Any help is greatly appreciated!

P.S. Sorry for possible typos, my keyboard didn't enjoy its share of Coca Cola. ;-)

[This message has been edited by Tero Lehto (edited 21 February 2000).]

[ParaKnowYa]

I just hope nobody hurts me now but because you've got a K7M, please try the following.

Download the PD uninstaller. The latest G400 driver from www.paraknowya.de (must be that site, it's a driver pack! and the TurboGL drivers from www.murc.ws. Then get yourself the 1008 bios for the K7M and the flasher v822.

Reboot the system and press F8, get into pure DOS and flash the mobo bios! Reboot, set the bios settings to default settings (or similar) reboot and set the bios settings to otimized settings. Now reboot and check the bios again whether or not there is stuff you'd like to enable/ disable/ tweak.

Once this is done, uninstall the old Matrox drivers with the uninstaller. Reboot.

Install the driver pack from www.paraknowya.de and reboot. Then install the TurboGL driver.

Oh, yeah, don't forget the AGP driver from AMD! Just d/l and install it!

Voilà, does it work now?! Let me know! LOL!

[This message has been edited by ParaKnowYa (edited 21 February 2000).]

[Tero Lehto]

ParaKnowYa, thanks for your advice. I had about everything fixed just fine except for the "Load optimal settings" feature that's in the BIOS settings' Exit menu. After trying this my system now seems to run like it should, even though I might be able to get some more juice out of this optimizing the settings.

As fas as I know, the problem was with the "Internal cache" setting which should be set to "reserved" instead of the default value "write thru". Thanks again!

[ParaKnowYa]

Glad to hear that!