Alright... this is my first time building a computer. So far it's been problem after problem, but I'm working through them... slowly.
I got an ATI Radeon 9600 XT AGP card. The motherboard that I put it into is a Gigabyte P4 Titan GA-8VT800-L, and it says that it supports 8x. Also, in the BIOS, I have the AGP speed to set to 8x. That's my hardware setup. Onto the software problem.
I was having some performance problems, so I decided to open up my ATI Catalyst properties. Under SmartGart, I was amazed to find that the AGP Speed was set to "Off." I don't even want to know how your speed can be Off and it's still working, but that's beside the point. My other two options were 4x and 8x, so I naturally moved the slider up to 8x and hit OK. I was informed that my computer would have to be restarted, and if the settings were stable on my system, they would be changed. I restarted, went back into the settings, and... the AGP speed was Off. I tried again with 4x, same deal.
So, I looked around online. I finally found a tutorial for setting up ATI cards with catalyst software. I read over it, and everything it told me to do I had already done. At the very end, it told you to go to Start -> Run -> SmartGart. I did that, and I looked at the settings. PCI Write were both set to On, and AGP Read and AGP Write were both set to Off. I tried to change it, but once again it had to reboot and when I came back it was reset again.
So... what is making my system not stable enough to do 8x or even 4x? If it helps you help me at all, I'm running Windows XP with 512 MB of DDR RAM. Thanks for any assistance you can offer.
Side note: I've been looking around the boards at the common solutions people are given, so just so you know: I do have the latest ATI and VIA drivers.
I got an ATI Radeon 9600 XT AGP card. The motherboard that I put it into is a Gigabyte P4 Titan GA-8VT800-L, and it says that it supports 8x. Also, in the BIOS, I have the AGP speed to set to 8x. That's my hardware setup. Onto the software problem.
I was having some performance problems, so I decided to open up my ATI Catalyst properties. Under SmartGart, I was amazed to find that the AGP Speed was set to "Off." I don't even want to know how your speed can be Off and it's still working, but that's beside the point. My other two options were 4x and 8x, so I naturally moved the slider up to 8x and hit OK. I was informed that my computer would have to be restarted, and if the settings were stable on my system, they would be changed. I restarted, went back into the settings, and... the AGP speed was Off. I tried again with 4x, same deal.
So, I looked around online. I finally found a tutorial for setting up ATI cards with catalyst software. I read over it, and everything it told me to do I had already done. At the very end, it told you to go to Start -> Run -> SmartGart. I did that, and I looked at the settings. PCI Write were both set to On, and AGP Read and AGP Write were both set to Off. I tried to change it, but once again it had to reboot and when I came back it was reset again.
So... what is making my system not stable enough to do 8x or even 4x? If it helps you help me at all, I'm running Windows XP with 512 MB of DDR RAM. Thanks for any assistance you can offer.
Side note: I've been looking around the boards at the common solutions people are given, so just so you know: I do have the latest ATI and VIA drivers.
