ASUS P4G8X / Radeon 9500 Pro problem..

I decided I would post this here, as people here always seem to have good insights.. I have posted this on numerous other forums, and no one yet has been able to shed any light on the situation..

Here is my problem.. I put together a new system, an ASUS P4G8X motherboard (intel 7205 chipset), ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, 2x 512mb DDR266 and a P4 2.53ghz processor. What happens is this: When I reboot (any time, ie. save and exit from BIOS, restart from windows, anything) the machine will typically hang right before POST. The cd-rom will pretend to spin up, but thats it.. and the little asus voice will come on and say "System failed due to CPU overclocking".

Now, my system is not overclocked, and everything is at "normal" settings for the CPU / Video Card etc.

I thought it was a bios problem, but I basically ran through every possibility in the bios, and nothing helped. So I decided it was maybe a memory problem, I switched out the Corsair modules for some Kingston modules (that were shown to work with this motherboard from Kingstons website). That didnt solve the problem. Then I decided I would throw a different video card in the machine and see what happened.

I put an old Geforce 256 in the machine, and the problem magically disappeared. Great, huh? So I decided I would just RMA the Radeon 9500 and get a new one, and I would be good to go. Well, I received the new Radeon, and guess what? Same problem I was having before.

At that point, I thought.. maybe my 330 watt power supply isnt sufficient, so I got a 430 watt supply.. No luck with that either. Still hangs before POST (I can reboot after it hangs, and it will usually boot up fine the 2nd time)

The helpdesk people at ASUS basically told me to "Buy a non-ati card". That was fairly frustrating, because I want to use an ATI card, and I mean, 2 major manufactuers products (you would think) should be able to work with one another.

Any suggestions? Do you think my motherboard is bad? It has to be some kind of compatibility issue between my motherboard and Radeon cards. I have read posts of people having difficulties with this same combination, but nothing like mine.

Any help would be great, as I am completely baffled.

as people here always seem to have good insights

Not to mention we've got an ATI employee frequenting the board...

That was fairly frustrating, because I want to use an ATI card, and I mean, 2 major manufactuers products (you would think) should be able to work with one another.

Wouldn't surprise me... I know some 333-chipset MBs (can't remember if it was Asus or Abit) didn't work with a GeForce4 4600-card....

Stig

The helpdesk people at ASUS basically told me to "Buy a non-ati card".

Yeah, they would say that... especially when you consider their graphics partner is Nvidia and not ATI.

I would also try the following :
- Flash the motherboard with the latest bios.
- Try another Radeon 9500 card, but one from a different manufacturer. Also make sure the card is AGP 8x compatible. Some of the earlier ATI cards were AGP 4x I believe.

If that also fails, then you might consider getting rid of that motherboard. If you're not into overclocking, get yourself an Intel motherboard. I now have an Intel board after having used Asus, Aopen, Abit, Gigabyte, Soyo, Shuttle & MSI and can honestly say that this is the most stable board I've EVER had. (Aopen comes second, Asus third). Only downside I can see is that it's not overclockable, but I don't do that anyway.

The Bios that came on the board was the latest stable release, I actually flashed it to the latest beta release to see if that would help anything... it didn't. (Now it won't let me flash back to the latest stable release, go figure..)

The card is definitely 8x compatible, but I guess that is really my only alternative is trying a new Radeon or a new motherboard.. Unfortunately the online shops that I bought the Radeon / Motherboard from are none to easy to deal with returns..

I'll check into that, MSI got really good marks on this chipset.

Aparently Intel's AGP 8x wasn't quite up to spec with the chipset on the P4G8x, and can cause problems. This thread over on Rage 3d has a few possible workarounds.

Hopefully Bruno might be able to help on this one. If not, post over on Rage 3D and give ATI a call.

Yeah I have read many similar posts of this problem, and its very disheartening. Unfortunately, no one seems to be having the same problem as me! The stability issues that they are having (general freezes in 3d mode); I resolved by changing AGP voltage / enabling USWC in BIOS. But the hang on post thing, I have not been able to fix (without pulling the card and putting another brand in there..)

I'll post there as well.. But I have decided to return my P4G8X and get a MSI Granite Bay board, and see if I have any better luck with that. Hopefully I will... Or maybe I will be worse off..

Bruno where are you! Nah, the problem is definitely on ASUS / Granite Bay side.. Am I correct in assuming that the machine not posting after reboot has nothing to do with video card drivers? Or do the windows drivers that get installed change firmware etc on the video card itself, that would cause it to work or not work (before entering OS)?

That's definitely a hardware issue. Software drivers usually can't do anything like that. The other thing to try is if the bios will let you is to set the agp speed to say 4x only and see if that works other wise go Intel on you motherboard. I've been building systems for 8 years now and Intel boards have the fewest problems and are far more stable. I run a D845WN P4 board and it's never crash on me I also have a Radeon 7200 with it, had a Asus board before this and couldn't keep my 7200 running for the life of me.

Just my 2 bits

That's true.. My last 2 intel boards have run extremely smoothly. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, Intel doesn't make a Granite Bay motherboard. They make the chipset, but not the board.. I could go with another board, but I have already bought the memory to work with that chipset etc...

Yep sadly they only make the chip-set.
If you haven't already check out this site.
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20030203/

I've yet to use an MSI board but I get told often that they are the next best thing to Intel but that comes from an AMD guy at work. teehee /ducks LOL.

Intel doesn't make a Granite Bay motherboard.

You're right, Intel does not make a Granite Bay motherboard. My mistake, sorry.

But I wouldn't get one of those anyway if I were you.

The Granite Bay series should never have been released anyway becasue they'll have a pretty short life span. By may Intel will present its Springdale/Canterwood chipsets who look MUCH more appealing than Granite Bay.

After those chipsets are presented, Granite Bay boads will already have become obsolete.
Springdale/Canterwood boards will also feature the new ICH5 southbridge chip which (among others) supports Serial ATA natively.

I would wait for those new boards if I were you. There are due not so long from now. Granite Bay boards really doesn't offer much advantages over i845 PE/GE (except AGP 8x) anyway AND they're very expensive.

Well I agree with you on the fact that it will be obsolete at that point, but that's basically the way of life in computers. I mean, *any* computer will be basically obsolete in a matter of 6 months, so that's not too important to me, I still think that it is a good motherboard (in concept at least).. If the new MSI one that I get doesn't work to my satisfaction, I will probably just return it and hold out for the Canterwood / Springdale series...

Just for anyones benefit, it looks like updating to the latest beta BIOS for the P4G8X fixed my hang on POST problem. (1004 beta 014). A new problem arose however, when I decided to install the Intel Application Accelerator.. My computer went into an infinite rebooting loop.. I guess IAA was a mistake?

What is that? I haven't heard of it.

Not really sure, it is a program that comes on the ASUS cd (and I am pretty sure it comes with other intel chipsets), that is supposed to speed up programs by fine tuning something or another.. Heh.. real informative huh? Well, anyhow, it is supposed to make it faster, but it is basically just making it unbootable..

I agree with you that everything becomes obsolete pretty fast when it comes to computers, but this Granite Bay chipset really takes the cake! It hasn't beat the i845 in sales records yet and doesn't really offer any advantages over it (except AGP 8x, which is not yet needed anyway) + it's a lot more expensive than an i845 board.
There are many motherboard makers that haven't even bothered producing a mobo with this particular chipset for that reason.
Anyway, this is just FYI, if you really want one, that's your choice of course!

Intel's Application Acelerator is a really good little utility that speeds up every application on your system. And it does a pretty good job at it! Moreso, it enables 48bit disk support to be able to use harddrives larger than 137gig on your system. (currently this is only an option when you use winXP with SP1, see here)

I ALWAYS install it on a new system, 'cause it's really worth it !

As to why it doesn't work on your mobo, I have no idea. Probably because you're using a beta bios? (I know, it's not like you have another choice, but that's the only thing I can think of ; I've never had problems with this utility myself)

Nah, I actually finally got it working right. I just had to download the latest version of Intel's Application Accelerator (2.3) instead of the 2.2.2 I was using.. now its working fine.

Great!
Somehow I read over the part where you mentioned that you've installed the app from the cd that you got with your motherboard.
That's something I never do just to avoid the problems like you had and never thought that that could be the culprit.

So Asus is still not providing the latest version of IAA with a mobo you've bought late march, and the new version has been available since mid november last year ? That's hardly commendable!

Anyway, I'm glad you've sorted it all out now.
It sometimes pisses me off to see how little bug checking there is going on nowadays before a final product gets released. It seems like sometimes the beta stages get skipped entirely, and they try to make up for that later by providing software updates (if you're lucky). I mean, if an end-user can sometimes see the problem(s) within 5 minutes of use, can't all those techie guys do that too, or do they just don't care?
I know that a speedy release date is important, especially in the computer business, but there's something to be said for quality and stability also. I for one centainly don't mind waiting a bit longer if that would mean I would get a good, stable, quality product.
At least the Empeg guys got it right! (I really love 2.0!)