Need help with 9700

10-07-2002, 12:20 AM

I have a brand new computer (ASUS P4S8X mobo, P4-2.53 CPU, 1GB DDR333, ATI 9700 Pro, Adaptec SCSI card) that won't play BF1942 for more than a few minutes without locking the system up.

I was having other crash-related problems with this motherboard, but those turned out to be due to an insufficient Vcore voltage. Everything else runs beautifully except BF1942. I get a minute or so into a multi-player game on a very high-speed server, and the system locks hard.

I have updated to the lastest drivers from ATI's support page and installed the version 1.1 patch. I have the card set to 6x AA, 16x AF, High Quality textures, and High Quality mipmap settings. The "Wait for Vsync" and "Truform" options are set to "Application Preference".

Any thoughts? TIA!

10-10-2002, 07:03 PM

same problem, same spec, no idea

lenchmob · 10-11-2002, 03:18 PM

What is your OS and the kind of sound card you are using? This might help others to assist you....

Rommel the Desertfox · 10-11-2002, 04:03 PM

I can`t help you with your Problem, but let me say that you have the most high-end system i`ve ever hard of.

I thought I had I nice PC with a GeForce4400ti, 512MB DDR RAM and AMD Athlon XP 2100+ ...

2.5Ghz, Radeon 9700, 1GB memory , wow.

I wish you luck with getting BF to run ...

yetix · 10-11-2002, 07:30 PM

turn off the AA and AF stuff( you can't see the in game text messages very well with AA on). I set my refresh to 60hz.
Also, as strange is it seems, make sure your audio card has current drivers and your DXDIAG and BIOS are using the correct newest drivers.
hth- Yetix
933 AMD T-Bird
ATi 9700 Pro
768 PC133ram
SB Audigy XGamer Live
DSL

Swedish Chef · 10-12-2002, 01:15 AM

Blackcat,

Look back at the other Radeon 9700 related posts in this forum. ATI released a fix for those cards specifically mentioning problems running BF1942. I can't remember which post it was but there was a direct link to the file you can dl from ATI - supposedly that fixed problems for other 9700 users. Hope this helps.

By the way I own a GF4 Ti4600 (128) which obviously has antialiasing as well... Best to turn that feature to off or auto (let the proggies decide whether to use AA). I ran BF1942 with AA and experienced trouble with it.

Chef

Rommel the Desertfox · 10-12-2002, 05:48 AM

Yes, it`s a damn shame but true,
Battlefield runs awful with FSAA turned on... I have a GeForce4400ti @300/650MHz and tried to play it with FSAA 4x and Antisotropic Filtering 2x . Everything was looking so damn GOOD, razor-sharp textures and stuff. But when I started to move...unplayable.
I saw BF running on a 9700 Card. The Framerate was nearly like with my card with FSAA off, but FSAA was turned on 4x !

But why spending 500 Euros for a 9700 when Direct X 9 is coming 2003...

Red MEat · 10-12-2002, 06:32 AM

ATI has released a D3D (Direct X) patch go to their website and download it.

-Red MEat-

GoodFiend · 10-12-2002, 07:16 AM

http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4081.html Have fun

[/u]

10-14-2002, 11:42 PM

I think I may have your answer ... :-)

I have an extremely similar setup:

Windows XP Pro, SP1, No "Background Shenanigans"
ASUS P4S8X MoBo, BIOS v.1004, SiS 648, AGP 8X
Pentium 4 @ 2.53 GHz, 533 MHz FSB (Not overclocked)
512 MB 333 MHz DDR PC2700 RAM
(Samsung, approved DIMM x 1)
Radeon 9700 Pro, Drivers v.7.77~ (w/ "D3D Fix")
Hercules Game Theater XP, v. 4089A
Monsoon 300W 4.1 Flat Panel Surround Sound
Two Maxtor 30GB ATA-100 HD's, NTFS, No RAID
Comcast Cablemodem w/ LinkSys Wireless Firewall

The important thing to note here is the Asus P4S8X BIOS,
version 1004. My MoBo came with 1003A, and I was getting
many frequent BF42 lockups. FLASH your BIOS to 1004 and
they will most likely go away; I believe it has something to
do with the new "One Page Control " setting you'll see under
"Chipset -> Advanced". Don't ask me - Mircon didn't know...

Asus P4S8X BIOS version 1004 (Asus' link is BAD!) :
http://www.asus.com.tw/cgi-bin/dl.as...x/p4s8x004.zip

Filename: p4s8x004.zip Size: 313,035 Bytes
You'll need AFLASH and a boot disk; read Asus' docs.

I still have some occasional hangs, but, the game is playable.
I am pretty convinced now that these hangs are general stability
issues with BF42, perhaps due to an nVidia T&L coding bias. I am
hopeing Dice / EA will fix this since it's an otherwise excellent game!

Also - all nVidiots out there - I came from a GeForce 2GTS,
GeForce3 and GeForce4 4200 128MB, and let me tell you, the
Radeon card SMOKES! Every 3D game I own (which is quite a
few!) runs GLASS SMOOTH and like a PIECE OF ART with all
settings totally maxed out. No need to "go lightly" with this card.
I'm sure nVidia will counter, but not anytime soon enough!

Hope this helps - gonna go save the world now! ;-)

10-14-2002, 11:50 PM

Dude I got news for you NVidia will be releasing their next card before years end... And I have been testing three of their reference cards with the new chip for the past month on the game I'm working on and it smokes the 9700 hands down. You will start to see reviews coming out in the next month.. or less and teh numbers will blow you away..

-Red MEat-

10-16-2002, 05:22 PM

I'll believe it when I see it!

Also, I've been reading that nVidia will NOT be shipping before next year ... :P so, that's at least three months + SOONER that I will have been enjoying my Radeon 9700 Pro until nVidia's card is available...

So, guess what: since I can enjoy MUCH better performance than any nVidia card RIGHT NOW, that justifies it for me! Even if the nVidia is a little faster, they're behind the curve, and there ain't no denyin' that!

Lastly, if it's really THAT much better, I'll put the Radeon in my Second system and buy the nVidia for my primary card! But, they have to produce yet - let's see.

The proof is ... yup, you got it ... IN DA PUDDIN' !!!

lenchmob · 10-16-2002, 06:56 PM

Led Salad (Blei Salat) originally wrote:
Also - all nVidiots out there - I came from a GeForce 2GTS,
GeForce3 and GeForce4 4200 128MB, and let me tell you, the
Radeon card SMOKES! Every 3D game I own (which is quite a
few!) runs GLASS SMOOTH and like a PIECE OF ART with all
settings totally maxed out. No need to "go lightly" with this card.
I'm sure nVidia will counter, but not anytime soon enough!

I stay with Nvidia for consistent driver support unlike ATI who can't find it's ass with both hands. I own quite a few games as well and they all run smoothly with my ti4600. I don't tweak my card I just floor board everything and it runs fine. So you can take you nvidiots and place it where the sun doesn't shine....

yetix · 10-17-2002, 10:13 PM

hehe, let Ati and Nvidia fight it out.
What better cards might we see?
what better support...uhem ATi hopefully learned a lesson.
What better prices? 9700 Pro is a great card, I use it and love it.
But I really hope Nvidia busts out the NV30 stuff before year's end.
Let's see how far they go to get our hard earned cash!

10-21-2002, 07:15 PM

Black Cat -

We got off on a tangent, here. Did the BIOS upgrade help???

Led Salad

(as in, "I'm gonna feed you a ~".)

10-22-2002, 01:06 PM

Black Cat ... Fellas ... I got it! Finally !!!

For the Asus P4S8X Motherboard,
make sure to set Video Memory
Cache Mode to [UC], the Default,
under Advanced / Chipset.

I had this set to [USWC], which
is Uncacheable, Speculative Write
Combining, which worked fine for
all other games EXCEPT BF'42.

Now this game works GREAT,
even at AGP 8X, with 6X AA
and all settings CA-RANKED!!!

10-25-2002, 07:38 PM

But the ppl there talked about this applying to BF1942 too...

It seems the 9700 pro is designed to take full advantage of the agp power-wise (even though it's got a secondary powerconnector), none the less, it seems most MB manufactorers do not supply enough pwr to the agp port (not following the spec for the agp standard) - and thus the 9700 is not getting enough juice - if you can, try bumping the voltage up .1 to .2 above default.

Though my AO trial period expired right before I got to test it, I can say, that I have not had any video problems in BF.

SB live! making the whole thing choppy, now _that's_ another story... (and which is why I stopped by the board)

Led Salad · 10-31-2002, 05:41 PM

Radeon 9700 Pro / Asus P4S8X FIX !!!

Yes, folks, this time it looks solved for real!

Go download the newest ATI drivers, either from:

http://mirror2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w...0-6193-efg.exe
(Linked off http://www.rage3d.com/ )

or

ftp://ftp.hercules.com//video/exe/97...0-6193-efg.exe

Uninstall your old drivers, reboot, install these, reboot, and, VOILA!

For some WEIRD reason, these drivers are not yet available
through the ATI website (maybe still waiting WHQL approval?),
but they ARE available from Hercules and ATI (indirectly).

The 7.78 was "newer" than the 7.77 "patch" from ATI's
Advisory # 4081 about their "patch" (which did NOT work for me),
so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Currently running EXCELLENT at 1024 x 768 @ 32 bpp, Sound @ 22KHz.
All Direct3D settings MAXIMIZED (AA / Truform / SmoothVision II).
Will try (gently) tweaking sound back up to 44 KHz and refresh
back up to 100 Hz tonight ...

11-04-2002, 05:34 AM

Specs:
p4 1700, 512mb RAMBUS, ATI Radeon 9700 pro, SBL sound Card. And ive updated all drivers, patches and everything else known to man and the game is still choppy!!! With everything set to low!!! WTF!!

12-11-2002, 03:24 PM

Hey guys--
I've been having some severe problems with this setup, too.. I haven't even gotten to the part where my system will boot yet, so I've been researching... but it seems that MANY people are having the same problems you are... Almost all of them were solved by updating the bios from www.asus.com ... It's actually not that much of a pain if you use Asus' fancy new "EZ-update" utility... don't even have to use A-Flash.. Anyway, get the bios update, check your VCORE voltages, and according to the geeks, your vid card problems and random system lockups/reboots will disappear... hope this helps.
-c0der

10-07-2002, 12:20 AM	#1 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Need help with 9700 I have a brand new computer (ASUS P4S8X mobo, P4-2.53 CPU, 1GB DDR333, ATI 9700 Pro, Adaptec SCSI card) that won't play BF1942 for more than a few minutes without locking the system up. I was having other crash-related problems with this motherboard, but those turned out to be due to an insufficient Vcore voltage. Everything else runs beautifully except BF1942. I get a minute or so into a multi-player game on a very high-speed server, and the system locks hard. I have updated to the lastest drivers from ATI's support page and installed the version 1.1 patch. I have the card set to 6x AA, 16x AF, High Quality textures, and High Quality mipmap settings. The "Wait for Vsync" and "Truform" options are set to "Application Preference". Any thoughts? TIA!

10-12-2002, 06:32 AM	#8 (permalink)
Red MEat Staff Sergeant Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Fucked Up So Cal Posts: 277	ATI has released a D3D (Direct X) patch go to their website and download it. -Red MEat- __________________ \"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me now I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.\" --Mark Twain

10-14-2002, 11:42 PM	#10 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	I think I may have your answer ... :-) I think I may have your answer ... :-) I have an extremely similar setup: Windows XP Pro, SP1, No "Background Shenanigans" ASUS P4S8X MoBo, BIOS v.1004, SiS 648, AGP 8X Pentium 4 @ 2.53 GHz, 533 MHz FSB (Not overclocked) 512 MB 333 MHz DDR PC2700 RAM (Samsung, approved DIMM x 1) Radeon 9700 Pro, Drivers v.7.77~ (w/ "D3D Fix") Hercules Game Theater XP, v. 4089A Monsoon 300W 4.1 Flat Panel Surround Sound Two Maxtor 30GB ATA-100 HD's, NTFS, No RAID Comcast Cablemodem w/ LinkSys Wireless Firewall The important thing to note here is the Asus P4S8X BIOS, version 1004. My MoBo came with 1003A, and I was getting many frequent BF42 lockups. FLASH your BIOS to 1004 and they will most likely go away; I believe it has something to do with the new "One Page Control " setting you'll see under "Chipset -> Advanced". Don't ask me - Mircon didn't know... Asus P4S8X BIOS version 1004 (Asus' link is BAD!) : http://www.asus.com.tw/cgi-bin/dl.as...x/p4s8x004.zip Filename: p4s8x004.zip Size: 313,035 Bytes You'll need AFLASH and a boot disk; read Asus' docs. I still have some occasional hangs, but, the game is playable. I am pretty convinced now that these hangs are general stability issues with BF42, perhaps due to an nVidia T&L coding bias. I am hopeing Dice / EA will fix this since it's an otherwise excellent game! Also - all nVidiots out there - I came from a GeForce 2GTS, GeForce3 and GeForce4 4200 128MB, and let me tell you, the Radeon card SMOKES! Every 3D game I own (which is quite a few!) runs GLASS SMOOTH and like a PIECE OF ART with all settings totally maxed out. No need to "go lightly" with this card. I'm sure nVidia will counter, but not anytime soon enough! Hope this helps - gonna go save the world now! ;-)

10-16-2002, 05:22 PM	#12 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	I'll believe it when I see it! I'll believe it when I see it! Also, I've been reading that nVidia will NOT be shipping before next year ... :P so, that's at least three months + SOONER that I will have been enjoying my Radeon 9700 Pro until nVidia's card is available... So, guess what: since I can enjoy MUCH better performance than any nVidia card RIGHT NOW, that justifies it for me! Even if the nVidia is a little faster, they're behind the curve, and there ain't no denyin' that! Lastly, if it's really THAT much better, I'll put the Radeon in my Second system and buy the nVidia for my primary card! But, they have to produce yet - let's see. The proof is ... yup, you got it ... IN DA PUDDIN' !!!

10-21-2002, 07:15 PM	#15 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Well, did the BIOS Flash help? Black Cat - We got off on a tangent, here. Did the BIOS upgrade help??? Led Salad (as in, "I'm gonna feed you a ~".)

10-10-2002, 07:03 PM	#2 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	same problem, same spec, no idea

10-11-2002, 03:18 PM	#3 (permalink)
lenchmob Private Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 83	What is your OS and the kind of sound card you are using? This might help others to assist you....

10-11-2002, 04:03 PM	#4 (permalink)
Rommel the Desertfox Private Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 93	I can`t help you with your Problem, but let me say that you have the most high-end system i`ve ever hard of. I thought I had I nice PC with a GeForce4400ti, 512MB DDR RAM and AMD Athlon XP 2100+ ... 2.5Ghz, Radeon 9700, 1GB memory , wow. I wish you luck with getting BF to run ...

10-11-2002, 07:30 PM	#5 (permalink)
yetix Major Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Bob's Panzer Garage, BFE Arkansas Posts: 3,191	turn off the AA and AF stuff( you can't see the in game text messages very well with AA on). I set my refresh to 60hz. Also, as strange is it seems, make sure your audio card has current drivers and your DXDIAG and BIOS are using the correct newest drivers. hth- Yetix 933 AMD T-Bird ATi 9700 Pro 768 PC133ram SB Audigy XGamer Live DSL

10-12-2002, 01:15 AM	#6 (permalink)
Swedish Chef First Lieutenant Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: all over the place Posts: 1,637	Blackcat, Look back at the other Radeon 9700 related posts in this forum. ATI released a fix for those cards specifically mentioning problems running BF1942. I can't remember which post it was but there was a direct link to the file you can dl from ATI - supposedly that fixed problems for other 9700 users. Hope this helps. By the way I own a GF4 Ti4600 (128) which obviously has antialiasing as well... Best to turn that feature to off or auto (let the proggies decide whether to use AA). I ran BF1942 with AA and experienced trouble with it. Chef

10-12-2002, 05:48 AM	#7 (permalink)
Rommel the Desertfox Private Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 93	Yes, it`s a damn shame but true, Battlefield runs awful with FSAA turned on... I have a GeForce4400ti @300/650MHz and tried to play it with FSAA 4x and Antisotropic Filtering 2x . Everything was looking so damn GOOD, razor-sharp textures and stuff. But when I started to move...unplayable. I saw BF running on a 9700 Card. The Framerate was nearly like with my card with FSAA off, but FSAA was turned on 4x ! But why spending 500 Euros for a 9700 when Direct X 9 is coming 2003...

10-12-2002, 07:16 AM	#9 (permalink)
GoodFiend Private Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 48	http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4081.html Have fun [/u]

10-14-2002, 11:50 PM	#11 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Dude I got news for you NVidia will be releasing their next card before years end... And I have been testing three of their reference cards with the new chip for the past month on the game I'm working on and it smokes the 9700 hands down. You will start to see reviews coming out in the next month.. or less and teh numbers will blow you away.. -Red MEat-

10-16-2002, 06:56 PM	#13 (permalink)
lenchmob Private Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 83	Led Salad (Blei Salat) originally wrote: Also - all nVidiots out there - I came from a GeForce 2GTS, GeForce3 and GeForce4 4200 128MB, and let me tell you, the Radeon card SMOKES! Every 3D game I own (which is quite a few!) runs GLASS SMOOTH and like a PIECE OF ART with all settings totally maxed out. No need to "go lightly" with this card. I'm sure nVidia will counter, but not anytime soon enough! I stay with Nvidia for consistent driver support unlike ATI who can't find it's ass with both hands. I own quite a few games as well and they all run smoothly with my ti4600. I don't tweak my card I just floor board everything and it runs fine. So you can take you nvidiots and place it where the sun doesn't shine....

10-17-2002, 10:13 PM	#14 (permalink)
yetix Major Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Bob's Panzer Garage, BFE Arkansas Posts: 3,191	hehe, let Ati and Nvidia fight it out. What better cards might we see? what better support...uhem ATi hopefully learned a lesson. What better prices? 9700 Pro is a great card, I use it and love it. But I really hope Nvidia busts out the NV30 stuff before year's end. Let's see how far they go to get our hard earned cash!

10-22-2002, 01:06 PM	#16 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Black Cat - I GOT OUR FIX !!! Black Cat ... Fellas ... I got it! Finally !!! For the Asus P4S8X Motherboard, make sure to set Video Memory Cache Mode to [UC], the Default, under Advanced / Chipset. I had this set to [USWC], which is Uncacheable, Speculative Write Combining, which worked fine for all other games EXCEPT BF'42. Now this game works GREAT, even at AGP 8X, with 6X AA and all settings CA-RANKED!!!

10-25-2002, 07:38 PM	#17 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Got this from an AO forum But the ppl there talked about this applying to BF1942 too... It seems the 9700 pro is designed to take full advantage of the agp power-wise (even though it's got a secondary powerconnector), none the less, it seems most MB manufactorers do not supply enough pwr to the agp port (not following the spec for the agp standard) - and thus the 9700 is not getting enough juice - if you can, try bumping the voltage up .1 to .2 above default. Though my AO trial period expired right before I got to test it, I can say, that I have not had any video problems in BF. SB live! making the whole thing choppy, now _that's_ another story... (and which is why I stopped by the board)

10-31-2002, 05:41 PM	#18 (permalink)
Led Salad Private Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 15	Radeon 9700 Pro / Asus P4S8X FIX !!! Radeon 9700 Pro / Asus P4S8X FIX !!! Yes, folks, this time it looks solved for real! Go download the newest ATI drivers, either from: http://mirror2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-w...0-6193-efg.exe (Linked off http://www.rage3d.com/ ) or ftp://ftp.hercules.com//video/exe/97...0-6193-efg.exe Uninstall your old drivers, reboot, install these, reboot, and, VOILA! For some WEIRD reason, these drivers are not yet available through the ATI website (maybe still waiting WHQL approval?), but they ARE available from Hercules and ATI (indirectly). The 7.78 was "newer" than the 7.77 "patch" from ATI's Advisory # 4081 about their "patch" (which did NOT work for me), so I figured I'd give it a shot. Currently running EXCELLENT at 1024 x 768 @ 32 bpp, Sound @ 22KHz. All Direct3D settings MAXIMIZED (AA / Truform / SmoothVision II). Will try (gently) tweaking sound back up to 44 KHz and refresh back up to 100 Hz tonight ... __________________ Led is not an essential vitamin or mineral, per se, but I\'ll be happy to feed it to my oponents!

11-04-2002, 05:34 AM	#19 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	Damn 9700 Specs: p4 1700, 512mb RAMBUS, ATI Radeon 9700 pro, SBL sound Card. And ive updated all drivers, patches and everything else known to man and the game is still choppy!!! With everything set to low!!! WTF!!

12-11-2002, 03:24 PM	#20 (permalink)
Anonymous Posts: n/a	RE: P4S8X w/ATI 9700 Hey guys-- I've been having some severe problems with this setup, too.. I haven't even gotten to the part where my system will boot yet, so I've been researching... but it seems that MANY people are having the same problems you are... Almost all of them were solved by updating the bios from www.asus.com ... It's actually not that much of a pain if you use Asus' fancy new "EZ-update" utility... don't even have to use A-Flash.. Anyway, get the bios update, check your VCORE voltages, and according to the geeks, your vid card problems and random system lockups/reboots will disappear... hope this helps. -c0der