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Comment #11
Hello:
I've been going through a lot of pain trying to get my Creative GeForce DDR stable at 88MHz AGP bus. I've tried disabling sidebanding via the Creative Drivers "disable AGP" option, and reducing AGP aperture to 4MB in the BIOS, but
Q3Arena still crashed over time.
How do I make the card run at AGP1X? I heard that the performance drop is not significant, so its something I'm willing to try. But for whatever reason, NO ONE seems to know how to do it! Please help me out.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
Nick Cheng
Hello Nick,
There's no guarantee you can run your AGP bus at 88MHz. It depends on
your card. Some cards just can't run at higher AGP bus speeds, even
with sideband support disabled. And reducing the AGP aperture size to 4MB
isn't recommended at all because it doesn't affect the overclockability of
the AGP bus and more importantly, most AGP cards need an AGP aperture of at
least 8MB to function properly. Check out the BIOS
Optimization Guide for more information.
About running the card in AGP1X mode, that would depend if the
manufacturer of your motherboard or your graphics card has made such a
provision. Some motherboards have a BIOS option that allows you to set the
AGP transfer mode (1X or 2X) while some graphics cards come with a driver
option or a video BIOS patch that allows you to set something similar.
PowerStrip (see picture below) may possibly also allow you to select the AGP
transfer mode you want.
However, there's virtually no point in running your card at AGP1X mode in
order to get it to run stably at 88MHz. The purpose of overclocking the AGP
bus is to increase the bandwidth of the AGP bus. But disabling AGP2X mode
means a reduction of AGP bandwidth by 50%! Not only that, you lose
the performance benefits of sidebanding. In short, overclocking your AGP bus
to 88MHz @ AGP1X gives you a bandwidth of 352MB/s while running it at
the standard 66MHz @ AGP2X gets you 528MB/s. So, I think it's best
you stick to an AGP2X bus running below 88MHz.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #12
Hello,
I have just read your article on AGP sidebanding and overclocking. I also
went through the comments section for the article and had some info to add.
Creative is working on a driver that will enable the sidebanding function of
the GeForce that Nvidia disables in their driver release. Also my Annihilator will not even run UT without my AGP clocked to 100MHz and I can
not run the original Unreal without the Unified driver. The problem with that is the Unified driver kills the performance of UT and if
you try to switch back to D3D, UT will crash. To fix this problem, you will have to go
into your 'windows/system folder and remove the Glide driver. Then you can play UT in D3D but Unreal will no longer work right. After
owning 3dfx cards for so long, I had forgotten how much fun owning a card with compatibility
problems can be. :)
Paul N. Wolf
Hello Paul,
That's great news! AGP sidebanding really improves the efficiency of the
AGP bus and the GeForce will definitely benefit from its reactivation.
About Unreal, it's been a long time since I played it but I remember
running it in Direct3D mode without any problem at all. Because Creative's
Unified driver is an ongoing beta, there's bound to be teething problems and
bugs, etc... So, you can expect the usual reliability issues. I recommend
you stick to the standard (not the Unified) driver for your GeForce card.
Glide's days are numbered. All new games now come with at least Direct3D
support and only a few support Glide as well. So, there's no need to use the
Unified driver unless you need Glide support for old games.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #13
Was reading your article on AGP overclocking vs sidebanding. I clicked on your
link because I have found another way besides what you have shown to disable/enable sideband
support. It is with Powerstrip. I am sending a snapshot of the setting in Powerstrip.
Mike Ornellas
Hello Mike!
Thanks for the info and the screenshot you sent in!
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #14
Hi,
Just wanted to let you know that GeForce 256 DDR (Well in this case Creative
Lab's Annihilator 3D Pro) has a similar "Disable AGP Support" in their drivers.
Here is the link:
http://www.eurogamer.net/screenshot.php3?name=/pics/reviews/clapro/memclock.jpg
and http://www.eurogamer.net/features.php3?name=clap
Best Regards,
Shawn Tooryani
Web Designer
InterNetworking Systems
Lucent Technologies
Thanks for those links, Shawn! :)
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #15
Hello
I read your sidebanding article. I have a lowly Banshee and a Celeron 333 overclocked to 416 MHz at an 83MHz FSB. I think by default
Banshee has no sidebanding but when I reach a 100MHz FSB my PC crashes and I
know it's the video card because my motherboard has no 2/3 divider or any sort of
AGP bus divider. When I overclocked my PC using a PCI Voodoo2 card and a 2D
PCI card it was rock stable at 500MHz. Please any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanx.
Sarmad Faraz
Hello Sarmad,
As I have mentioned earlier, not all graphics card can support an
overclocked AGP bus. Most will run with a 75MHz AGP bus with sidebanding
enabled and a 100MHz AGP bus when sidebanding's disabled but a few cards
will not function if the AGP bus speed exceeds 75MHz, even if sideband
support is non-existent or has been disabled. It all depends on your card.
PCI cards have been around for a long time now so their designs are more
stable than AGP cards'. This enables many PCI cards to withstand a high PCI
bus speed of 41.5MHz.
Try updating the BIOS of your motherboard. Sometimes, the new BIOS will
include an option that allows you to set the AGP/CPU clock divider. With
that option, you can then set the AGPCLK/CPUCLK ratio to 2/3. Alternatively,
check the Banshee's specs. If it states that the Banshee supports
sidebanding, disable it.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #16
Hi Adrian,
My name is Roger & I must say your articles on AGP overclocking have been very informative & useful. However I have a different problem: I am using an ABIT BE-6 M/B with a PIII 450 running on the 133FSB quite happily at 600 MHz (I do have a huge duct with a 3.5" fan cooling the CPU), however my AGP divider is set to 2/3 which makes the video card run at around 88.66MHz.
I have the occasional freeze especially if the system has been running for over 4 hours. The CPU temp is 32C well within
its limits so I suspect the CL Graphics Blaster TNT 16MB video card is the culprit. I do have a 486 fan on the card to cool it which is probably why it doesn't lock up more often.
Is there anyway I can get my AGP clock divider to 1/2 e.g. a BIOS upgrade or Soft
Menu upgrade from ABIT.
Thank you for your assistance in this matter & keep up the good work.
Roger Jeffrey
Hello Roger,
Unfortunately, the Intel 440BX AGPset only supports the AGP bus dividers
of 1/1 and 2/3. So, there's no way ABIT can circumvent that.
We will all have to wait for Intel's upcoming Camino chipset for the 1/2
bus divider.
However, I don't think your problem is due to the overclocked AGP bus.
Usually, if the card cannot withstand the overclocked AGP bus speed, it will
immediately lock up upon activation of any application that stresses the AGP
bus (3D games, etc...). So, I think it's the overheating of the RIVA TNT
graphics chip that's causing the lock-ups. You should try improving the
cooling of your Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT card.
Hope that helps you some! :)
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #17
Hello Adrian:
I tried disabling AGP in DX7 tool but Unreal T. crashes the second it starts to open. I've tried reducing
the aperture same thing.(As you pointed out.) I've tried every Detonator driver there is, No luck. It's
beginning to look like my GeForce is un-overclockable. I hope I'm wrong! Any further advice would be
appreciated.
Daniel Edgar
Hello Daniel,
The overclockability of the AGP bus depends on your graphics card. Most
graphics card can stand an AGP bus speed of 75MHz but will falter beyond
that unless sidebanding is disabled. However, there will be some cards that
won't work at post-75MHz bus speeds, even with sidebanding disabled. Your
GeForce would most probably be one of the latter.
If that's the case, there's nothing you can do about it because it has
nothing to do with the driver or a BIOS setting. It's just like overclocking
a processor. Some processors are just not as overclockable as others.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #18
I have successfully used Powerstrip from www.entechtaiwan.com
to enable/disable AGP 1x, 2x or SBA on/off : Use Pstrip with the following switches:
Pstrip /agp:2x /sba:on ----> to enable AGP 2x & enable SBA
Hope this info is useful to your readers
Adrian Lee
Thanks for the tip, Adrian!
I'm sure it would be very useful to the readers. In fact, I have already
included it inside the guide itsefl! Thanks again! :)
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
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