650@866 problems (P3)

[Terak]

Well, I finally upgraded to a P3 650(CuMine 100) and pushed the FSB to 133MHz. Surprisingly enough my RAM holds up and all my peripherals are fine except for my aging Creative Riva TNT card.

When I cold boot the machine it will not display any activity at all. If I then reset the machine it will boot and continue to operate at 866MHz for an indefinate period of time (12+ hours).

Unfortunately, I don't have control of the AGP Bus other than 1/1 or 2/3 divider. The motherboard is an AOpen AX6B (440BX) supporting AGP Turbo.

Can anyone suggest a solution to this minor problem?
A quality video card is a possible consideration but I'd rather not pay top dollar for a AGP 4x card if I can't use the bandwidth.

Many thanks,
Terak

 

[Crashman]

Go ahead and buy a newer card. You're not really paying extra for the 4X feature anyway, that used to be the case, but it is now standard technology.

 

[Terak]

Can you recommend a reliable card manufacturer?
I've only used this Creative Labs TNT.

Thanks,
Terak

 

[Crashman]

Most of the GeForce cards are of high quality reguardless of the manufacturer. The main difference is the memory. I think Visiontek is the cheapest major brand right now. Or, if you want something with a real name go with a Creative or Guilimot card. I have seen their original GeForce cards going fairly cheap lately.

 

[Unolocogringo]

go with a creative most of the original geforce cards could not handle the overclocked agp on a bx at 133 agp at89???? i think but the creative definately could

 

[Crashman]

My Visiontek runs overclocked and stable at all bus speeds I've tried.

 

[berkeljm]

I would get a GeForce2 MX. If you're not looking for a super high end card this will be everthing you will need. I have one. I would stay away from creative labs though. It's great that they put DDR memory on it but why then would they handycap it with on a 64 bit interface instead of 128. The DDR is almost useless because of this. The Hercules 3D Prophet IIMX is what I have and it outperforms any other MX card out there. Make sure if you get it though that you get the retail version and not the OEM. The OEM comes with 6 or 6.5 nanosecond memory and the retail comes with 5 or 5.5 nanosecond memory. I got mine for about $140.00. It works great and is very overclockable. As a fix for the current card and motherboard, I would try turning off turbo mode in the bios (if you haven't already). You could also try dropping it down to 1x (this would be worse for performance but may work until you can buy another card). On some boards turbo and 2x are the same thing. You may want to check in the manual. Hope this helps.

 

[Terak]

Yeah, the Turbo is 2x on this board.
I've decided to grab an OEM GeForce 2 MX from ELSA. I hope the memory quality is decent. Of course the next step is to see how fast I can push it. Any suggestions? Hmm.... Perhaps a Blue Orb.

I looked around for a GeForce 256 SDR but the stores in my area don't carry them and claimed they couldn't get them anymore. One place had them priced cheaper than GF2MX but none in stock.

Thanks for all the advice folks!
Terak