Soyo P4s dragon Ultra and Gforce4 incompatibility

[Guest]

Turns out that the GForce4 video cards are not compatible with the Soyo Dragon Plus mother board (not agp or pci) without sending the board back to the manufacturer to be reworked for compatibility. . I was running around in circles before I found it out. See my attached email excerpts. I thought other should know.
Regards,
Beejay
-----Original Message-----
From: SOYO Support2 [mailto:soyo2@info.com.ph]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 12:02 AM
To: xxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Fae1
Subject: Support


xxxxxx ,
Please go to www.soyousa.com/rma.html. Download the form for end user, fill it up and just follow the instruction written in the form.
You need to get a RMA to rework the incompatibility between the GE Force 4 and the P4S Dragon Ultra.
Your case no. is xxxxxxxxx

Thank You! Have a Nice Day!

Regards,
SOYO Technical Support Team
For FAQ & Technical Questions
Http://www.soyo.com.tw/faq.htm
Http://www.soyousa.com/support.html
Http://www.soyo.com.tw/support.htm

________________________
Name: xxxxxx
EMail: xxxxxxxx
Phone: xxxxxxxxx
Motherboard: P4s dragon Ulta 05/06/02
BIOS Version: p4sx2ba3
CPU: p4 2.2 gig
Memory: 512mb micron pc2700 333 memory
VGA Card: Creative blaster 4 ddr mx440 agp
Other peripherals: 80 gig hd
40x cd burner- 8x dvd
Operating System: windows xp

Problem Description:
I have a creative blaster 4 DDR 400 MHZ mx440 with 64mb of memory on it. it is a geforce4 ddr AGP video card. my Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra mother board will not recognize it (one long beep two short). I know the card works as I tried it in another persons computer with an msi mother board and it reocgnzies it right away with no proplem at all. yes, the agp slot works on my soyo ok as I am running it right now with a borrowed video card I have which is a hercules 4000xt with 32 mb of sdram (not the newer ddr). I have tried flashing the bios to various levels and it did not help. I have tried various bios settings that I have found on various forums and that did not help. I now have the latest flash and it does not work. another odd thing is that I even tried a PCI DDR card in it and it does not work either! same symptom it just will not recognize it. I tried it in every slot and tried changing the bios settings to every combination imagineable and no go. That card was a PCI Xtasy nvidia gforce4 mx420 with 64mb of memeory. I know it is good as I use it in my 2nd computer. ( it is an asus MB with a celeron 500 cpu and sdram not ddr) Yet I can put any other PCI card into my soyo MB such as a S3 and they work. It appears that I cannot use any video card with ddr memory on it on this soyo mother board. Or is it the gforce4 Nivida chipset that is the problem ? since both the cards that I canot use are Nividia gforce 4 and both have ddr memory. HELP!!!!! Obviously there is some incompatabilty here. I really wnat to use the Gforce4 ddr as it is very very good and fast. Is there a bios patch I need or something. Or is the board bad? everything else seems quite alright with the video card I am borrowng right now (the sdram card). I have no other symptoms. I am waiting a response. xxxxxxxxxxx

 

[4Ryan6]

I'm running a SOYO Dragon Plus AMD board and I had the Gforce4 440mx 64Mb DDR but I ended up moving up to a Gforce TI4400 128Mb DDR ram because the mx series did not support Direct X 8 and above or open GL. DDR memory on the video card is not your problem your Motherboard is already running DDR memory, you won't have a conflict there. If SOYO has admitted to a problem with the MB then its definitely hardware related, or a BIOS flash would solve the problem. Sorry you're going through this mess!

 

[Guest]

Actually I had figured out the the ddr memory was not my problem Before Soyo had responded. Also found out the problem is only with their P4 boards not the AMD boards of the dragon ultra boards. I was just concerned that with rumors on the chat boards that the memory on my board was pc2700 and the video card was pc2100 and I was wondering if there was a conflict there. but then I investigated this myself and I found someone who had let me borrow their pc2100 and I put it on the Mboard instead and it made no difference. hence, the only thing left was the gforce4 chipset itself and the incompatilbilty with the MB itself. Who would have thought as everything on the board seems to be leading technology. Other then that, it is a great board with tons of features on it and a good buy for the money. I was a little concerned that on the soyo USA site there was no info on my SY P4 Dragon Ultra board and found it all at the Soyo taiwan site. thank God it is in english! Bugs me though that Soyo says that I have to pay the shipping on this to send it in to get it fixed. By the way I have talked to others running with my board with the Gforce mx (not with Gforce4 of couse)and with the last 2 flashes it now supports open GL and directx 8. Oh well, I will be shipping it off this weekend for upgrade, only hope it doesn't take too long to come back. Another wierd thing is when sent in for warranty repair or upgrades you cannot put the s&H on a credit card it is check or money order only. I find that a bit odd don't you?.