Cannot Enable AGP4X For GeForce Ti-4200

[upgradefever]

Hoping some of you may be able to help. I recently installed an MSI GF4-Ti4200 on my system. The problem is I cannot enable anything greater than AGP2X, even though it is set to 4X mode in the BIOS, and it was the same with my older card (Riva TNT2 32Mb M64). Here are my system specs.

Intel Celeron 900MHz
ASUS TUV4X Socket 370 Apollo Pro133T Motherboard
512Mb PC133 SDRam
MSI GeForce4 Ti-4200 128Mb DDR
Creative Soundblaster Live! Value
Windows 2000 Pro w/ Service Pack 2
Via 4-In-1 Drivers Ver. 4.40
NVidia Detonator Ver. 30.00 (Latest MSI update)
DirectX Ver. 8.1b (Latest official Microsoft)

ASUS Tech support says that with VIA chipsets the NVidia drivers automatically default to AGP2X. However, the registry fix available from VIA that is supposed to patch this does nothing. Am I missing something? Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?

Thanks for listening.

 

[rubikian]

Check again using the WCPUID software to see if it is really running at 2X or 4X. If not, get the GeForce Tweak Utility or RivaTuner from www.guru3d.com. Try to enable the AGP 4X using those tools.

 

[upgradefever]

RivaTuner did the trick! Thanks alot for the tip - you just saved me from a ton of frustration.

 

[Crashman]

ASUS Tech support says that with VIA chipsets the NVidia drivers automatically default to AGP2X. However, the registry fix available from VIA that is supposed to patch this does nothing.

You have a crap motherboard, because VIA never made a decent chipset for the PIII. Why did you pick THAT motherboard? You could have gotten a TUSL2-C!

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>

 

[rubikian]

You're welcome...

 

[upgradefever]

Actually I originally bought the board to accomodate a Celeron, and since I was not very well informed heading into the process never really gave much thought to chipset. Basically I was trying to make a budget system with future expansion possibilities.
Besides the AGP problem however the board has been rock solid. Doesn't hurt that I'm running Win2K Pro, but my lock-ups and crashes have been nil.
Now my problem is trying to establish how much CPU I can drop into this thing. Asus won't explain why I can't drop a L2 512K PIII into it, besides saying that those processors were "intended for servers". Think they're trying to sell me another board?
Thanks for the input, and the help.

 

[Crashman]

OK, well, since BX boards are getting harder to find, I'm going back to an i815E. My current board refuses to power my processor on it's own (mine is Slot 1, and I've had to resort to using a powered Slotket). So the board I've purchased is a top notch i815E board, the Abit SA6R. It cost me only $32. But this board I ordered won't support Tualatins, which is OK since it's going to be running a Coppermine processor. Your Celeron 900 is also a Coppermine core processor, so you could have saved money AND had better performance, better compatability, and more stability of an Intel chipset.

The newer i815E/EP "B" stepping boards, such as the TUSL2-C and Abit ST6 will run Tualatins, as will your VIA equiped TUV4x. That means ALL Tualatins. So you shouldn't have any trouble whatsever running the 512k version.

<font color=blue>At least half of all problems are caused by an insufficient power supply!</font color=blue>