ASUS A7A266 bad for Quadro 4...any alternate ?

[neFilim242]

Help!! ASUS A7A266 mobo bad for Quadro 4...any recommendations for an alternate?

Hello all,

I'm the owner of an Athlon 1.4 with an Asus A7A266 mobo machine running on Win2k. I recently aquired a Quadro 4 XGL 750 and after messing around with the drivers I realized the card wasn't performing as well as it should. Then I read this recent review at CGCHANNEL.com

http://www.cgchannel.com/feature.php?article_id=37

I was dismayed when i read the following:

"One issue that delayed this article for several weeks was a strange performance-related problem under Windows. This turned out to be the fact that the NVIDIA driver falls back to PCI operation on motherboards with M1647 Ali Northbridge chipsets. This included the Asus A7A266-based test machine.

Without a working AGP implementation, benchmark scores can be as low as one quarter as its optimum result.

For serious users, please watch out for Ali Magik 1 M1647-based Northbridge motherboards such as the Asus A7A266. Although Windows may indicate that it is running in AGP mode, the NVIDIA drivers disable this feature due to instability problems. Likewise most motherboards based on VIA chipsets are throttled back to AGP 2x. These safety guards were done under the premise that it’s better to have a slower but stable system, than a system that would quickly develop problems and crash. "

This bites! Now i have to find a better setup. Can anyone recommend a more compatible motherboard for my system? I'd hate to have a "neutered" $1000 DCC card on my machine!!

Thanks for any recommendations.

-nefilim242

 

[Phantasm66]

Is a new motherboard really the answer to your problem? I mean, it may well be that this driver issue will ultimately be wrangled out by the fellas at nVidia, and you will be at full AGP 4x operation!

Basically, one way of reading the quote you posted is : "We haven't managed to get this card to work with this board yet, so we turned everything off.... Maybe we will fix this later if we can." There is probably a team working on your problem right now, in fact.

Personally, if you bought the Quadro from a store I would be tempted to take it back and get something else similarly performing at a similar price point. It is, after all, not fit for the purpose for which it was sold in this case, and you can print out the web page you found as proof.

Alternatively, you might want to stick your old AGP card back in (depending on what it is) and wait for the issue to be solved by the nVidia boys (and girls.) But then again, problems like this have been known never to have been fixed.... I would only think about this if you got the card from a friend, etc.

I usually only contemplate a motherboard replacement when wanting to upgrade to a CPU that my current system just can't take at all, or in the case of damage....

Exactly what card did you have before, where did you get the Quadro ? Knowing this will help the 3DS gang more fully venture their opinions....

Best wishes, Phantazm.

 

[neFilim242]

Hi Phantasm66

I actually won the card at an art contest from the Nvidia booth at this years Game Developers Conference. Normally I wouldn't even invest in such an expensive card since I dont have the $$$ for it. But since I do 3D and 2D graphics I was floored to receive a higher end workstation card for free! (well actually for the cost of a drawing hehehe)

For the record here are my systems specs:

Athlon 1.4 Thunderbird
Asus A7A266 mobo
Quadro 4 XGL 750 vid card
28.32 Nvidia drivers
IBM 40 gig HD 7200rpm
512 megs of DDR PC2100 ram
Soundblaster Live Value sound card
Windows 2000 (service pack 2)
Acer DVD drive
300watt power supply

I used to have a Visiontek Geforce 3 ti200 card on this machine. Other than doing 3D and 2D art on this machine I'm a gamer as well. Despite the Quadro 4 being a DCC card it actually scored a higher benchmark when I ran the test in 3dMark 2001se as compared to my old Geforce 3 ti200 so I'm naturally inclined to keep the Quadro 4 in this machine. I did notice that the FSAA wasn't working properly and I tried all sorts of tweaks in preferences as well as various tweaking programs (riva tuner, nvmax, etc) to get it to wok but to no avail. This could be part of the compatibility problem with the Asus mobo that I have.

I haven't benchmarked its DCC capabilities yet but Im pretty sure it will still outperform my Geforce card in Maya and Photoshop.

I'm sure either the Nvidia or the Asus guys will get around to a solution but we'll see in time. I was also planning on upgrading my second system anyways so figured I could just swap out the mobo I have here and put it in the second machine and get a better more compatible one with the Quadro 4 so I can use the card to its fullest capacities.

Appreciate the help!

-nefilim242

 

[Phantasm66]

Originally posted by neFilim242
I was also planning on upgrading my second system anyways so figured I could just swap out the mobo I have here and put it in the second machine and get a better more compatible one with the Quadro 4 so I can use the card to its fullest capacities.

Well, that would be a strong reason for upgrading.

 

[Didou]

I'd recommend the Shuttle KT266a board -> Shuttle AK35GT-R Socket A (VIA KT266A
It's feature full, stable & KT266a goodness all in one ( no I didn't recieve a free Shuttle board for this ).

With KT333 boards coming out, KT266a board prices are falling ( & the KT333 isn't that much faster if you ask me ). It's listed here for 88$ -> http://3dspotlight.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=40/start=25/ut=d9880275f186ecc6/

I have an ASUS A7V-266-e board & I would recommend it if I didn't have a few problems here & there. The Promise BIOS issue is the most annoying one so far.