AGP 4x vs 8x

[veeneedefeesh]

I jsut bought a new video card, obstensively to correct the frequent video crashes I get in WoW. I got a GeForce 5500 256 MB card which replaces my old GeForce 440 MX 64MB card. At first it looked ok, but when I loaded WoW it told me that WoW had found a hardware change, did I want to reset to default, I answered no thinking that it needed to detect the new hw and make adjustments as neccessary. At that point my system locked, so I rebooted still thinking that this was a WoW problem. The second time I tried loading WoW I crashed at the login screen, complete system lock. So I thought well obviously I was supposed to answer yes to that question earlier, so I uninstall WoW and try and reinstall it, this is after several attempts to load it, all of which resulted in a system lock. I reboot and start the install of WoW and my screen starts freaking out, and seems to want to repaint the entire screen about every 45 seconds or so. Think changing resolutions or color depth when I say repaint the screen. Finally the whole system locked and I had to reboot (in the middle of the WoW install no less)

At this point I begin to get a bit supicsious and read thru the docs and look into my BIOS. What I find is that the mobo is 4x AGP and the vidcard is 8x. Almost as if by magic when I find this out, the systems starts crashing randomly about every minute or two. Again total system locks forcing a reboot every time. I finally gave up and put my old 440 back in, but this is really pissing me off.

Is AGP backwards compatable? should a 8x card work in a 4x mobo? Why did I have no problems until I started trying to load WoW, and why did they seem to escalate after that reboot?

Any suggestions would be appreciated...the only thing I can think of is that the hw isnt compatable and this is all one big coincidence with installing WoW etc. I was so excited to be getting a more powerful vid card and hopefully being able to actually play WoW as opposed to jsut running from one place to another doing quests between video crashes. I havent even gotten into a group yet after almost a month because every time I try the system locks and I have to reboot,

[Lyion]

Your card should work fine in a 4x mobo. There is not much difference between 8x and 4x, anyways

I'd check the rest of your BIOS settings, and especially make sure your AGP Aperture is set with enough memory. Also make sure your voltage is ok, and your power supply can support your hardware. That would be more likely to cause your system problems.

[veeneedefeesh]

I set the AGP aperture to 256 and the screen went vertical, meaning there were vertical lines over each object. My powersupply is a 300 watt so that should be good. What about voltage? you mean from the wall? How would I check that?

[Phlegm]

Stick your finger in the socket, if your hair stood straight up and you feel a little pain, it's 110v. If your hair stood straight up, you smell smoke, and you feel a lot of pain, it's 220v.

[veeneedefeesh]

ok new development, reloaded WoW with old vid card and it locks on login screen again...sheesh I am soooo tired of fighting with this damn thing.

[Tossica]

are you removing the old video drivers before you install the new card? Uninstall the existing driver and replace it with a standard VGA driver, shut down machine. Install new card, boot machine and then run install for new video drivers.

[veeneedefeesh]

Gonna try that one more time before bed,

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results...


edit: uninstalled drivers, installed card, changed aperture back to 256MB in BIOS, WoW still crashes on the login screen (if I get that far) and screen just flicked off and on as if I were changing color depths again for no apparent reason (ie I didnt change any display settings)... damn this is frustrating

[Tikker]

I picked up a geforce 6600gt not realizing it was an agp8 card, for my agp4 mobo


works just fine


make sure you uninstall old drivers before new ones

caused me all kinda of squirrelly problems

[veeneedefeesh]

replaced the power supply (upped from an older 300 to a new 350, I would have liked to get the 500, but money was an issue) downloading patch on new vid card, no crashes yet, that is further than I have gotten previously.

Lyion

[runamonk]

Your card should work fine in a 4x mobo. There is not much difference between 8x and 4x, anyways

I'd check the rest of your BIOS settings, and especially make sure your AGP Aperture is set with enough memory. Also make sure your voltage is ok, and your power supply can support your hardware. That would be more likely to cause your system problems.

Agree with Lyion here, it might even benefit you to just reset your bios to all default settings. When you installed the new card did you uninstall the old card and drivers before pulling it out and installing the new card?

[Lyion]

Read the post above you, Vaelie.

Glad things are working Vee. Hopefully it was just the PS.

[veeneedefeesh]

Well sort of, I got the 350 w power supply and the video card no longer blinks in and out and appears to work fine up to the poin t that the login screen comes on WoW, I ahve uninstalled WoW a couple times, even reinstalling it on a different drive the last time (because it was crashing so often tyhe files were getting fragmented badly and every time Windows rebooted it wanted to scandisk on Drive D: where WoW was installed) I get the same response every time.

Any time I try to launch WoW it locks, it is like the fire on that login screen just kills it, because it will crash on the licence agreement when I first reinstall WoW. My WoW account expires tomorrow and I think I am just going to let it go until I can resolve this crap since I cant play any damned way.

PS the one thing I didnt try (because it was like 1 AM) was to try and uninstall and reinstall DirectX. I am running DirectX 9.0c, but maybe I got some corrupt files or something. If that doesnt work then I am going to cancel my account until I can afford to get a mobo, proc, and mem to rebuild ym entire system.

[Lyion]

There are a lot of people with WOW issues out there, so it might not be your rig, just an issue with WOW.

My AMD 3500 6800GT runs everything great, save Half Life 2. It crashes from it everytime, and I finally just gave up and played it on my older pooter, that had no issues.

Try some other games and see if you have the same issue.