K6Plus

HI. I just put a machine together using a k6 2 550 in an asus p5a-b mb. It appears to work well with a 4mb pci video card but when I install a tnt2 m64 the darn thing freezes up solid. I've tried changing aperture size and a few agp settings in the bios nothing seems to help. Also 3dmark runs about two test and then gives me errors or exits by its self. I have win98 (not se) installed. Any help would be great, I'm stuck. <p></p><i></i>

Have you downloaded and installed the latest AGP drivers from Ali? If not, this might help. Also, the AGP driver utility should have an option for enabling AGP 1X instead of 2X. Try it at 1X if it's not already.<br><br>Did you completely uninstall the previous card's video drivers? Also, what nvidia drivers are you using? If old ones, newer ones may help out as well. <p></p><i></i>

I might be able to help. I had a P5AB with a TNT2 Ultra for a while and had the extact same problem! There are 2 things that you can do about it(well 2 things that worked for me) :<br>1) Go with an AGP card that draws less current. GEFroce2 MX's seem well suited for this.<br>2) Try disabling USB in the BIOS. YOu will need to tunr it off and make sure that no IRQs are assinged to it. <br><br>I did 2 for a while until I went to 1 and eventually wound up using a Radeon in there. Let us know how you make out. <p></p><i></i>

I had similar probs when I fitted an agp gf2 mx card a while back, and I was also using a K6-2/550 at the time. I spent ages removing all the entries left by the previous voodoo card, but the biggest imnprovement was from the ali agp drivers. In the ali control panel you can apply safe settings (1x agp etc), and the whole system ran well. The MX card is a very low power sucker and pretty good in these systems. As time went by, I fitted a 3+/550 and then a GF2 ti (similar to GTS but faster). This card draws more current than the MX, but runs very stable thanks to the ali agp software, and will even run at 2x agp with sideband addressing enabled. Good luck, I think you'll be alright, especially with an agp MX card, and the ali programmes. <p></p><i></i>

Thanks for all the help. I installed the latest ALi agp drivers and nvidia detonator 2311 drivers .Then ran 3dmark 2000 with out any problems. I'm getting around 1205 score. Good enough I guess. Still having some stability problems with internet explorer though (lock ups). I'll install 6.0 and see if that helps. thanks again. <p></p><i></i>

rdrdr, the ie lockups are typical of the problem. I noticed it especially when you do a vertical scroll on a page that has a lot of graphics or textured background. I eventually got it to the point where I could make it happen in 5 seconds. Try the USB disable and see if that helps. <p></p><i></i>

rdrdr, try the 7.58 nvidia drivers. They should perform loads better than the 23.11 on 3D2K. Are you running the ali agp center in the "safe" setting? GAT mode 2 used to give me some grief, but the "safe" setting uses GAT mode 1. <p></p><i></i>

I installed the 7.58 drivers and got about 200 more points on 3d2k (neat). the lock ups stoped after I installed explorer 5.5. machine is running perfect. thanks alot. But I'm not sure what the ALi agp center is could you explain? <p></p><i></i>

rdrdr, glad to hear the 7.58's helped. Also the 7.76, 7.97, and 8.05 are pretty good, although I prefer the 7.58's on my setup.<br><br>You need the ali agp drivers and the ali control center. My motherboard is a gigabyte ga-5aa, and I got these things from the giga-byte site. However, I've seen them on the ali.com site too. The agp drivers (latest) are 1.90e and the control center is agp utility 140. Install 1.90e drivers first and then the control center. The agp control center enables you to apply certain agp features. Once installed, I would set initially at the "safe" settings and reboot. Then go into the manual settings and run "Set K6 EWBEC" at "3" for best performance. The initial "safe" settings will set AGP 1X and GAT Mode at "1" I think. This is a good little utility and will help with stability and performance. Come back if you need any further help, but with a bit of luck you will be able to add a couple of hundred more points to that 3D2K score! <p></p><i></i>

Funny how with a P5-A/K6-III+ 550 I was experiencing a lot of freezes with IE5 and 5.5. Since I moved to IE6, no more glitches whatsoever. But I have to say that those boards were never to keen on Nvidia and AGP. I switched to a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI and system is now stable as rock. <p></p><i></i>