The mobo and gpu should be compatible.
What chipset driver are you using?
Are you using the latest BIOS?
Are there any unusual AGP settings in BIOS?

Can you also check wether the card works fine in other systems?

Doornkaat wrote on 2023-12-08, 22:08:

The mobo and gpu should be compatible. What chipset driver are you using? Are you using the latest BIOS? Are there any unusual A […]
Show full quote

The mobo and gpu should be compatible.
What chipset driver are you using?
Are you using the latest BIOS?
Are there any unusual AGP settings in BIOS?

Can you also check wether the card works fine in other systems?

I'm using the drivers on gigabytes website: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7IXE4 … pport-dl-driver

Not using the latest BIOS i would say, not sure if i can update it as i don't have floppies.

Not that i can see, no. What would i look for as examples?

This card was sold to me as untested so there could be an issue with it. I was £6 ... so yeah... Sadly i have no other AGP systems here.

It's very unhappy though..

I even get this after installing the latest drivers and rebooting...

Your mobo is 3.3v agp maybe it might make issues with your card . I'd try to get geforce 2mx to be on safe side

WarhammerDarkOmen wrote on 2023-12-08, 22:24:

I'm using the drivers on gigabytes website: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7IXE4 … pport-dl-driver […]
Show full quote

Doornkaat wrote on 2023-12-08, 22:08:

The mobo and gpu should be compatible. What chipset driver are you using? Are you using the latest BIOS? Are there any unusual A […]
Show full quote

The mobo and gpu should be compatible.
What chipset driver are you using?
Are you using the latest BIOS?
Are there any unusual AGP settings in BIOS?

Can you also check wether the card works fine in other systems?

I'm using the drivers on gigabytes website: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-7IXE4 … pport-dl-driver

Not using the latest BIOS i would say, not sure if i can update it as i don't have floppies.

Not that i can see, no. What would i look for as examples?

This card was sold to me as untested so there could be an issue with it. I was £6 ... so yeah... Sadly i have no other AGP systems here.

It's very unhappy though..

I even get this after installing the latest drivers and rebooting...

Drivers should be good.👍
I definitely recommend updating the BIOS. AMD Irongate 751 has known APG issues, some of which were worked around or mitigated with BIOS updates on other Irongate mobos at least. Put the BIOS file and your BIOS update utility of choice into C:\ and start the computer in DOS mode to run the update utility from C:\.

Try forcing AGP 1x in BIOS.
Also try forcing AGP 1x in chipset and GPU drivers. Use protected mode if possible/necessary.

Too bad you can't test the card in a known working/compatible system to rule out a defect on that part.
You could try booting into Video Memory Test Clean Environment though to see if it has VRAM issues.

do you guys have any recommendations for bios update programs? I've never flashed a BIOS in windows 98 / DOS

Ok BIOS is updated but still having issues. I got my Geforce 2 MX400 card today as well so tried that and it's having problems too. I had an issue where the BIOS would hang if i went into the hardware monitor. This is still present after the BIOS update.

Reinstalled Windows 98 SE, installed the AMD chipset drivers and i get this twice before it will boot and install the new hardware.

Once inside windows i tried installing the graphics drivers which worked but after awhile bugs appeared.

So, i reinstalled again minus 1 RAM stick to see if one of my sticks were faulty (they were mismatched anyway so i'd rather run with one stick for now) no chipset drivers installed straight away did the graphics and then the chipset and it went ok aside from having the two "Windows protection error" errors again and needing to reboot twice.

Tried to run F22 Lightning 3 with Direct X 6 enabled and it just goes black then back to the desktop. Also tried Dark Omen which does not show use the 3D option so i assumed Direct X 6 is playing up.

Had a look in Direct X 6 and the 3D acceleration is disabled and the test won't run.

Any ideas? I'm getting rather confused at this point.

So, i found out that the card is showing up as AGP 1x in nVidia control panel???

I saw there was a beta BIOS which i thought i may as well try

Still zero luck so i tried the original TNT2 card in it as that did work originally but the performance was pretty bad. This now also fails to run anything direct x related??!

Tried GF FX 5200 too, same issue so now none of my cards are working. the TNT2 does show up as AGP 2x the GF FX and GF 2 MX show AGP 1x

IPut the GF 2 MX card back in as thats the card i plan to use and now i get a "updating system settings" box pop up then this screen.

So thats another windows 98 SE install dead...

Any ideas? I'm thinking its some sort of issue with the board or perhaps a chipset issue. Not entirely sure but it's really annoying.

Thoughts? 🙁

Sorry to hear that mate . This might be falling mobo but there is tons of other things that can cause this issue. It also might be hdd or ram . I couldnt install windows ME recently so i replaced hdd but it doesnt help .I kept getting MSGSRV32.EXE error and other errors while trying install it . So i thought that mobo is faulty but then i replaced ram and it finally installed . Still i have double check as it still have some issues . Unfortunately its trial and error and you have to have some spare parts to diagnose what cause your issues.

The TNT that worked before now also not working should be a clue that the driver version is the problem. You updated to 45.23 and now all cards don't work? Earliest FX 5200 driver is 43.45 have you tried that?

I've had the "Windows protection error" in connection with Nvidia drivers, what helped for me was boot into safe mode, uninstall the Nvidia driver via Control Panel/Software, then install another version. Edit: Just saw this happened to you before any Nvidia drivers, so this would not help then.

I also have this board and I also get the freeze in BIOS hardware monitor, and newer Nvidia drivers limiting to AGP 1x is also normal, Nvidia did this on purpose because the AMD Chipset becomes unstable with AGP 2x. I ran many different cards on this board, including a Radeon 9800 Pro, and never had a problem with any of them, sadly I don't own a FX 5200 to test.

Have you tried installing Windows XP and see if the card works with that? You mentioned that you had a mouse lagging / stopping problem in Windows with the card installed - I've had this problem plus intermittent "Windows protection errors" with a Geforce 7600 GT, which has a driver problem with Windows 98 and cards that have 512 MB or more memory. This is not the same as your situation but still, could be a hint that this is a driver problem. It went away when using Windows XP.

I have this board as well, it is working fine with NVidia cards up to a FX 5900. I used the 52.16 driver version. Board can also do AGP2x but nvidia drivers disable this normally due to potential stability issues.
The freeze in the BIOS hw monitor happens if you don't have a PSU with a -5V line.
If you keep getting windows protection errors, check for other hardware problems, e.g. bad RAM, bad HDD and/or cables. Try using a PCI video card if you have.

pyrogx wrote on 2023-12-09, 20:37:

The freeze in the BIOS hw monitor happens if you don't have a PSU with a -5V line.

Thanks a lot for solving this mystery! I already thought about replacing the bios chip.

Thank you for all the info guys especially the HW monitor issue, i did wonder if it was that as it stops when checking the -5v so makes perfect sense.

I figured out it is actually down to the chipset drivers and i believe the nVidia drivers i was using. I installed it all step by step to figure out when it would crash/cause issues. I installed Windows 98 SE again, installed the 52.16 drivers as suggested here followed by Direct X 9 redist. Rebooted and tried F22 Lightning 3 it's all working with hardware acceleration!

I then tried the Sound Blaster AWE64 driver CD as i like the software on it and the drivers. No issues there either.

Lastly i tried the AMD chipset drivers from Gigabytes website and...

Now it's in an endless BSOD even in safe mode so im going to reinstall again be leave out the chipset drivers. This was done using the Geforce 2 MX400 card, i did try the FX 5200 before doing the Sound Blaster drivers and it also worked flawlessly though i suspect it is CPU limited as the FPS was no different so I've put the Geforce 2 MX back in it to keep it period correct but it can be swapped in and out easily now as the drivers just add the card upon entering windows.

So all in all, don't ever install the chipset drivers. Thanks for all the help guys.

Glad to hear that it's working now. But still a bit annoying that you can't install the chipset drivers, I also use the version 1.20 from Gigabyte and never had problems with it.

Can you try a logged boot (press F8 at Windows boot), let it BSOD, reboot, then again F8 and let it boot to command line, then "edit c:\bootlog.prv" and look at the last items it tried to load?

Are you using an usual hard disk setup, SSD to IDE adapter or anything?

Might also try to set in BIOS "PNP/PCI configuration->Reset configuration data: Yes" in case it's some kind of resource conflict.

By the way, you can mod the BIOS of the 7IXE4 to enable AMD's Super Bypass Mode. This will greatly enhance memory performance and give you a 5-10% FPS boost in games.

There are slightly newer chipset drivers available (1.30), these work for me just fine. Only difference I see is that I use DirectX 8.1 instead of 9.
AGP 2x also works on a Geforce FX5900, but it has to be forced on by using Rivatuner. Performance gain, however, is close to zero on my Athlon-800 which I have on this board.

i've had similar issues with win98 and directx 9. Not on an AMD motherboard, but various other builds (socket 370, socket 478, socket A, LGA775) - re-installing windows and installing directX 8.1 always fixed it for me.

I've never had this issue on my AMD boards tough, but I never installed DX9 on them. Said boards are AMD751 slot A (PCPartner AMD750ASLA, MSI MS-6167) and AMD760 (FIC AD11).