Hi all,

I know many people have perhaps upgraded to the Athlon 64s etc but I still have my K7D Master from MSI with dual Athlon MP clocked at 2600+. For me this is perhaps one of the best and most stable PCs I have ever used.

I recently got an X1600 AGP from ATi which is the maximum ATi card for AGP and unfortunately given that money does'nt come easily I found to my great disappointment that it just does'nt run with two CPUs enabled in any reliable way. I have built a test system out of the machine with 2 windows installs, one stable and one for testing and some of the fixes work some of the time, but never all of the time.

Whats the point of all this? The AMD MP platform may look old at 3-4 yrs but to me (a programmer) in the real world it is still one [content edited] of a fast machine. Following conventional wisdom I would now have to throw away 2 processors + 1 Gb DDR + mobo and spend a small fortune to get a new system? I don't want to, and I don't think after spending 2000 odd euro to build this computer, which is still very very fast, that I honestly need to.

I have read forum after forum and tried fix after fix and while it is true you can get two processors running (and it is mega quick when that happens), it is more a case of voodoo than computer logic. Linux works ok so whats the matter with windows?

I have seen AMD post new drivers for their Athlon 64 platforms but we remian stuck at AGP 5.33? Perhaps AMD don't have the time to sort this out or ATi (odd situation that that the two are merging now) but I do know this problem was examined at one time or another by AMD (in one of the earlier posts at 2cpu I think) and they said they would try and do something positive.

Well nothing seems to have happened. If I knew what was wrong maybe we the users might try to fix this at the code level? but it is difficult to see what could be wrong except that the problem is repeatable and so many users have complained.

The point is us AMD 762 users need some help from AMD, and while I appreciate it might not be convienient or cost-effective for them to devote large resources to a few users with problems on an old board, any information they have on the issue might help us who don't have the money to buy new computers because drivers don't work and while our machines can run modern software perfectly well (rFactor 1280 x 1024 x 32 @ 60-100 fps all mods on with /onecpu). I disagree completely with the view of one person/moderator that the AMD just should'nt bother because it is too old, which is not true, they do still support user problems on old products.

Sorry about the length of this post - it is short compared to the weeks and weeks I have spent tried to solve this problem. If anyone does have any information on this issue please post something or maybe we could try and work out the problem ourselves and then fix the driver? (pipedream)



Jack

Jack,

I too suffer from this exact same problem. I have just bought a X1600 256 AGP card.
I too have the same 768 chipset on a Gigabyte board 2x 2800MP.

I've had this puter for years and it still rocks! I feel just the same as you.
Have you fixed this issue? Has anyone?


Brian

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the post. Unfortunately I have not managed anything substantial yet. I don't know what you have tried yet but whatever happens there seems always to be a measure of instability involved. If you like lets swap notes on this issue.

Jack

I have an Asus A7M266-D with dual 2800+ CPUs. I have a Sapphire ATI 9200 card. When I installed the latest catalyst drivers from ATI for it, everything is slooooooooooooowww.. As in, extra 3 minutes to boot XP, and you can see the lines for every window that redraws or fills up ... I have never seen graphics this slow in my life, even on my first 8086 PC 18 years ago ...
But the video card works fine in my other AMD K6/3 PC ...
I'm running XP SP2 (fresh install) . I tried with no other boards installed but the video and disk - no difference.
I installed the AGP miniport 5.33 drivers - no help either.

The only fix for it is to disable all hardware acceleration in the ATI display driver properties. Then the card actually becomes usable (though not fast) ! Is there anything else I can do ?
I'm looking to replace the video card. What would you recommend ? This is for 2D applications only. I would like something with at least dual VGA. The one I'm eyeing is actually the ATI X800 XT all-in-wonder since I want a capture card as well, but I'm really afraid of getting another ATI given the problems with this one ...

Next week I'm also getting another 760MPX system - a Tyan S2466-4M mobo I got on ebay, to recycle my two old 1500+ CPUs that nobody wanted to buy. So I'm definitely looking for a new video card compatible with this chipset.
Help, anyone ?

I have a Tyan Tiger MPX with Dual Athlon MP 2800's and an x1950 Pro AGP 256MB

I use the Omega drivers in Windows Server 2003 and it works fine, never needed to install AMD's chipset drivers.

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ComputerBB

HAve the same prop her! I think Il try the Omega drivers like you said ccb056. I have tried absolutely everything that I have read and come up with but nothing works. AMD should fixx this. Argh

I'm probably the one Jack completely disagrees with...

Hey I know it is a problem, but the EOL on those chipsets was years back...

I seriously doubt they will fix it, you guys aren't the first to ask about it either.


Maybe I should call Toyota and they can fix my 17 year old truck !

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The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Physics? Ha! This is clearly magic and devilry at work. Prepare firewood! We have witches to burn!


MODERATOR

Edited: 03/24/2008 at 11:06 PM by MD - Moderator

I know this thread is old, but I too have a Tyan Tiger MPX and an X1950Pro and it works beautifully. I had been using the Omega Drivers, but now I just use the regular drivers, because ATI fixed the drivers for AGP. When ATI itself stopped making AGP cards, their drivers stopped supporting AGP, even though other companies made the AGP cards. The OMEGA drivers had a little fix that allowed DirectX and DirectDraw, etc... but now ATI has fixed that issue.

As for why your 2 cpus dont work I dont understand that, unless you loaded windows incorrectly. You have to hit a button F5 or something during Windows install and choose SMP or whatever Multiprocessor ACPI choice, and you may need a floppy disk with that driver on it to do it. Although that is basic, maybe you forgot to do it. You cant change that once you get into window, although it looks like you can in the device manager, it doesnt really work.

I still love my dual MP system, its still speedy and plays my AOEIII games great, but is bottlenecked by the DDR 266 RAM I think, so I just built a new system with the Athlon X2 4850e 45watt 2.5Ghz and HT1.0, with the hybrid Xfire HD3300 IGP and a PCI-E HD3470 and 4GB DDR2-800, when Deneb comes out at 45nm I'll drop that in quad core and use DDR2-1066. That setup was only about $500 with the 500GB Hard Drive and Blu-Ray reader, so upgrading now is not too bad with AMD's awesome new value products.

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From the year 2002 I have a Tyan Tiger MPX upgraded to dual Athlon MP 2600+ Barton in 2004 with one PCI 64-bit 66Mhz PCI U320 SCSI controller for Windows on 10K RPM Maxtor Atlas and on 64-bit 66Mhz SATA Raid controller with 4 250GB stiped array. AGP 4X with Radeon X1950Pro. All on Antex TruePower 550 power supply in an old Gatway P-120 tower. Its still screaming.

I'm running a Radeon x1600 Pro on my system with everything working correctly with the regualr drivers. As far as both processors working. You need to be running XP pro/Media Center edition or since vista is around now. Vista Ultimate or Bussiness. Those OS's are the only ones that support Dual processors.

PLEASE NOTE: Windows XP home will not operate properly with Dual Processors nor will Vista Home Basic/Premium! Only the ones stated above!

Yes I'm still using this system to this date even playing a lot of games that are being released to this day!

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Dual Athlon MP 2800+
Tyan Tiger MPX
Radeonx1600 Pro 512 AGP