[SOLVED] ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card

ataraxia · 07-13-2008, 02:22 PM

Summary: If someone has this exact card and made it work, please let me know. Many thanks! I am way, WAY past all the standard Video Card troubleshooting at this point... :(

I decided to upgrade this old machine with the best ATI AGP vard that I could afford, and this one seemed awesome, and it was from ASUS, a well known brand.

I have yet to be able to play ANY games with this card. When I use the ASUS drivers I get a BSOD with ATI3DUAG.DLL right off the bat when I start the game. WoW, Crysis, Bioshock, any game...

I ripped all that crap out and cleaned up all traces then tried the ATI Catalyst 8.6 hotfix driver for the AGP cards. Using THAT driver, I get a black screen when I try to start a game, after a few moments the monitor goes into powersave like there is no graphics output at all. ONE TIME I actually managed to get Crysis going for a sec before it went black, but it was slow as heck WoW NEVER starts...

I've been trying to get this thing to work for weeks now, inbetween work and life and I'm at my wit's end ASUS support is a joke now! Apparently they got bought or something. They just copy/paste me in stuff in tickets that has nothing to do with the issue then tell me to call a not toll-free number during weekdays. That's useless because I am at WORK then. You can't even reply to the tech support emails! You have to fill out the 20 question form each time *sigh*

I notice on THEIR forums that dozens of people are in the same boat. I've Googled and found posts about it in dozens of forums, tried all sorts of patches and things and NOTHING works At this point I've spent a bunch of money for this thing and have had more issues than ANY piece of hardware I've ever owned in my 20 year professional career working with computers This kinda BS is why I stopped using nVidia cards in the first place *sigh*

If ANYBODY out there has this card and has managed to get it to work, PLEASE post back here and let me know HOW!!!! I will thank you for life!!!

Also, if anybody has any crazy ideas that I haven't tried, feel free to suggest. I would detail all I have done, but it would be a 2 page post, LOL! I have done everything I can THINK about doing with a graphics card, and by no means am I a typical end-user. Doesn't mean I might have missed something though, which is why I am posting this

At this point I am actually thinking that there is no AGP card I can upgrade to to eek out more life fro this box. They ALL seem to be unsupported by both ATI and the Vendor, no matter what brand. I actually bought this one because it had more positive reviews than others.

Again, MANY thanks in advance to anyone who can help me before I set this card on fire and post the video on YouTube! Please excuse me while I put my old 128MB Radeon 9600 back in so I can play WoW for a while... *sigh*

Well, I changed drivers and I don't get a bluescreen now in WoW, it just exits and tells me that my card doesn't support Direct3D. That seems pretty damn odd, all things considered.. So I ran dxdiag and it failed on all the Direct3d tests as follows:

Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Generic failure)
Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (error code)
Direct3D 9 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (error code)

AGP texture acceleration is not available, but I'm guessing it probably should be :(

My DirectX 9.0c passes all of its own tests, and the card passes the 2d tests, but nothing but errors on 3d. I'm hoping this is helpful to somebody! *sigh* I've now spent my whole weekend frakkin' with this stupid card :(

wrench97 · 07-13-2008, 02:33 PM

You forgot to tell us what kind of PC you have, Brand and Model if OEM ,Motherboard brand and Model if custom, PSU brand and wattage on the 12v rail(s)

ataraxia · 07-13-2008, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wrench97

You forgot to tell us what kind of PC you have, Brand and Model if OEM ,Motherboard brand and Model if custom, PSU brand and wattage on the 12v rail(s)

Sorry, I thought I had that in there. I've pasted the same issue in so many places now I might actually need a revision control system *sigh* I build my own PCs. Mobo is Biostar M7NCG400, CoolerMaster 450w PSU with > 32a on rail for card which exceeds ASUS' recommendation of > 28a

Like I said in the summary, I'm just looking to see if anyone has this card and managed to get it to work under XP with some kind of working hacked together driver setup. I haven't decided if I am going to even TRY ASUS' offer of a replacement card, because I'm betting it will be the same problems (based on what I've read online)...

My other option is to find out if anyone out there has a spec-similar AGP 8x 512MB ATI card that HAS working drivers and SOME kind of support, so they can tell me and I'll return this one and buy that one.

Heck, at this point I'd even entertain an nVidia card....

wrench97 · 07-13-2008, 05:31 PM

I can assume you have applied this hotfix?
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=31542

Upgrayedddd · 07-15-2008, 02:02 PM

I was looking at this AGP card myself as a possible purchase. And like you, I saw all the problems others are having when I researched the card. The problem is that ATI doesn't support anything X1950+ that is AGP. Vendors have to modify and release the drivers. Buuut, some people have suggested modifying the .ini files of the PCI-E Catalyst driver to get it to work anyway. The card may work but you won't be able to get the control center to. What .ini files and what editing you need to do, I don't know. People post about it in the forums but they don't go into specifics.

ataraxia · 07-19-2008, 03:36 PM

I have amassed so much information on this card series and about 1000 different ways to fix it at this point. I'm about to do something that might render my PC useless, so I made an image backup of my boot drive last night.

FWIW, the short answer on this is that these cards are not supported by ATI or ASUS. Neither of the ASUS drivers provided work at all :( The closest I have come to FIXING the issue is the 8.6 "agp hotfix" driver and using ATI Tray Tools as opposed to CCC (which breaks things). I can now "trick" the card into letting me play WoW, but I don't think I will ever have this truly working as I would have hoped. Framerate is really no different than my old card, but I am able to ALT+TAB out of the game instantly back and forth, thanks to the 512MB of RAM on the card.

ASUS used to be a market leader, but they must have been bought/sold sometime a while back, because it's not the same company it used to be. Their "support" is laughable... Well would be laughable if I wasn't actually in NEED of it *sigh* It's pretty much killed the idea of ever buying another ASUS product ever again :( Some years back I was building servers and workstations with AMD mobos every day. Now, I wouldn't even bother...

All the information I have gathered is simply too much to put in a post here, and a lot of it is actually conflicting, so it would be a rather confusing post. If it were MY call, I'd say just leave this thread as it is and if anyone in the future buys this card (DON'T!), please FEEL FREE TO PM ME.

One really has to be careful because if you're just doing Google searches, you will find things like mysterious executable "fixes" I'm not about to run, and scripts that do a LOT of Registry modifications (for very little actual improvement, IMHO).

The "best" fix so far is a COMPLETE removal of all existing ATI-related files and using the HOTFIX posted above by Wrench97. That link will go away if they update the Catalyst and come out with, say, an 8.7 "hotfix." DO NOT install the CCC!

Also, the normally wonderful Omega Drivers DO NOT work with this card due to the ATI core they are based on. Bluescreen city. I've let him know about the issue, but he hasn't written back yet.

See, I'm already doing what I said I'm not going to do, LOL! *sigh* Maybe I will compile a list of things later...

To be completely honest, I actually would have come out "cheaper" buying a new motherboard and a PCI-Express Graphics Card. That's if you factor in all the TIME I have put in on this... Wasted the last 3 weekends and at least an hour or 2 each day. At least Newegg seems to have gone along with my suggestion and no longer stocks the card.

ataraxia · 09-07-2008, 12:24 PM

Good lord, I forgot I made this post, LOL!

Man, was THIS a horrible experience! I'm not even going to make a book-length post about what all I went through trying to get this thing to work, from drivers, to customizing driver files, to repair installs, to finally a restore from an image backup, only to still have an expensive card with lower numbers than the old cheap card I had to start with... *sigh*

Long story short - If you have an old AGP machine and you want to upgrade the video to eek out more life for gaming;
just don't do it!
Buy a new mobo and video card. I'm serious!

07-13-2008, 02:22 PM	#1 (permalink)
ataraxia Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: USA Posts: 109 OS: Xp Pro Sp3	[SOLVED] ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card Summary: If someone has this exact card and made it work, please let me know. Many thanks! I am way, WAY past all the standard Video Card troubleshooting at this point... :( I decided to upgrade this old machine with the best ATI AGP vard that I could afford, and this one seemed awesome, and it was from ASUS, a well known brand. I have yet to be able to play ANY games with this card. When I use the ASUS drivers I get a BSOD with ATI3DUAG.DLL right off the bat when I start the game. WoW, Crysis, Bioshock, any game... I ripped all that crap out and cleaned up all traces then tried the ATI Catalyst 8.6 hotfix driver for the AGP cards. Using THAT driver, I get a black screen when I try to start a game, after a few moments the monitor goes into powersave like there is no graphics output at all. ONE TIME I actually managed to get Crysis going for a sec before it went black, but it was slow as heck WoW NEVER starts... I've been trying to get this thing to work for weeks now, inbetween work and life and I'm at my wit's end ASUS support is a joke now! Apparently they got bought or something. They just copy/paste me in stuff in tickets that has nothing to do with the issue then tell me to call a not toll-free number during weekdays. That's useless because I am at WORK then. You can't even reply to the tech support emails! You have to fill out the 20 question form each time sigh I notice on THEIR forums that dozens of people are in the same boat. I've Googled and found posts about it in dozens of forums, tried all sorts of patches and things and NOTHING works At this point I've spent a bunch of money for this thing and have had more issues than ANY piece of hardware I've ever owned in my 20 year professional career working with computers This kinda BS is why I stopped using nVidia cards in the first place sigh If ANYBODY out there has this card and has managed to get it to work, PLEASE post back here and let me know HOW!!!! I will thank you for life!!! Also, if anybody has any crazy ideas that I haven't tried, feel free to suggest. I would detail all I have done, but it would be a 2 page post, LOL! I have done everything I can THINK about doing with a graphics card, and by no means am I a typical end-user. Doesn't mean I might have missed something though, which is why I am posting this At this point I am actually thinking that there is no AGP card I can upgrade to to eek out more life fro this box. They ALL seem to be unsupported by both ATI and the Vendor, no matter what brand. I actually bought this one because it had more positive reviews than others. Again, MANY thanks in advance to anyone who can help me before I set this card on fire and post the video on YouTube! Please excuse me while I put my old 128MB Radeon 9600 back in so I can play WoW for a while... sigh Well, I changed drivers and I don't get a bluescreen now in WoW, it just exits and tells me that my card doesn't support Direct3D. That seems pretty damn odd, all things considered.. So I ran dxdiag and it failed on all the Direct3d tests as follows: Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Generic failure) Direct3D 8 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (error code) Direct3D 9 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (error code) AGP texture acceleration is not available, but I'm guessing it probably should be :( My DirectX 9.0c passes all of its own tests, and the card passes the 2d tests, but nothing but errors on 3d. I'm hoping this is helpful to somebody! sigh I've now spent my whole weekend frakkin' with this stupid card :(

07-13-2008, 02:33 PM	#2 (permalink)
wrench97 Tech Hardware Team Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 3,468 OS: XPSP2	Re: ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card You forgot to tell us what kind of PC you have, Brand and Model if OEM ,Motherboard brand and Model if custom, PSU brand and wattage on the 12v rail(s) __________________

07-13-2008, 05:31 PM	#4 (permalink)
wrench97 Tech Hardware Team Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 3,468 OS: XPSP2	Re: ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card I can assume you have applied this hotfix? http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=31542 __________________

07-15-2008, 02:02 PM	#5 (permalink)
Upgrayedddd Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 14 OS: Windows XP Home SP3	Re: ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card I was looking at this AGP card myself as a possible purchase. And like you, I saw all the problems others are having when I researched the card. The problem is that ATI doesn't support anything X1950+ that is AGP. Vendors have to modify and release the drivers. Buuut, some people have suggested modifying the .ini files of the PCI-E Catalyst driver to get it to work anyway. The card may work but you won't be able to get the control center to. What .ini files and what editing you need to do, I don't know. People post about it in the forums but they don't go into specifics. __________________ PSU: Antec Earthwatts 380 Motherboard: ASUS K8S-LA (SiS 760/964 Chipset) Socket 754: 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) RAM: 1.5 GB DDR-400 (1x1 GB + 1x512 MB)

07-19-2008, 03:36 PM	#6 (permalink)
ataraxia Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: USA Posts: 109 OS: Xp Pro Sp3	Re: ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card I have amassed so much information on this card series and about 1000 different ways to fix it at this point. I'm about to do something that might render my PC useless, so I made an image backup of my boot drive last night. FWIW, the short answer on this is that these cards are not supported by ATI or ASUS. Neither of the ASUS drivers provided work at all :( The closest I have come to FIXING the issue is the 8.6 "agp hotfix" driver and using ATI Tray Tools as opposed to CCC (which breaks things). I can now "trick" the card into letting me play WoW, but I don't think I will ever have this truly working as I would have hoped. Framerate is really no different than my old card, but I am able to ALT+TAB out of the game instantly back and forth, thanks to the 512MB of RAM on the card. ASUS used to be a market leader, but they must have been bought/sold sometime a while back, because it's not the same company it used to be. Their "support" is laughable... Well would be laughable if I wasn't actually in NEED of it sigh It's pretty much killed the idea of ever buying another ASUS product ever again :( Some years back I was building servers and workstations with AMD mobos every day. Now, I wouldn't even bother... All the information I have gathered is simply too much to put in a post here, and a lot of it is actually conflicting, so it would be a rather confusing post. If it were MY call, I'd say just leave this thread as it is and if anyone in the future buys this card (DON'T!), please FEEL FREE TO PM ME. One really has to be careful because if you're just doing Google searches, you will find things like mysterious executable "fixes" I'm not about to run, and scripts that do a LOT of Registry modifications (for very little actual improvement, IMHO). The "best" fix so far is a COMPLETE removal of all existing ATI-related files and using the HOTFIX posted above by Wrench97. That link will go away if they update the Catalyst and come out with, say, an 8.7 "hotfix." DO NOT install the CCC! Also, the normally wonderful Omega Drivers DO NOT work with this card due to the ATI core they are based on. Bluescreen city. I've let him know about the issue, but he hasn't written back yet. See, I'm already doing what I said I'm not going to do, LOL! sigh Maybe I will compile a list of things later... To be completely honest, I actually would have come out "cheaper" buying a new motherboard and a PCI-Express Graphics Card. That's if you factor in all the TIME I have put in on this... Wasted the last 3 weekends and at least an hour or 2 each day. At least Newegg seems to have gone along with my suggestion and no longer stocks the card.

09-07-2008, 12:24 PM	#7 (permalink)
ataraxia Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: USA Posts: 109 OS: Xp Pro Sp3	Re: ASUS AH2600Pro 512MB AGP 8X Card Good lord, I forgot I made this post, LOL! Man, was THIS a horrible experience! I'm not even going to make a book-length post about what all I went through trying to get this thing to work, from drivers, to customizing driver files, to repair installs, to finally a restore from an image backup, only to still have an expensive card with lower numbers than the old cheap card I had to start with... sigh Long story short - If you have an old AGP machine and you want to upgrade the video to eek out more life for gaming; just don't do it! Buy a new mobo and video card. I'm serious! Last edited by ataraxia : 09-07-2008 at 12:25 PM. Reason: formatting