What does "AGP (PCI Mode)" mean?

[Guest Capholland]

I recently upgraded (nobody laugh!) from a NVIDIA TNT2 card to the NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX/MX400. (Hey, I got it for free, and it WAS an upgrade.) I don't recall seeing this with my TNT2 card, but with my GeForce card plugged in, when I click the "Advanced" button on my Display Properties "Settings" page, and then click on "Adaptor" and "Properties" it tells the card is located in a PCI bus slot, even though it's plugged into an AGP slot. When I click on the "GeForce 2 MX/MX400" tab installed by the Nvidia drivers, it tells me the "Bus type" is "AGP (PCI Mode)".Does anyone know why my OS (Windows 2000, service pack 3) is registering my GeForce 2 as being in "PCI Mode" or whether or not that means anything as far as the effectiveness of the card (or my computer performance) is concerned? Thanks for your replies.My system (very below average, but it's what I've got right now): AMD 800 mhz294MB RAMGeForce 2 MX/MX400 64MB (latest drivers)Windows 2000- Caphollandhttp://caphollands.fsgateway.com

[W2DR 1,866]

It's probable that the motherboard chipset drivers need to be updated (that's where the AGP acceleration comes from). You can check by running dxdiag (StartRundxdiag) and looking at the Display tab. That will tell you whether, or not, the AGP Texture Acceleration is enabled (it probably isn't). The fix is usually easy, just a matter of installing the latest drivers for your motherboard.Doug

[Guest B52Drivr]

I too had this problem before I upgraded my system. The solution was to boot the computer in safe mode, completely remove all old drivers and then re install the new and latest drivers for your vid card.Truth be known, I noticed NO performance difference, but did not get the PCI mode warning any longer. Since going to XP I have not experienced this, but it is also a totally new system.Your BIOS and chipset drivers also could have something to do with it, but the vid card drivers, (after removing all in safe mode) did the trick.Best,Clay

[Guest Capholland]

Thanks for the tips. I'm considering a BIOS flash upgrade (discovered what that is and how to do it) but am not sure I have the courage to attempt it without somebody else more technically minded present--especially as my computer is working find, and the PCI-mode apparently does not affect performance.So I'll give the "remove all drivers in safe mode" idea a try, and see if that helps. If you don't hear from me ever again, it means I attempted the flash upgrade anyway and killed my computer, ha! Otherwise I'll post my results here.- Caphollandhttp://caphollands.fsgateway.com

[mrcaveman 1]

B52drv is correct. If you don't remove all the old drivers completely what you saw is what generaly happens.Go to rage3d.com and read the article on how to remove all the drivers. This happened to me on my WinXP system. Good luck and please let us know if this fixed your problem.

[Bill Womack 7]

By the way Cap, you may not think that the PCI mode is hurting performance, but I had that problem a year or so ago with one of my video cards. Updating the AGP miniport drivers on my motherboard enabled the card to work in full AGP mode and I saw a HUGE improvement in smoothness and frame rates. Your mileage may vary, of course, but you may find that PCI mode actually is really holding your new card back.

[Guest Capholland]

Do you have a link to that article on Rage3D? I looked around a bit, but am not familiar with that site. Thanks! I did the safe-mode bootup and uninstalled all current drivers (including using several utilities from the Guru3D site to make sure every trace of the old drivers was gone) but after it rebooted and I reinstalled the latest drivers, the card was again picked up as running in PCI mode. So unless the Rage3D site has some other miracle answer, I'll probably have no recourse but to attempt the BIOS upgrade, and hope it makes a difference. But because I use this computer for work as well as play--and in fact MOSTLY for work, the risk of attempting such a procedure is something I'll have to carefully consider.

[W2DR 1,866]

Cap - You probably don't need a BIOS upgrade. It's always risky and you never want to upgrade the BIOS unless it's really needed. I still think all you may need are updated mobo chipset drivers.Doug

[Guest Capholland]

I found the download for the A7V mobo BIOS flash upgrade on the Asus sight, but don't really know what a "chipset driver" is, how to find out whether I am using an old or recent one, or what file in their download section might be what I'm looking for. If I specify "drivers" instead of "BIOS" in their "download type" I get the same list of files and downloads as the "BIOS" option, so I'm a little confused here.Is the chipset driver something Windows uses once it's active, or something used by the computer in the native mobo boot-up stage?

[mrcaveman 1]

Go back to the ASUS site, click on the mobo you have, click on download, click on utilites and you should see the lastest via 4in 1 drivers. (your chipset)Or, go directly to the VIA website. If you never have updated these I believe this will fix your problem. The last time I installed a new mobo I forgot to install the chipset drivers. This is the first item that should be install after you install a new mobo. Here is what happened because I installed the video drivers first. My video card properites reported the exact same thing yours is doing now. Unsteasd of the APG it reported a PCI device. I had to uninstall the video drivers and then install my chipset drivers. Reinstalled video drivers and the problem was fixed.I do not know the complete model of your mobo so I can not tell you what via drivers you need. ASUS has several AV7 models listed that use either the VIA KT 333,400 or 600 drivers or the VIA KM400. Besure to use the one for your mobo. Do not flash your bios yet. Try this first. If it was me, I would remove the video drivers first then install the new VIA drivers. Then reinstall the video drivers. Here is the thread. http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php...readid=33656771Good luck I hope this helps. The gentelmen that first said he belived you have a chipset problem is most likely correct.

[W2DR 1,866]

They are the drivers used by system, not by Windows. I'm not an AMD guy, but I think the post below regarding the 4-in-1 update is what you need to do.Doug

[Guest Capholland]

Well, I got it fixed. For some odd reason it's still showing up as "PCI bus" in the Display Properties/Advanced/Adapter Type/Properties window, but when I click on the GeForce 2 MX/MX400 tab, it's properly reading as "AGP 4x" instead of "AGP (PCI mode)" now. I'm not sure exactly what made the difference. I went through a few things, including more extensive research on my motherboard model and chipset (Asus A7V / VIA Apollo KT133 chipset), and then finding and installing the necessary drivers. But I stopped short of flashing or upgrading my BIOS. That's a step I am glad I can postpone until I decide to upgrade my CPU.With that done, I rebooted in safe mode and removed all NVIDIA drivers, rebooted, and then used "Nasty File Remover" (http://rudz.homepage.dk/nfr) and Detonator-RIP (http://www.guru3d.com/detonator-rip) to remove all existing traces of the NVIDIA files and registry entries. Then I rebooted again and manually extracted the 53.03 drivers so that I could point the "Found New Hardware" wizard to the driver location manually. I also discovered one very interesting article that seemed to address my problem exactly (even down to my motherboard and chipset model) and I implemented that fix as well. Here's the article: http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=guide&dId=68. If you download the 4x.reg file, it adds the Dword value in the "nv4/device0" key, but I noticed on my machine I had to enter the value in the "nv/device0" key.But I'm not sure which of the three made the final difference. It could have just been one of these steps, or two, or all three. But at this point I don't care anymore. (I've seen too many reboot screens in the past couple of days.) What matters is that all my time and effort (and this great forum that pointed me in the right direction) has paid off. Both the Nvidia drivers and SiSoft Sandra are picking up the card as being in AGPx4 mode, and I'm able to turn up almost all hardware settings to their max (except anti-aliasing) with minimal effect on FS frame rate or performance. The one odd thing right now, which only happened AFTER installing the Nvidia drivers, is that SiSoft Sandra reports that I DO have "Fast Writes Support" but that I DON'T have "Fast Writes Enabled"--but in my BIOS, I DID enable Fast Writes. (And before I installed the Nvidia drivers, SiSoft Sandra properly reported that Fast Writes WERE enabled!) I'm not sure if that will affect performance much, but maybe that's an NVIDIA driver bug, since it only changed after the drivers were installed. Or maybe I'll come across another great article like the one above about this specific problem. The internet is a wonderful place.Merry Christmas, y'all! - Caphollandhttp://caphollands.fsgateway.comhttp://jdtllc.com/images/RCsupporter.jpg

[Guest keattchr]

Often its impossible to get rid of all drivers from a system when going to a completely different card. I had lots of weird problems with my new 9800 pro card that I could only solve with a re-install of XP.I forgot the latest chipset drivers during this install so my 9800 Pro was showing zero AGP! New chipset drivers and everything ok.Do what others are suggesting but if things are still weired, and your at the 'pulling hair out' stage, you may to re-install your operating system to guarantee good results.Ray Keattch.

[W2DR 1,866]

Good show! For what it's worth, I have a machine here with a GF2 Ultra installed and the Properties tab also reads PCI (PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0) but the card is running 4X AGP just fine. Merry Christmas.Doug