FastWrite

**Bjorne** · April 24th, 2003, 02:07 PM

Hello!

I have a Radeon 9100 card and when I enable Fast Write in the drivers and reboot the system have disabled it again! I have enabled it in bios too. Is the card incompatible with Fast Write (cant find any info on it) or what shiuld I do?

Thanks,
Bjorne

**PeLiGrOsO** · April 24th, 2003, 02:23 PM

what motherboard / os / drivers are you using ? do you have the catalyst drivers loaded for video driver ?

**Kineda** · April 24th, 2003, 02:29 PM

check the bios and see if fastwrite is enabled for the agp bus. you might also want to update to the newest catalyst drivers, agp bus drivers, and possibly new bios. Also if you are still having a problem if it is an OEM Radeon possibly it may not have all of the features of a Retail Radeon. Slim possiblility but i would check the other stuff first. But like Peligroso said what motherboard and drivers are you using???

**Bjorne** · April 24th, 2003, 02:47 PM

MB: Abit KR7A (I have enabled Fast Write in bios)
OS: Win XP
Drivers: todays drivers from ati.com, got the card today
Card: Sapphire ATLANTIS 9100

Thnx,
Bjorne

**spdycml** · April 24th, 2003, 11:40 PM

first of all, fast write has nothing to do with drivers at all(unless there is some ati setting that is called fast write)....it is a setting in the bios so catalyst drivers won't help....turn off video bios shadowing, set the agp aperture to half your system ram...and basically set all the agp options you can find to the lowest setting and then go back and increase them one by one until you find a stable point that your vid card will run at. just my .o2

**Qinstaller** · April 25th, 2003, 04:29 AM

Now since I cant post the link straight to the section I will cut and paste it

AGP Fast Write

Common Options : Enabled, Disabled

Details

This BIOS feature controls the chipset's AGP Fast Write capability. Fast Write is a feature which accelerates memory write transactions from the chipset to the AGP device.

Normally, any data meant for the AGP device must be written to the main memory for the AGP device to read. Fast Write allows the AGP device to bypass the main memory and directly access the data. To do so, the AGP device will act as a PCI device whenever the chipset attempts to write to it. This allows the data to be directly written to the AGP device (like other PCI devices), instead of being written to the main memory first.

As you can see, bypassing the main memory saves time and improves the AGP read performance. However, AGP writes (to the chipset) will not benefit from Fast Writes as it will follow normal AGP protocol and write to main memory.

In addition, while PCI signals are used for Fast Write transactions, the behaviour of those PCI signals has been modified and do not follow PCI specifications. Therefore, this feature may cause problems with some PCI cards.

Therefore, it is recommended that you enable AGP Fast Write for better AGP read performance but disable it if any of your PCI cards start acting funny.

Please note that for AGP Fast Write to work, both motherboard chipset and graphics card must support the Fast Write protocol and the data transfer rate must be at AGP2X or faster.

I would bet the card dosent suport it

but IF you ever have a Question about Bios settings go here. http://www.rojakpot.com/

just my 2cents

**SwamE** · April 25th, 2003, 09:01 AM

The catalyst 3.2 drivers for my AIW 9700 pro have a fast write option in the display properties settings. You might want to check it out see if the bios and display settings are both set to Fast-write.

**SwamE** · April 25th, 2003, 09:07 AM

Also, I had a KR7A-133R with GF2 that I had problems with the fast write option. But I was OC'd and with the fast write enable my system would not clock as high as I wanted. Point being the KR7A does support fast write, but the VID is another story.

**PeLiGrOsO** · April 25th, 2003, 11:16 AM

The catalyst 3.2 drivers for my AIW 9700 pro have a fast write option in the display properties settings.

thank you SwamE for backing that up.

spdycml

me

**techs** · April 25th, 2003, 11:32 AM

There were some problems with fast write between the Via chipsets for Athlons. I couldn't get it to work on my 133a chipset and I don't remember about the 266a chipset. It is possible either the drivers or the bios itself is resetting it to disabled intentionally.

**Bjorne** · April 25th, 2003, 11:50 AM

probably won't work then

I have disabled shadowing and set apperture to 256M, but it still dont work

**spdycml** · April 25th, 2003, 09:32 PM

No flame intended PeLiGrOsO, Its just that I have never heard of a Fast write setting anywhere other than the bios....it is interesting that ATI has an option in the driver.
*opens mouth and inserts foot* hehehe

**Bjorne** · April 26th, 2003, 09:41 AM

this morning I updated the ViA chipset drivers too, no result though...

ATI Drivers:

/Bjorne
PS. Screenshot is from the Swedish drivers,
Fast Skriv = Fast Write
Av = Off
På = On

**confus-ed** · April 29th, 2003, 05:13 AM

Originally posted by spdycml
No flame intended PeLiGrOsO, Its just that I have never heard of a Fast write setting anywhere other than the bios....it is interesting that ATI has an option in the driver.
*opens mouth and inserts foot* hehehe

My matrox drivers have options for fast write, fast read & write combining ....

You need the chipset on the motherboard & the card itself to support it, which would appear to be the case here ... BUT you need all the 'other' devices on the pci bus to 'play' with it too .... the latest hyperion driver for VIA chipsets supposedly 'sorts' most of these problems

(oh yeah !)...

You need ACPI on for it to work. Memory timings etc need to be 'conservative' ... An AGP card is just a very fast PCI card, if you have stuff timed 'aggressively' on the pci bus you'll get errors & bios will turn fastwrites off, no matter what you set it at!!!!

Try with only the video card (no other cards).....

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