AMD and Win2k Incompatibility

[Guest]

After reading all the great things on the site here about athlons I built a system and ran into a bit of a shocker. More info can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/7/15.ASP


-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Pringle
Sent: January 29, 2001 4:24 PM
To: 'frank.voelkel@tomshardware.com'; 'tom@tomshardware.com'
Subject: Athlon and Win2k Incompatibility


Hi, I recently built a Athlon 1.1gig, Asus A7V, Asus Geforce 2 gts system and I was floored to discover that my 3dmark 2000 score under win2k is only about 2200 compared to over 7000 under windows ME. This is with the latest motherboard, video drivers, patches etc and the system is not overclocked or modified in any way and bios settings are conservative.

Apparently there is some sort of known incompatibility between AMD chips and win2k. I applied the registry patch they provided and even removed all the other cards from my system but I am still seeing hanging and extremely poor d3d performance.

Here is the information on this, I am extremely disappointed and would have considered a pentium 3 if I had known. Most people do not know anything about this I am hoping more exposure will pressure them to come up with a proper fix to this issue.

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon-duron/amd_win2k_patch.html

Sincerely,

Greg Pringle

 

[Guest]

If it's true, then I'm concerned. I kinda enjoyed Win2K and just assumed my 3d Mark scores were my own fault. Of course, I'm using a T-Bird 900, 256MB PC100 SDRAM and a GeForce DDR and I achieved about 5900 3d Marks. So I'm not sure why you're getting something like 2200...

Charles

 

[Guest]

As far as I am aware you need to change some setup params duriing the Win2k install, I run Win2k on my Athlons (in fact I run it on all of my PC's) and have no problems.

I will try to find a link to this info .......

M

one of the first UK T-Bird users....

 

[Guest]

Maybe theres hope for me ! Charles, what motherboard are you using, which version of drivers?

Greg

 

[Zenthar]

I too got a low score when I first installed Win2K on my A7V, but I applied the patches, some drivers and I and now my 3DMark benchmark is about 1% lower than it was on Win98SE.

 

[FUGGER]

What?? AMD has an incomapatability? OMG!! NFW

 

[Guest]

Here's the info from the microsoft site:

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server


SYMPTOMS
A Windows 2000-based computer may stop responding (hang) when you use an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) program such as Ziff Davis 3D WinBench 2000. This behavior may occur more frequently depending on the computer's processor, memory, and graphics configuration. This problem is known to occur with Nvidia GeForce 256 and Matrox G400 video adapters on computers with AMD Athlon processors. This issue is not specific to any specific video adapter type.

CAUSE
Memory that is allocated by the video driver is being corrupted.

 

[Zenthar]

There is a patch found on AMD's web site to correct this memory corruption issue, but I don't quite remember the address.

 

[Zenthar]

I want to protect AMD here (and I would protect Intel if it was in the same position), the "incopatibility" issues only come from the Via chipset. The thing that pisses me off is that Via keeps comming out with new chipsets without ever having solved all the issues of the previous ones ... they just suck. Most of the problems you might encounter, only need to apply patches or updat drivers.

 

[Guest]

Sounds more like an issue with W2K / Via than AMD. Just like W9X can't handle much over 512Mb RAM, which causes problems that *look* like your video card is screwed.

===
Do unto others before they do unto you...

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Thank you. I wanted to say the same thing to protect AMD.
The problem is with VIA, not AMD.
How do I know?
I have the exact same problem happening on my Windows 2000 system running on a P3-750 with an AMD chipset mobo from ASUS.
So on my own desk I have proof that it's VIA's fault and not AMD's about the incompatability with Win2K.

The funny thing though is that the only time the errors start to occur is when I'm running MS Visual C++ 6.0 (SPed to death).

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[pvsurfer]

Protecting (or flaming) AMD should not be the issue here. Just because you have experienced some Win2K problems with P3-Via boards (as others also have), doesn't prove that there are no Win2K-AMD(CPU) problems as well. As a matter of fact, MS' and AMD's support sites clearly indicate that there are indeed some Win2K-AMD compatibility problems.

One thing is for sure; Win2K is part of the problem, be it with Via or AMD. In past posts, I have asked TomsHardware to spend more time using their resources to thoroughly investigate this rather serious issue. Instead, article after article, they seem more interested in relating "old news" (e.g., Dual CPU mobos, P4-Rambus, or more meaningless mobo reviews). If TomsHardware doesn't believe this situation is worthy of a full investigation then all they need do is search their own forums for all such reported problems! And if that doeesn't convince them, sooner or later some other site will "scoop" them with the first in-depth article on a subject begging much more understanding!

Just my $.02 worth. ~pvsurfer

 

[slvr_phoenix]

I think you're relatively clueless as to the subject matter being conversed in this thread.

"Protecting (or flaming) AMD should not be the issue here."

The thread title is, "AMD and Win2k Incompatability". And I am serving to point out that at least SOME of this incompatability that people are blaming on AMD is actually an issue with VIA and occurs on Intel chip systems as well as AMD chip systems.

So at least SOME of the blame for the incompatability should be aimed at VIA, not at AMD. No, it doesn't prove that there are NO issues with AMD. But it does prove that some of them aren't actually AMD's fault. They're VIA's fault. And that IS the whole point of this thread, and thus IS the issue here.

As for your Win2k issues, if you've been so interested in uncovering faults with Win2K I would like to see an itemized list of these issues so that I can then double-check to make sure that my company won't be running into any of those issues on our Win2k machines.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[Guest]

It clearly says in the knowledge base article that the problem is not motherboard or video card specific, but happens with many of the new generation faster video cards and AMD chips in conjunction with win2k.

Right now I'm stuck with a pc that runs like crap under windows 2k using my partciular hardware. From my point of view there is an overly rosy picture of AMD systems in the Toms Hardware articles. Looks like I am stuck running windows 98 until I upgrade my system in a couple years

Greg

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Well of course. That's because THG is all about benchmarks. Not about actually using a computer like a normal person in every day life.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[pvsurfer]

Tailslide & slvr phoenix ~

You and I, as well as a good many other AMD-Via-Win2K users, share this problem.

Here is my real-world situation. My wife and I each have our own PC. One consists of a 1GB Athlon on an A7V mobo and the other one a 866MHz P3 on a CUSL2 mobo, all other pieces are the same including Win2K SP1. Before loading Win2K onto both PCs, they had Win98 installed. At that time, the Athlon ran every app we use much faster than the P3. After upgrading to Win2K and both mobos to 512MB (from 256MB) the very same apps now run noticeably slower on the Athlon PC (seems to us as if the P3 box got faster and the Athlon PC got much slower)! BTW, I have downloaded and installed all of the latest drivers, and I even swapped the PC133 SDRAM to eliminate the possibility of a memory problem.

The only "benchmark" here is wifey and me executing the same job (i.e., crunching spreadsheets, database searches, and various image-editing tasks) on each machine concurrently. If that's not real-world exposure of the problem being discussed in this thread, then please excuse me.

Clueless & very frustrated... ~pvsurfer

 

[Guest]

Does ANYONE have the Abit board?

If I knew for sure a motherboard swap would fix it I would lay out the extra cash.

Greg

 

[IntelConvert]

Greg:

This is not meant to mock your dilemma, but in your first post you say "I am extremely disappointed and would have considered a Pentium 3 if I had known" and now that you do know the situation, you are still looking to throw more $$$ into another Athlon KT133 mobo? Snap out of it!

As far as KT133 mobos go, most will tell you it's hard to beat an A7V. Doesn't it makes a lot more sense for you (and pvsurfer) to put WinMe back on your Athlon PC until the AMD-Via-Win2K problems are resolved? Athlons on Win98/Me run like the wind.

After reading more posts in more forums than I can count on this very subject, I decided I'd rather switch than fight. So I converted to the Intel side (and I'm now running Win2K very successfully), which pretty well explains the background for my moniker.

 

[Guest]

Not to mock your literacy but my post said "if I was sure it would fix it"

 

[IntelConvert]

Hey, I was making a sincere attempt to help you, not flame you!

 

[Guest]

Many of my Athlon boxes at work are running the A7V, all have WIN2K and the Matrox G400. Interestingly, I saw this issue only on one machine. I installed the registry hack downloadable from AMD's web site and the problem was gone. Try reloading the OS from scratch and/or a different video card.

 

[SoulReaper]

Lets give another round of applause for Microsoft and another $hitty operating system that ruins good hardware performance. YEY!!! JERKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

--SR

 

[Guest]

Intel, it would really help to run windows 2000 I am a software developer. Sorry if I took your post the wrong way but switching back to intel or staying with windows 98 are not attractive options for me.

A friend with the same problem told me he fixed it by updating to the latest asus a7v BIOS (1005C) although the readme for it didn't mention anything about fixing this problem. I will give it a try tonite.

Greg

 

[phsstpok]

Sorry, but it doesn't appear that problem is exclusive to Via Chipsets.

from the AMD Web site

"Microsoft Windows®2000 Patch for AGP Applications on AMD Athlon™ and AMD Duron™ Processors

Description of Issue

An issue has been identified that could result in the corruption of video data shared between AGP graphics adapters and AMD Athlon™ or AMD Duron™ processors when running Microsoft Windows®2000. This issue is independent of system chipset and has been observed when running Ziff-Davis 3D Winbench™2000 and Mad Onion 3DMark™ 2000 in benchmarking mode."

Here's the link.

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon-duron/amd_win2k_patch.html

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 02/02/01 02:14 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[pvsurfer]

Greg~ I'm still trying to remedy this. As I said in my prior post in this thread, I have already downloaded and installed ALL of the latest drivers for our 1GHz T-bird A7V PC with Win2K and it still runs slower than our 866MHz P3 CUSL2 PC with Win2K in a side-by-side "shootout"!

While I'm sure that IntelConvert offered his suggestions with the best of intent, now that I invested in Win2K and 512MB, I can't accept reverting back to Win98 on our AMD PC.

We may just have to wait for Microsoft to release SP2 (due out this summer), which will hopefully fix whatever problems are causing this performance degradation.

~pvsurfer