Motherboard misrepresentation

I was having problems w/ my old setup, heat due to lack of airflow and that my radeon 9800 pro woudln't work. Finally replaced the motherboard/case etc, entirely new setup. Bought a Soyo kt600 dragon plus v1, this board stated it could support 8x. to bad i didn't research further. I tried the card running at 8x. works fine until i started a intense graphics program. then it crashes or locks up. turns out that the motherboard supports 8x, only if it runs at 8x with 1.5V... which the majority of cards do not support 8x at 1.5V. turning it down to 4x solved any problems but i guess i'm upset that they would advertise 8x if it can't support it. i might try looking into seeing if i can tell it to only send .8v to the agp slot but i'm worried that could cause problems. basically just a warning, make sure you fully research what you intend to buy and that it is compatible w/ all your specifications.

 

Yes, and their memory speed claims on the kT333's and the KT400's were also erroneous - not sure about the 600's. Only after reading the fine print does one know what they really bought. A shame or a sham depending on one's perspective.

 

gotta love it. would changing the voltages to the slot do any good and or be harmful to the mobo/card in any way?

 

The 1.5V AGP value that has you stymied is fairly common among board manufacturers. Don't forget, that board has been around for a while. I don't think this particular board has the capability to let you adjust the voltage to a value even close to what you need and if it were me, I wouldn't try modifying it to do so either. There are plenty of 8X AGP cards that run at 1.5 so you have the option to go with a compatable card even though thats probably not your preference vs your present card.

I lost a lot of respect for Soyo thanks to their somewhat misleading "stretch" of the truth, but also have to stop short of calling it false advertising. But, in that I don't like having to read all the fine print to avoid "getting porked ", I've just stayed away for a while.