TR Forums

how do you like it, Any issues, what abow the visiontek and Epox issue?

I may have been living under a rock for a while, but what visiontek issue? I've preordered a card and would really like to know about any issues beforehand.

Should be getting mine any time now. Today, tomorrow, or Monday.

Read todays post at http://www.HardOCP.com:



There is a Ti4600 issue that is going to possibly effect VisionTek as well as every other producer of Ti4600.

I got my brand new VisionTek GeForce 4 ti-4600 this morning and when I went to install it I found that a capacitor on the EPoX 8kha+ motherboard bends the bottom capacitor on the VisionTek GeForce 4 enough to kill it. Spread the word because this is a HUGE problem because both of the products popularity. I was looking around for pictures of the other GeForce 4's to check the height of the bottom capacitor from the bottom of the card and couldn't find any high res pictures of them. From the picture on the PNY website it looks as though the capacitors are far enough up to avoid contact with the motherboard capacitor. I'm still looking for a picture of the ASUS card. If you could help with any of these pics I would greatly appreciate it. Thx much!

Stephen Dwyer

I am working with NVIDIA now trying to figure out this situation and what exactly is going on. Either NVIDIA is out of spec or EPoX is. It is my guess that Ti4600 cards are in spec, and this is why.

The 8KHA+ does not obey the AGP keepout zones. Their loss, not Nvidia's problem. See if Epox will give you a new board, or permission to replace the cap.

More on the Geforce 4 Issue and the Epox MOBO from HardOCP:

Now here is something that is not looking to good for the Ti4600 at this time. We are getting more reports of EPoX 8KHA+ and the VisionTek Ti4600 not being compatible. Wayne Brooker of 3DVelocity reported the issue also and we are hoping he will post pics soon.

Wayne is also reporting the VisionTek board to be out of spec although I don't think there is any proof of this at this time.

I have mailed my contacts at EPoX, but they have not replied yet. I am pretty sure EPoX is violating a "no mount" space around the AGP slot, but have no proof of that at the moment either.

This is was easy to check out:

ftp://download.intel.com/technology/agp ... /agp20.pdf

Chapter 5 (starting on page 209) is the mechanical specification.

Figure 5-13 on page 229 shows the restricted height areas on the motherboard. A 9mm wide area extending 25mm from the end of the AGP connector can only have components less than 5.08 mm high. The entire area between the front edge of the motherboard and the AGP and PCI connectors has a maximum allowable component height of 15.24mm.

Is the capacitor on the EPOX motherboard in-line with the AGP connector and within an inch of it? If so, it should be less than 0.2" high. If it's anywhere else between the slots and the front edge of the motherboard, it should be less than 0.6" high.

Figure 5-1B shows the form factor for the AGP video card. The maximum component height on the solder side (toward the CPU) is 2.7mm (0.1") and on the component side (toward the PCI slots) the maximum allowable height is 14.5mm (0.58").

Is the capacitor on the VisionTek AGP board more than 0.58" high?


Simple compatibility crap like this is why Intel created the specification. It's a shame that some manufacturers are too lazy to follow specs.

Kyle put a tape measure on the 8KHA+. It looks like that capacitor is about 21mm above the surface of the motherboard. It is definitely taller than the 15¼mm maximum in the Intel AGP 2.0 specification.

The 5.1mm restricted area right at the end of the AGP slot looks to me to be there to allow AGP Pro cards to be inserted into regular Universal AGP slots without motherboard interferences.

From the photos, it appears that this stuff is even more in the way of the first PCI slot than the AGP slot. I'm surprised that we haven't seen complaints before now about problems installing long PCI cards in the 8KHA+.

From the photos, it appears that this stuff is even more in the way of the first PCI slot than the AGP slot. I'm surprised that we haven't seen complaints before now about problems installing long PCI cards in the 8KHA+.

The first PCI slot is very often skipped over by enthusiasts due to it's tendence to share an address line with the AGP slot.

This is likely why there haven't been a whole lot of complaints heard before now.

Setup:
Alienware, Custom
Intel D815eeaa MotherBoard
Pentium 3 866, not overclocked
384 Sd-ram
Geforce 4 Ti 4600
SoundBlaster Live! X-gamer
Altec Lansing 5-peice surround sound speakers
Pioneer 16x Dvd-rom drive
Iomega 100mb Zip drive
Sony 24x CD-RW
U.S. Robotics 56k modem
Windows Me
IBM Deskstar 30 gig harddrive
300-Watt Power Supply
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Anyway, my PC is running perfectly fine with my Visiontek geforce 4 Ti 4600. Before that I had a Geforce 2 Gts 64 mb. Installation of the visiontek card was simple, easy, and fast. I love the NView options, and i might get a second moniter cause of this, and becuase of the S-video port that lets me hook up my PS2, TV, VCR, etc. to my PC. If i had a bigger harddrive i might start recording some shows.