Graphics Blaster Readme ======================= Please read through all the sections before you proceed with the installation. This file contains the following sections: 1. Games Compatibility Issue 2. System Compatibility Issue 3. Known Problems 4. General Notes 1. GAMES COMPATIBILITY ISSUE i) Shogo If you experience flickering when moving through tunnel, try again after uncheck "Wait for VSYNC" in . ii) Blood II If you experience flickering, try again after uncheck "Wait for VSYNC". 2. SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY ISSUE i) General If you encounter problem of black screen after soft reboot (Ctl-Alt-Del), try placing the Graphics Blaster into another PCI slot. ii) Problem with certain Elitegroup motherboards The following symptoms may appear when operating a TNT in an Elitegroup motherboard: a) suspend mode does not work properly b) system randomly restarts or hangs c) colors are corrupted after switching back from full- screen DOS d) AGP card cannot be configured as a secondary display adapter On certain Elitegroup motherboards (e.g. P6BX-A+, P6LX-A+), the 3.3 volt supply to the AGP connector cannot meet the power demands of the graphics card. Contact your system vendor for possible replacement. Note that the Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT PCI card should work correctly with that system. iii) Running a Direct3D game on some ASUS motherboards (ASUS P2L97 rev. 1.05 and P2L97-DS rev. 1.03) causes the system to hang. You can try the following: a) Get the latest BIOS update from http://www.creaf.com After downloading the web BIOS release, use the patch version found in the patch directory. b) If step a) do not work, please find more details of the problem at http://www.asus.com.tw/products/techref/misc/rivatnt.html iv) Motherboard compatibility with TNT PCI/AGP Card Another problem with certain motherboards is that there will be random screen corruption or system hang, you can try the following: a) Ensure that you have the following suggested settings in your system BIOS setup: 1. Enable "Assign IRQ to VGA" if possible. 2. Disable "VGA Palette Snoop". 3. Disable "Video BIOS Cache" and "Video BIOS Shadow". 4. Disable "C800-CBFFF Shadow" or similar options. 5. Set AGP Aperture Size to about half the size of system RAM size. b) You could also try to update the system BIOS of your motherboard. The motherboard manufacturers normally have a web site that you can download the latest version of BIOS that might fix compatibility problems with our card. c) If you had overclocked your CPU, you might want to revert back to the original clock settings. d) If you are using a AGP card, try getting the latest BIOS from http://www.creaf.com After downloading the web BIOS release, use the patch version found in the patch directory. e) Ensure that you have installed Microsoft DirectX 6 from our installation CD. 3. KNOWN PROBLEMS i) Only "Tweak" Settings of BlasterControl Appears Windows 95 (retail version) users may see only the "Tweak" of BlasterControl after first installation. If this happens, reinstall the display driver to get the full BlasterControl control applet. ii) Windows 98 Multimonitor Support a) When 2 or more TNT cards are installed in a system, you may experience a corrupted screen or a random hang after repeatedly changing display resolutions. Please check with Creative's technical support. b) Please ensure that you have monitors connected to your VGA adapters if you are attempting to use Multimonitor support. If you did not and attempted to configure the TNT card, you might have problems using Multimonitor support. If you have this problem please run ASD.exe from your Windows directory and select the TNT card before re-attempting to configure the Multimonitor with the monitors attached again. iii) A machine with the retail version of Windows 95 reports "Unable to Load Display Driver." Windows 95 attaches a generic PCI VGA display adapter driver to any card it does not immediately recognize. When the TNT driver loads, Windows 95 fails to detach the generic driver. This is fixed with the OSR2 release of Windows 95. To fix this, do the following: a) Go to Start\Control Panel\System\Device Manager. b) Double click on "Other Devices." c) Highlight "PCI VGA-Compatible Display Adapter" and click on the "Remove" button. d) Click "OK" and restart the system. e) The system should prompt you to install the TNT driver. f) Install the TNT driver; the system will reboot and should recognize the TNT card. v) In Windows 98, the system hangs when running a screensaver while the "Display Properties" window is open. Please check with Creative's technical support. 4. GENERAL NOTES i) DMPS Certain motherboards lockup system when going into low-power standby mode. To go around this problem, disable the DPMS feature in the motherboard BIOS. ii) AGP version - applicable to Graphics Blaster AGP version only. a) Windows 95 OSR 2.1 Only OSR 2.1 version (with USB supplement) of Windows 95 has the system files that supports AGP. To check whether your Windows 95 is a OSR 2.1, look into this registry key: HKEY_LOCATE_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ The data for VersionNumber should be 4.03.1212 and above. b) AGP Aperture The motherboard's BIOS setting for AGP Aperture should be 8MB and above. Otherwise the DirectDraw/Direct3D will fail to use hardware acceleration (HAL). c) GART Vxd The installation disk contains GART (Graphics Address Remap Table) Vxd for Intel chipset (LX440) only. For motherboard with other chipset type, please check the availability of similar Vxd from your motherboard/chipset manufacturer. For VIA motherboard, make sure you are using VIAGART.VXD version 2.0 and above. This Vxd can be obtained from the motherboard manufacturer.