Help with ATI 9700 Pro & Overriding SmartGart!

[Unibrow]

Hello!
I have an ATI 9700 Pro 128MB, and it has performed well for about a year now. However, after installing Ground Control II, a message pops up telling me that AGP speed is disabled.
I thought this was incorrect, but I was wrong; SmartGart says the AGP Speed is disabled, along with FastWrite. Thus, I investigated the matter and ran the SmartGart Utility via Start -> Run -> "SmartGart". There I found that the AGP settings were disabled.
I then proceeded to enable all settings there, and FastWrite and an AGP Speed of 8x. After rebooting, all of these settings were still disabled. I tried the procedure several times to no avail.
I have check the BIOS, and it is capable of 8x AGP (Asus A7N8X-X mobo), and FastWrite is enabled there.
I am using an older version of the Catalyst drivers that date back to 11/13/03. I have not updated because they work well with Counter-Strike, and I have noticed in the past when I've updated, the performance has actually decreased.
Thus, I am wondering how can I fix this problem? Or, how can I override SmartGart settings to enable AGP speed?
Thanks in advance!

[Unibrow]

Anyone have an idea?

[fishybawb]

What motherboard do you have? Installing the right mobo drivers usually helps, particularly for boards using Intel chipsets.

[Unibrow]

Like I said in my first post, I have an Asus A7N8X-X mobo, running an XP 2600+. I updated the Cat drivers to v4.6, but that did not solve the problem.

[kevrob1]

Do you have the latest AMD miniport driver for your os? Also you might consider a more up to date cat driver as they have resolved a bunch of issues.

[Unibrow]

4.6 is latest version. CORRECTION: I have A7V8X-X mobo, not the N. Because of this, I updated the via chipset with the Via 4 in 1 Hyperion and now all is fixed except that I can't enable AGP Write. Any ideas?

[Unibrow]

Does anyone know how to enable the AGP Write?

[kevrob1]

Have you tried enabling it in the bios?

[kevrob1]

I see that from your original post you tried to enable fast writes in the bios of the mobo, can you set it again and also turn it on in the properties of the display from within windows?