ATI 9800 Pro and Asus A8V problems

[huntr7]

I have been trying to solve this problem for some time. Basically it seems that the ATI card just can't be stable in 3D gaming. Does anyone have any procedures to follow to get this combo stable?

BTW, I've tried the following already:
Reduce AGP to 4X
Turned off fast writes
Tried different VIA CPU to AGP controllers, currently have VIA CPU TO 2.0/3.0 AGP controller

Any new ideas/procedures to try? Is there any new ATI, ASUS or Via updates to try?

My system consists of: Asus A8v Deluxe, AMD Athlon 64 X2 +4200, 2 GB Corsair, Creative SB Live, 2 - 200 gb maxtors(IDE), 16X DVDR

[doc6886]

Did you try changing your AGP Aperture size to 64MB?

[VulgarHandle]

have u tried re-seating the heatsink on the vid card?

BIOS Settings(if they have them)
Init Display Device: AGP(may say: onboard/agp)
AGP Aperature Size: 128(or 256 if you have the 256mb 9800pro)
AGP Bus: 66

[doc6886]

Vulgar... no you don't want to set the AGP Aperture Size to what your card actually is. I had this problem with same board and same card (Asus A8V and R9800Pro 128MB) and I had to set the AGP Aperture Size to 64MB to solve the problem. There are no performance losses due to this bios as far as I know.