4SDA5+ & ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP Problem

[East2002]

I bought a Sapphire ATI Radeon 256Mb HD 2400 PRO (AGP) and am having no luck getting it to work.

My specs are:

CPU:P4 2.4
Motherboard: Epox 4SDA5+ (SiS 648)
AGP: 4X/8X (1.5V)
PSU: 400W Jeantech JNP-400 P (+12V1=15A, +12V2=17A)
MEMORY: 1Gb DDR (single strip)
IDE0: 300Gb Seagate HDD
IDE1: 80Gb Seagate HDD
RAID0: 60Gb Seagate HDD
IDE2: DVD-ROM
IDE3: DVD-RW
OS: Win XP SP2 (inc. all updates and Direct X 9.0c)
Fans: 1 CPU, 1 Chassis
Other: SiS AGP miniport driver - latest from SiS website on 17/12/2007
BIOS: sda52c03

When I installed the card with the drivers from the CD, the screen resolution was set to 640X480 in 4Bit colour and COULD NOT BE CHANGED. I then went into safe mode and used the ATI Unistall from add/remove programes and re-booted.

I then installed only the display driver from the latest Sapphire drivers online, once installed the screen goes blank with an _ (underscore) blinking in the top left hand corner.

I have also tried the omega drivers but again have the blank screen after rebooting / "Welcome to Windows".

I have read a lot on various forums and cannot find a solution. I cannot force my AGP settings to 4X in BIOS or disable FAST WRITE as there is no option for this.

I have already raised a ticked with Sapphire Tech but have had no reply. I have also contacted ATI/AMD but like a lot of other people I just get the "current driver not certified, wait until (possibly) Catalyst 7.12".

All this just to squeeze a little more life out of my setup before starting a new build mid next year...

Has anyone else come across this? or is there anything else I can try before ATI/AMD release Catalyst 7.12?

SE