Intel or AMD for Marvel G400: A quandary

[dieulinh]

Greetings,

I have problem with the Marvel G400 and would appreciate if anyone can provide a lead.

I just got a Marvel-400 and have been having trouble using it with my system (Asus P5A + AMD K6-3@450 + 128M RAM + SBLive! Value + Win98 SE). My system crashed rather randomly and sometimes wouldn't even boot because of "windows protection error"). After a week or so of tweaking around (un/reinstalling, playing with the BIOS, using different drivers, etc) to no avail, I tried the card on my wife's Celeron 466 with only 64M RAM, and it ran without a hitch.

So this is quite a quandary for me, because I've always been fond of supporting AMD. My next dream machine would probably be an Athlon-powered system. But on the other hand, there are tens of clips of my 7-month daughter waiting to be edited to send to her grands.

If anyone has the same problem and found a way to fix it, please help me out. Also, if any of you has successfully used the Marvel G400 on an Athlon-based system, please discuss about your experiences on the forum (or send me private emails at vu@uwm.edu). Thanks.

Just one more note about my system: there is no conflict, no IRQ sharing with the Marvel, and I am using all the latest BIOS, drivers, and software available.

Vu~

[RoGuE]

Unfortunately super-socket-7 systems are known for reliability issues. To be fair though, some work without a hitch. A Windows protection error generally means that windows has got a problem with the CPU speed.

I have used/currently own/or have set up many SS7, Athlon and Intel systems. The Athlon is great (I have one) but as far as reliability goes, no Athlon system I've used is as stable as an equivalent Intel one. Unfortunate, but true IMHO.

------------------
aka Chris H

[dieulinh]

Chris,

If the problem is really with the fragility of the super-7 platform then there's nothing I can do except for upgrading my mobo/cpu combo.

My system had been working fine with an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro AGP, albeit I never did any serious video editing or similarly system-taxing stuffs in this configuration.

Btw, I suspect that my ALI AGP driver (version 1.0) may be the culprit. I checked ALI's website and found that the latest version is 1.65. The release note for this version says "support for Matrox G400 added". I will try this route and see if it cures my problem.

One more thing about the socket 7 versus Intel issue. My K6-3@450, which is the flagship of the socket-7 line, works just fine for business applications, but as soon as I use it for multimedia content creation (for example, Xing Mpeg Encoder or RealJuke Box MP3 converter), its performance is about 20-30% lower than that of my wife's Celeron@466 with 64M RAM. This indicator perhaps can be useful for people who are considering low-end machines for multimedia creation.

As for me, I am still waiting for a stable Athlon configuration to come out that can work reliably with my Marvel G400. I really don't like the other option (i.e. P3/Coppermine) because of the (low) performance/price ratio.

Vu~

[This_Idiot]

Just to add a few cents

During a casual ICQ conversation with Kris, he mentioned that (in hs opinion), the problem with AMD/Cyrix etc was not inherent to the processors, but more to do with the lack of standardisation of the supporting motherboard chipsets (via, SIS, ALI etc).

Another friend of mine recently mentioned that the K7 motherboards are manufactured by AMD also, and therefore many of these problems have disappeared.

I'd be interested on other folks points of view on this.

[Riktar]

Head over to the tips and tricks section and check out the ALI V and the RR-s/Marvel tip. I have found that in most cases it will solve Matrox/ALI V problems

[kidspot]

While I'm new on the NLE scene, my Athlon is really stable with the Marvel, I've run into a few software crashes, but they are all very predictible and I don't believe them to be hardware related. My SB live has caused me some trouble that needed small hardware work arounds. Personally I think the Athlon and Marvel make a nice match.

[DrMordrid]

AMD K6/x processors are excellent products, but the problems with SS7 motherboards go beyond what annoyances can be fixed by meerly disabling the cache pipelines.

At the heart of the issue is a major bug with busmastering that is present in both the MVP3 and AladdinV chipsets. Why both? Because they were created by the same designers.

Since most new AGP cards, G400 included, are heavily dependent on busmastering this limits their performance on SS7 systems. As such the only AMD systems I can recommend their use with the are those using the Athlon processor.

The only problem with the Athlon is that the list of well-featured motherboards is a short one. If you can find the Asus it's the best one at this point.

If you aren't planning on an Athlon then go for a PIII. Software has reached the point where the SIMD instructions are worth the cost. The price on the 450/500's is now in a decent range.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 07 December 1999).]

[dieulinh]

Good news! I updated the ALI M1541 AGP driver to the newest version (1.65), and so far everything is smooth sailing. My system still locks up a couple of times when running Matrox techdemo in high quality, but that happens with the Celeron system, too.
Also, DVD playback is still very jerky.

I was also pleased with the prompt reply I got from Matrox tech support regarding this problem.

Still dreaming about an Athlon system though :-)

Thank you all for your shares of thought.

Vu~