New PC to go with Marvel G400?

[DenisL]

Hi everyone,

After 18 months of succesfully using a marvel g200 on my pentium 2 450 PC, I'm about to buy a new one and I need suggestions to configure a new one with minimal (read NO)hardware conflict. In order of preference, I would like:

Marvel G400
Pentium III 667EB or 733EB processor
128 MB SDRAM
SB live (Value, Xgamer or MP3?)
ASUS MB (I currently have P2b, should I go for P3B-F? what about P3C?)
2x 40 or 50 Gb EIDE hard disk (is quantum Fireball LM 7200 OK?)
HP 9210i CD RW

Any suggestions on a decent 19in Monitor?

Thanks

Denis

[Brian Ellis]

You forgot to mention a few prayers to the Almighty, a rabbit's foot, touching (or knocking on) wood and crossed fingers in your spec.

No-one, but no-one, can forecast what will work and what won't. E.g., my first tries were with an Asus P2B m/b with a similar CPU to yours, 128 Mb, 3 UDMA HDDs, choice of SB16 and SB Live! There was NO way I could get Marvel to work on it. After six months of trying, including all the help from this and the MUG forums, I changed the m/b and, lo and behold, everything worked fine within an hour. Yet you say you're happy with the P2B. I've had severe problems with other Asus m/bs on non-video apps, incl. speech recognition. So there you are. My advice is to go to a friendly dealer, and tell him you want a computer with your spec and get him to demo that it works correctly before buying. (Actually, this is what I did with the changed m/b).

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Brian (the terrible)

[Mark C]

If you go with SB Live, beware of the supplied driver. For me they caused windows GPFs on loading ant any time sound was attempted. Apparently due to the new PIIIs.

New drivers from creativelabs.com sorted it, since then it been great.

I'm using the Marvel g400, a PIII500E-FC on the Soyo 6BA+IV with 2xATA33 AND 2xATA66 - lovely!!

Mark

[DenisL]

Thanks for all answers.

Can someone from Matrox tell me their usual set-up? I would think that they have a preferreed configuration for development and testing. Might as well use the same. If it works well for matrox, it should work well for me!

The motherboard seems to be the critical element. What brand/model motherboard seems to cause the least problems? I remember now having some problems initially with my ASUS P2B, but were solved with new matrox drivers.

Thanks again.