Matrox problems

[jonkrol]

I have been coming to this forum for a while now, at least once a day to see if there are any new driver updates for the G200 that I purchased a year and a half ago. In the interim, I have purchased the TV out adapter and memory upgrade for my card. I'm not trying to flame the card but I bought my card based on the hype I read on this forum as well as others. While the card performs ok in general use with the origional drivers that came with it, all of the driver upgrades have not worked on my card forcing me to return to my old drivers (4.11). I have had all the problems that have been kicked around here regarding that card, no agp 2x, PD lock ups, no OpenGL driver, etc.. When I heard the G400 was coming out, this time I thought I would wait before I spent money on that card. It seems that was a wise decision. I was starting to get caught up in the hype about this card once again. There seems to be more of the same kind of issues with the 400 as there were with the 200. The posts on this forum seem to run 10 to 1 of people with issues, and pretty severe ones at that, rather than people who don't. I'm going to stay with my G200 for a little while longer but I don't think I will purchase another Matrox card. I read these posts of people having problem after problem and no fixes on sight. Matrox seems to turn a deaf ear. I remember the talk that all these problems would never show up on the 400, Matrox wouldn't do that. Now people are talking about the G600 or what ever it will be called and surely this won't happen again it just seems to be the same old stuff.

[Zwisch]

If you tell us your specs and problem, maybe we could help... mmost people managed to fix their problems through here and I think that all video cards have issues, we just need to find what' wrong.. usualy related to system specs or configuration and not the card itself.... As for Matrox, you would be surprized but I think that they do listen to what the clients have to say, proof of that is that there are at least 3 official people from Matrox Tech Support on the forum regurlarly and no one knows how many of them are posting anonymously... so they are presnt and we, other users such as you, are willing to help you find the problem, if you give us the chance... btw, better post this in the matrox hardware section since it is related directly to them...

[paul]

Jonkrol - My previous cards to the g200 (1st the Diamond Stealth Graphics 2000, then the Diamond Stealth 3d 2000) had their share of quirks. This was also 4 years ago, and there wasn't much to the technology (d3d/opengl,sound). From what other people post in general newgroups, you could have any card and motherboard and still have incompatabilities, bad drivers, flaky hardware. For what it's worth, I finally got 5.25 to work and it's not a bit faster or better than 4.51 with the icd beta2. Try downloading that version, it's better than previous

------------------
k6-3 450 @500 - tyan 1590s bios 1.16 - wdac310100 - g200 mill sgram w/8mb upgrade & bios 2.6-20 PD 5.25 - AGP1x - 128MB 10ns sdram - sblive value 2.1 - 3com 3c905b-tx - cable access (28.8k for emergencies) - win98 service pack 1 + 2
dx7

[Kruzin]

And the reason you see more posts of people with problems than people without is because that's what this place is for. If people are not having problems, they usually don't look for forums like this to start with.

For the record...I have had NO problems with my G200 or G400

And Zwish is right...who knows how many Matrox tech employees actually post here...I suspect there is more than is generally known

[jonkrol]

Thanks for the response guys. I really like the video quality of this card, colors and sharpness(G200) but I've upgraded the drivers all the way up to 5.25 and I've had problems with all of them other than 4.11. The video gets corrupted in open GL games using the newer drivers, or PD either locked up my machine or locked the screen resolution at 640x480@16 colors. I had to reformat my hard drive to loose the offending files, I get, even now, random short white lines through my picture. I'm afraid to try 5.30 for fear of having to reformat and load my programs again. I guess the card is running fine (with the lines) now but only because I don't mess with any settings. My main point is that when this card came out it was supposed to improve over time as more mature drivers came out but those drivers never showed up, if anything they got worse. Now with the 400, the same thing seems to be happening. Total, I have spent over 200.00 bucks on this card and accessories and a year later, there are still problems with the drivers performing properly. I haven't gone to any of the other graphics card sites to learn of their problems but it seems to me that Matrox has quite a few that seem to repeat themselves not only on an individual card basis but on a cross generational basis. I'm not a computer chip designer but I know that Matrox designs some pretty high end graphics cards for the computer graphics and cad industries. I'm not aware of any problems they may be having with those cards. I do know one thing, if the cards have problems, people won't but them. Any way thanks for your help.
Regards,
Jon

[Zwisch]

jonkrol, have you tried updating your BIOS on your card? What type of system and mobo are you using? I do not think that drivers are to blame but either your settings or simply a defective card... Drivers were a good improvement for me...

[Alfie]

Have the g200 and have gone through all the driver's with no major problems,and have enjoyed the steady improvements(excluding 5.30,problems with certian mobo'sThe 5.25 is quite good.
Why don't you,as already stated,post your system specs and irq's,also state your specific problems and we all can help you get the most out of your g200.

[BrownEyes]

When I heard about the new Matrox card I rushed to the store to buy one as soon as they head it available. The last 4 cards I bought were all Matrox because of the clear image it produces, and the good drivers. As the time passes, and other manufacturers come up strong with new innovations and techniques (today's low-end 3d cards are still acceptable) I now tend to look at other cards as well, like nVidia Riva cards. If Matrox doesn't get their act together they will probably loose me as customer in the future, sorry to say. My RainbowRunner set will not be upgraded to AGP version. I'm just afraid it's not worth the money anymore.

Ramon

[jonkrol]

My system consists of:
AMD K6/2 300 not o/c'd
Epox MVP3G-M rev.4
128 Megs PC100
Matrox G200 w/16 Meg sgram and TV out adapter
SB Live value
Maxtor 5.6 gig HD (C
Seagate 1.0 gig HD (D
LS 120 internal
Pacific Digital 2x2x6 CDRW (D
HP Deskjet 712c
Mustek 600 III EP scanner
Mobo has the latest bios installed with the latest Via chipset drivers. The G200 has the latest bios installed also. The SB has the drivers that came with the card installed. The G200 is on IRQ 12 I believe with no other devices shared on it and there are no conflicts listed anywhere. The SB was installed in the furthest PCI slot away from the AGP slot. The SB is on IRQ 5 I think, it's been a while since I checked all that. Thats about it, oh a Best Data cheepo 56k modem purchased recently, my previous one took a elec. spike and died but the problems were happening long before the change out. The white lines that I mentioned appear when an application closes down and change position as the screen image changes. They are very short, only about an inch long. sometimes there are a few other times there are many. Iused to have a Diamond Stealth 2k w/ 4megs and the image differance was day and night between the two cards. One other thing, the G200 has a fan on the heat sink, a 486 fan. At one time several months ago I installed the MGA Tweak pgm to force AGP 2x but ran into problems with corrupted video. The image had white lines radiating in all directions and got worse over the course of a minute or so until the screen image was obscured. As I said in the earlier post 5.30 drivers did not work as did 5.25 and 4.51. I don't recall about 4.33 as thats been a while but I did try them. So Doc, whats the prognosis?
Again, thanks for your interest.
Regards,
Jon Krol

[Zwisch]

just to start... two very important things... did you get the 4 in 1 patch directly from VIA's web site? Second, when you installed Windwos, did you make sure that USB was enabled in your BIOS? Last but not least, do you have at least LiveWare 2.0 installed for your SBLive card?

[jonkrol]

I'm sorry, I did not install 5.30 only 5.25. didn't think when typing, and sorry for the faces.
JK
ps I will go back and check my IRQ's to let you know what is where.
JK

[jonkrol]

Yes I installed the 4in1 drivers and USB is enabled in the bios/cmos. I have not installed Livewire 2.0 but I had the problems before I got my SB Live. I had a generic 16 bit stereo card.
Jon

[jonkrol]

Addendum,
I also have tried removing the mem upgrade module and the TV out module as I read the mem module could cause problems sometimes.
Jon

[Gaiden]

This is just B*t@ing and moaning...

Just from my experiances, I've found that DISABLEING BUS-MASTERING is the best thing you can do for a G200. My problems ranged from VXD errors on bootup just after login, before initializing OGL while playing OGL game (didn't happen often), when setting AGP1X/2X fixed that . While playing certain D3D games (non time dependant) just when certain things happend ,while using windows normally ie mp3's,word, and to top it all of my video capture card didn't work (non matrox) until I DISABLED BUS-MASTERING.

Ok so this only took me a year to find out,in between i've had video , sound , mobo,processors swapped out by my OEM and no they all work fine by themselves but put them together in the same machine and WHAM!!!

If i had money i would seriously buy a new computer and throw this one away, but i don't
so on I go....

Well my computer doesn't crash anymore , i've got my proc AMD K6-2 300 overclocked by a 100Mhz (I think the OEM put a 350 in by mistake during one of the swop outs) the G200's got a heatsink and sometimes gets overclocked (doesn't make any difference , i just hope that it'll burn out or something) and I get the amazing 3dMark MAX! score of 1097 in 800x600x16 TB 16bit-z (thats the standard res. that is starts up in I can't be bothered to change the default. compared to 1900 before)

But why does OGl not work in 5.30!!! I was hoping for all these amazing speed increases and who and behold the res. changes ,the mouse pointer flickers on... of ... on ... of and BS (Blue Screen) so now I'm back at 5.25 and able to play all my games at the measliest of speeds.

Well here's my system specs for anyone who cares/or got this far

Gigabyte mobo 5SG100 (think,SiS 5591 chipset DONT USE THEIR DRIVERS)
AMD K6-2 300/350@400(Overclocking has never been an issue on the stability side)
128mb 100Mhz ram(32x32x64)
WD 8 Gig,Samsung 1 Gig HDD
Ricoh 7040A(4x4x24) , Apac 40x CD-Rom
G200 with latest bios and 5.25
SB32 s/c with 2mb memory
10/100 3com
Aimslab videohighway extreme vid cap card

And the all important question would i buy a matrox card again....

I would like to , that's how much i loved my Mystique 4mb , it never gave problems , it had updates regularly , it looked quite nice at the games i played , moto-racer and such

The G200 has been no pleasure , besides showing ppl really beautifull screenshots while I'm trying to DM, note the clarity of the rocket sitting stationary in mid air look at the way it displays light flares to the sides , notice the beauty of VCQ , oh damn i'm dead again!

But finnally you have to give matrox one thing they keep making the card faster , for every next gen game that comes out the give us a speed bump and it runs at the same speed as last gen games. So you can get used to your style of play (some call it camping)

Thats my bitching done!
Gaiden