Finally getting my new (Mike's) Athlon!

[Bixler]

Having sucessfully palmed off my old K63/SS7 system to the wife for schoolwork, my new comp will be arriving in pieces/parts over the next few days.

New Stuff:
One of Greebe's O/C'd Athlon's @ 650
MSI 6195
128 meg Crucial PC Memory
BigAss case and Athlon Approved 300W PS
External USR 56K voicemodem (USB/Serial)

Old Stuff:
Old faithful Marvel G200 TV with DVD Module
WD UDMA66 Hdd on a Promise Ultra 66 PCI Controller
WD UDMA33 Hdd
Acer CDRW
Creative DXR2 DVD
HPT3000 tape backup
POS flatbed scanner (parallel)
Serial based PaprPort scanner.

Any headsups or suggestions about conflicts/incompatibilities would be much appreciated. I'm particularly interested in whether any Athlon users with the DVD Module have had any problems with the 5.52 drivers. I'm pretty sure that I'll ditch the Promise controller unless someone want's to tell me why I shouldn't.

--and of course any other headaches I can avoid while plugging up.

Will stay with Win98 (98Lite from a clean reinstall)

[Hunsow]

Does Mike know you got one of his Athlons? Hehehe

[Bixler]

Not until the check clears.

[RAB]

Congrats, Tim. But I seem to remember you saying that you didn't play games so you didn't need anything faster than a K6-3. Don't tell me the game bug has hit you!

RAB

[Bixler]

Dream on, buddy!

I remind myself of a Corvette owner who's afraid of the gas pedal.

Of course with a 650, it would be a used Corvette.

I do intend to do a lot of video editing and cd burning, as well as DVD use, and was still having some problems with Via and Busmastering...and otherwise just tired of constant tweaking and 4in1 updates that didn't work.

But you will note that I'm still staying outside the Wintel Hegemony...at least trying to. Wish me luck!

Now if only NS 6 would release out of Beta, I'd be a really happy camper.

[CHHAS]

Grats on the new system Bixler

You know, that Athlon 650 would be a great addition to Team SETI@MURC

How about it ?

We need more power !!!

------------------
,HS61 004G ,mar BM 691 , 065@005 iamtaK
BG 31 0234 rotxaM, BG 03 +04 rotxaM

[Alfie]

Congrats,Tim
I guess I'm next in line!

[RAB]

Alfie,
If you get an Athlon, I'll be the only K6 user left. I still have six months to go if I'm to stick with my once a year upgrade schedule. Things have really changed fast this past six months.

RAB

[Greebe]

Just recieved your check this afternoon... will deposit on Monday.

[Bixler]

Having just today WASTED another 2+hours of installs and reboots playing around with the new W9x drivers and Vidtools, I've got a question for Athloners out there. Am I in for the same difficulties with driver updates with the Irongate Chipset as I've become used to with the Via's I currently have?

It was really dissapointing to go through the whole process to find that the new 5.55's BSOD on 3D apps just like all the others since 5.41. I know, I know, it's the substandard VIA's at fault, but are Athlon users doing alright on the 5.5x's??

I was especially pleased to find several bugs fixed in the new Vidtools...Audio out works at full volume through the BOB and is triggered without having to load the PC/VCR remote, a minor but irritating problem that has long needed fixing.

[Alfie]

Ok Rab,
I'll wait,can't leave you alone out there
Tim,
After going through the super7 routine,you're well prepared!
Just follow the guidelines!Latest bios,drivers and the miniport driver(s)available from AMD.
I think I'll wait until the Duron is released and see what is happening.
So,I'm cheap!
Hopefully Greebe will figure out how to overclock the socket design(shorting pins or something like that)
As I'm seeing the 5.55's are working with g400's,will give them a try,Tim.
If you don't here from me,they failed

[Bixler]

Rab & Alfie:

I feel a little guilty jumping off the bandwagon a little ahead of schedule. Rab, you are to be commended for your discipline...I just had the opportunity and jumped. Opportunity must be exploited fully when it is made available.

I'm still posting this on my K63, and will probably stay here for a week or two. This time, I will have the luxury of not being in any kind of hurry, as I don't need to rip the plug out of the wall until late July.

That should give me plenty of time to play before I'm stuck.

For the record, I bought Greebe's CPU out of gratefulness for all the feedback and helpfulness of this community, and I intend to stay around, gaining what inklings I can from the experts out there who lurk around for learners like me.

In the meantime, I've become a minor expert on the care and feeding of the Matrox DVD Hardware Module for G200's, and am the proud owner of a FINALLY working piece of hardware that outperforms anything in software or hardware to date.

Seriously, you should see this thing do it's stuff when the software and drivers are right....Problem is, it's gonna keep me using my Marvel G200TV for YEARS longer.

If anyone out there has an older DVD Drive, a machine that can stay in W9x and uses the G-200, you've got an under $100.00 DVD Movie solution that Kicks butt.

WOW the picture quality is something!

[RAB]

Bixler,
I'm really envious and glad you have an opportunity to upgrade. I'll follow, but it will be a while. I promised myself that I wouldn't buy anymore stuff until I finished the MCSE. Its a little bit harder than I thought, but certainly within my reach.

I'm a bit surprised that the 5.5x drivers don't work with the AMD chipset. I thought the latest AGP drivers from AMD fixed a lot of problems. Assuming you have these, apparently the D3D crashes with a G200 are not fixed, which indicates that maybe its not VIA afterall.

I haven't heard the latest on the G200 and the DVD add-on board. Has Matrox followed through on its promise to you to improve the software? From your post, it seems so, but what happened? I'm curious because I have a G200 Mystique that I thought I might one day turn it into a DVD player/computer connected to the TV.

Thanks,
RAB

[Bixler]

RAB: They may already have discontinued them at least on their website, but yes, there has been a LOT of progress in the past few months. Matrox won't invest any more development time in bug fixes for the software, (they only sold a couple thousand of these things worldwide) but the new 5.55 Drivers for W98 are a noticeable improvement with the bundled Navigator software for the module, and the software navigator has always been the biggest problem with this hardware.

The big news for us orphans is that MGI, the company that bought out Zoran (who coded the OEM navigator for Matrox) released a new Software Player (MGI SoftDVDMax Ver. 3.5) that supports the module, and the idiots at MGI don't even know it. I've posted lots of testing info and tips about this issue here:
http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/000290.html

I can honestly say that at this point I couldn't be happier with the performance of this hardware, and the Picture quality is absolutely stunning! Any other hardware solution out there except the Matrox module has to Kluge the pure digital stream back to analog via a pass-through cable that induces noise and interference.

Software players are CPU hogs, even in faster newer machines, and I've heard from Module users that the pure software players are still not up to the quality of the G-200 module decoding.

So, yes, if you're thinking of using an older, slower machine, I'd say with a little tweaking and setup the Mod would be a good solution.--But don't expect any support in W2K--it won't happen.

Lord help the poor Newbie who just buys one of these things and plugs it in, though.

You might want to go ahead and get a discounted or slower DVD Drive now or at least ASAP. The newer models are coming out with enhanced region code security called RCP2 that will be causing many headaches to hackers and rippers, or people who want to defeat the region security scheme of the MPAA.

[RAB]

Tim,
You really did a lot of work on the DVD hardware and software. Matrox ought to reward you! But like you said, its complicated and I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle it right now. Maybe it will be better to keep the G200 in my wife's work machine and move the G400 to the TV machine. Oh well, that's for another day.

I did try to get another DVD-ROM drive recently, but the prices have really gone up. I couldn't find a 6x Toshiba like I have in my newest machine anywhere in Atlanta. They are sold out, I guess. It was just $80 six months ago. Now the 8x drives are the slowest you can get, but they are $110. What happened to DVD-ROM prices? A 37.5% increase in six months is ridiculous. Must be that the consumers are paying for the new "improved" region protection. I'm not planning to rip out of region DVD's so that doesn't really matter, but the price increase does. I was so taken with sticker shock that I walked out without a new DVD-ROM and haven't been back since.

RAB

[This message has been edited by RAB (edited 23 May 2000).]