Installing a G400 while smoking crack...

[Genom]

At least that is what I must have done. Yesterday I decided I had to play HL no matter what (yes, I'm an addict) so I laoded it up and cringed at the glitches and crashes. So I procedded to do a complete uninstall of the matrox drivers as they say on their web page and then re-installed 5.13

Kingpin still craches, and Q3 also crashes sometimes now, but HL, OMG! I was playing at 1184x846x32 (yes, it DOES support it) and while I didnt have a FPS counter, most maps where very smooth. Just bounce dropped framerates a bit but thats got very large open areas and it was still playable. Now if only the drivers would support 1280x960

Anyways, my apologies for bitching about HL performance, aparently that was my mistake somehow. BUT Kingpin still crashes

[billko]

Genom:

You might try using the Matrox uninstaller. It cleans things up so thoroughly that you'd better have your Windows 9X CD handy so that you can install the VGA drivers!

Bill

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People call me a computer god; I remind them that I am merely a minor deity...

[Maggi]

Hi Genom !

Apologies taken

but you said:
I was playing at 1184x846x32 (yes, it DOES support it)

I guess you meant 1152x864x32

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Cheerio,
Maggi

I used to have some posts in my record and hopefully some of the guys 'n' girls will still know me and my system ...

[This message has been edited by Maggi (edited 07-13-99).]

[agallag]

Oh crap. I just realized that once my G400Max arrives, I'll have to go get a new damn monitor. I couldn't possibly leave all that untapped potential in the G400. My crappy 17" monitor only goes up to 1024x768. I think I need a new (less expensive) hobby.

------------------
Andrew Gallagher - agallagh42@yahoo.com
Asus P2B-S, PII-350, 64MB PC100, MillG200 8MB, SBLive! Retail, Win98SE

[casket]

agallag,
Save your money, and buy a big screen TV. I got a 27" Toshiba H50(650 lines) TV Out is great...although you have to play with the settings. I just wish i had a bigger TV... like a 31" Panasonic SuperFlat.

[Genom]

billko: I'll give it a shot. What I did was print out the instructions from matrox's site and follow them. Although I did notice when I re-installed that it detected some old powerdesk settings that for the life of me I couldnt find.

Maggi:

Yes. I meant 1152x864x32. Dammit I SAID I must have been smoking crack. That gives me a blank sheet for excuses including but not limited too, stupidity, excitement, drugs, booze, women, and other types of stimulants

Tongiht I'll try removing everyhitng again and seeing if that fixes it.

BTW, does anybody have any g200clk settings to suggest? I have gotten the pll clock to 280Mhz (it says, dont look at me funny dammit) but the other settings I tried the default sugested in the manual and my image just goes nuts. Can someone with a reg g400 and using g200clk suggest anything here?

Thanks



[This message has been edited by Genom (edited 07-13-99).]

[Himself]

agallag,

Get HZTool, it will allow you to use higher monitor resolutions than what your monitor definition file suggests, you might not be able to do 100Hz refresh or something but if my 14" monitor can do 1152,864, your 17" can do as much.

[voyager]

Genom:

I have gotten my G400 DH to 285Mhz and it is reasonably stable. 286 Mhz crashes a lot. I have played with the memory timings and found that 1 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 10 10 works well if it takes, but often (most times) crashes at load. If it takes, the system stays stable for a long time. I think there is a timing issue with changing anything more than the PLL Clock. Twice I have had it stable at 286 Mhz with the memory timings suggested above and got over 1 fps better in Expendable average from my usual 285 Mhz with no other tweaks.

Increasing the refresh rate seems to aid stability at overclocked speeds by using a smaller number (actually a divisor) helps stability a bit, but I have experienced crashes just increasing refresh rate, which is why I think there is a timing problem with G200CLK and the G400 chip.

I even played with the clock dividers and set Mclk and GCLK to 1 and set a 153Mhz PLL speed, which appears to be the upper limit to my fan-cooled G400 chip, as the RAM has been tested stable to 190Mhz. Performance is better at 142.5/190Mhz.

Last night I ran the G400 at 110Mhz FSB speed (73Mhz AGP speed) o/ced to 285Mhz and it worked, but my CPU, a Celeron 366, was real marginal at 605Mhz. It would never complete a full 15 tests in 3D Mark 99 Max, but if I aborted it prior to the end, I could get the regular and synthetic scores. I got 4881 3D Marks and 5740 Synthetic CPU 3Dmarks. At 578Mhz (5.5*105Mhz) those scores are 4703 and 5436 respectively.

One tip with 3DMark 99 Max. In the two games, the maximum refresh rate set for the test resolution may affect scores. If too low, it will limit maximum fps that can be achieved. If too high, the time that it takes to generate the raster eats into processing time. So my optimum scores come at 72Hz. I saw a peak fps of 67Hz in the first person game at 800x600x16.

Greg

[Genom]

OK guys. I did a fresh install of the 5.13 drivers afetr using the matrox util to remove everything. Nothing else running in the background. Used g200clk to set the pll to 280. Here are my 3dmark results. Note I left everything set to defaults. Didnt tuern on 32bit zbuffer on the card, nothing. As you'll notice I must have a prob with my AGP aperture or something cause over 16MB it slows down WAY too much, but is at 300+ fps with 2MB. Tell me what ya'll think. This is a NON max board.

3DMark Project:
3DMark Build Version: 200
Date: 7/14/99
Time: 12:00:00 AM
Project Name:Fresh install
Comments: G200clk set to 280Mhz
P3-450~556
384MB 8ns SDRAM

Project Settings (Template):
Rendering Platform: Internal (Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head - English)
Resolution: 800*600
Color Depth: 16-bit Color
CPU Optimization: Intel(r) Pentium(r) III
Z-Buffer: 16-bit
Frame Buffer: Triple buffering
Refresh Rate: VSync Off
Looping: Disabled
Texture Format: 16-bit, 4444 RGBA
Run Tests: Once
Title Screen: Shown

Test Results:
3DMark Result : 5,525 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed : 8,597 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score : 2,218 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race: 60.1 FPS
Game 2 - First Person: 51.1 FPS
Fill Rate : 232.9 MTexels/s
Fill Rate With Multi-Texturing : 235.5 MTexels/s
2MB Texture Rendering Speed: 363.1 FPS
4MB Texture Rendering Speed: 287.8 FPS
8MB Texture Rendering Speed: 119.2 FPS
16MB Texture Rendering Speed: 26.4 FPS
32MB Texture Rendering Speed: 10.1 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 3-pass: 114.0 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 2-pass: 148.5 FPS
Bump Mapping Emboss, 1-pass: 262.7 FPS
Point Sample Texture Filtering Speed: 111.5 %
Bilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 100.0 %
Trilinear Texture Filtering Speed: 68.9 %
Anisotropic Texture Filtering Speed: Not Supported
6 Pixel/individual: 2,377.4 KPolygons/s
6 Pixel/strips: 3,372.0 KPolygons/s
25 Pixel/individual: 2,156.5 KPolygons/s
25 Pixel/strips: 2,275.8 KPolygons/s
50 Pixel/individual: 1,372.6 KPolygons/s
50 Pixel/strips: 1,466.9 KPolygons/s
250 Pixel/individual: 519.2 KPolygons/s
250 Pixel/strips: 559.4 KPolygons/s
1000 Pixel/individual: 171.9 KPolygons/s
1000 Pixel/strips: 187.8 KPolygons/s

System:
Windows Version: Windows 4 A , Build 2222
DirectX Version: 4.06.03.0518
Bios Version: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Bios Date: 02/09/99
Total Physical Memory: 384 MB
Free Physical Memory: 284 MB

Processor:
Processor Type: Intel Pentium III
Processor Speed: 560 MHz
Processor Caps: MMX SSE
L1 Cache Size: 32 KB
L2 Cache Size: 512 KB

Desktop:
2D Display Adapter Name: Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head - English
2D Display Adapter Driver Date: 6-30-1999
Monitor Name: ViewSonic PS790
Monitor Driver Date: 4-23-1999
Desktop Resolution: 1280*1024
Desktop Color Depth: 16-Bit Color

3D Accelerator:
Name: Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head - English
Driver Name: G400DD32.DLL
Driver Version: 4.11.01.1130
Total Video Memory On Card: 32,698 KB
Total Texture Memory: 88,506 KB
Bus: AGP

Supported Features:
16-bit Rendering
32-bit Rendering
Point Sampling
Point Sampling With Mip-Mapping
Bilinear Filtering
Bilinear Filtering With Mip-Mapping
Trilinear Filtering
Specular Gouraud Shading
Vertex Fox
Table Fog
W-Fog
Sub-Pixel Accuracy
Alpha Blending
Addivitive Alpha Blending
Multiplicative Alpha Blending
Vertex Alpha Blending
Vertex And Texture Alpha Blending

Supported 3D Display Modes:
320*200, 16bit color
320*240, 16bit color
320*400, 16bit color
400*300, 16bit color
512*384, 16bit color
640*400, 16bit color
640*480, 16bit color
800*600, 16bit color
1024*768, 16bit color
1152*864, 16bit color
1280*1024, 16bit color
1600*1200, 16bit color
320*200, 32bit color
320*240, 32bit color
320*400, 32bit color
400*300, 32bit color
512*384, 32bit color
640*400, 32bit color
640*480, 32bit color
800*600, 32bit color
1024*768, 32bit color
1152*864, 32bit color
1280*1024, 32bit color
1600*1200, 32bit color

Supported Texture Formats:
16-bit, 565 RGB
16-bit, 4444 RGBA
16-bit, 5551 RGBA
15-bit, 555 RGB
32-bit, 8888 RGBA
24-bit, 888 RGB

[M Ragsdale]

Yeah, try setting AGP AP. to 128mb

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Is this some kind of bust?
Yes, it's very impressive.

[Genom]

As a conclusion to this thread, I just noticed my AGP was set to 1X. I forced 2X and now my 32MB texture rendering is over 100fps so that was basically my problem.

So, anybody wanna buy this board so I can get me a max later? Guranteed to OC to 280Mhz PLL acording to g200clk.

But really, I am surprised at the scores I get. Soon as the new opengl driver is out that evberybody is talking about I doubt I would actually buy a MAX.

OK, I'm lying, but at least I'll wait to actually sell this board before buying it

OK, I'm lying again. Forget it.