I'm beginning to feel like I stepped into quicksand here... 
Matt - I'm not questioning anyone's "experience", just your intepretation of what happened and your conclusions. I do insist the conclusion Kruzin related from Haig was too vague to be helpful - period. I can't replicate a problem based on what you guys are saying. Only some people are having problems with the PS, not everyone. And I know very well that the normal G400 has 6ns memory, and the MAX has 5ns memory.
Kruzin and Haig - Now what you're suggesting is that I'm doing something really malicious: dumping the existing BIOS to disk, modifying it, and then reflashing it, right? There can be nothing accidental about that process, as you both know very well. The chances of writing the correct BIOS checksum, after modifying even a single byte in the BIOS, are just too remote to make it anything but deliberate, and hence malicious. That's a pretty strong accusation: I don't care who Haig is; I'm not walking away from that kind of implied accusation...
Haig - How helpful would it be to you if I reported "The G400 screwed my system". How would Matrox Tech Support go about responding to, and fixing that "bug"? As for the PS doing nothing at all as far as your HAL tools are concerned, what can I say? I use a digital frequency counter attached to the CLKIN pin - I do this with lots of chips, and its never failed me as a method of independent verification. (Of course, this only works for the actual memory clock, not the sclk or gclk, but since these are related...)
Everyone - If you have a monitor with an OSD and you want to check the accuracy of the PLL programming done by the PS, go to the Screen adjustment page and select a custom refresh rate. Then compare what the PS does with what your monitor OSD reports - programming the pclk is very similar to programming the sclk, but its even more complex.
Kruzin and SwampLady - Difference of opinion only: Greg's PINs stuff is very clever, but I don't agree about permanent overclocking. A lot of work in PS 3.0 (the Performance Tuner thing) is in fact premised on the idea that o/c'ing is worthwhile only when it makes a difference - as it clearly does not while I'm writing this message...
SwampLady (and Agallag) - I wasn't jumping all over you because of a typo. A while back someone wrote in claiming all kinds of problems using a STB Voodoo2 card. I wasted a lot of time trying to find and borrow a BlackMagic card and see what was up, only to find out they had a Voodoo3. So to your real question: I think not. Registers are supposed to be reset to their defaults by the video BIOS on power-up. Register contents are lost when you shut down or reboot. And there is nothing remotely perfect about any software I write. You're trying to be helpful. I appreciate it. (Are we on good terms again?)
Since I'm not receiving details from you guys (not a single bug report so far, with quite a few G400 users - mostly in Asia), let me try to put this back on track with a few details on my side. Maybe someone will spot something.
1. I like Matrox cards in general, and the G400 in particular, but I have no relationship to Matrox whatsoever. I buy my boards thru the retail channel just like the average user.
2. I only have one G400 card. Its a retail, boxed, single-head 16MB card. It has a Rev-02 chip - most of you, I think, have Rev-03 chips.
3. I got my card in HK in June - iXBT suggested these were not even genuine Matrox cards, but Matrox HK assured me they were. (Just thought I'd mention that.)
4. I'm working just 20 minutes down the road from Matrox's HQ in Montreal, but to this day there are no normal and certainly no MAX G400s available anywhere around here. I don't consider the G400 support in the PS done (if anything of this sort is ever "done") until I've tested with at least one MAX.
5. I always validate cards with a digital frequency counter, but that only validates the mclk, not the gclk/sclk/wclk. (Anyone with an OSD can validate the way I write the pclk.) With all due respect to Haig, a frequency counter is *vastly* superior to software , whether it be Matrox's HAL, G4Set, G200clk, or the PS. I could be mucking up the other clocks, or dozens of other things, for sure, but if so, its accidental.
If you go back to the beginning of this thread, you'll see it was started by Paul, who's having problems with Q2 and who believes it was caused by the PS messing up his BIOS. He's reflashed his BIOS, and he *still* has problems. I repeat: there are people who have problems with the G400 who have never heard of the PS.
Now Haig - head of Matrox's Tech Support - says the PS "screwed" his card completely. A pretty heavy condemnation. Don't think for even one second that I'm not extremely concerned about what is said here.
I am not convinced the PS is doing anything that can't be fixed by a reboot. Still, I've already decided to disable G400 clock support in the next PS release, at least for the time being.
I think eveyone will agree that this is the only responsible thing to do, especially since - unlike Matrox - I don't have to support the G400 at all...

Matt - I'm not questioning anyone's "experience", just your intepretation of what happened and your conclusions. I do insist the conclusion Kruzin related from Haig was too vague to be helpful - period. I can't replicate a problem based on what you guys are saying. Only some people are having problems with the PS, not everyone. And I know very well that the normal G400 has 6ns memory, and the MAX has 5ns memory.
Kruzin and Haig - Now what you're suggesting is that I'm doing something really malicious: dumping the existing BIOS to disk, modifying it, and then reflashing it, right? There can be nothing accidental about that process, as you both know very well. The chances of writing the correct BIOS checksum, after modifying even a single byte in the BIOS, are just too remote to make it anything but deliberate, and hence malicious. That's a pretty strong accusation: I don't care who Haig is; I'm not walking away from that kind of implied accusation...
Haig - How helpful would it be to you if I reported "The G400 screwed my system". How would Matrox Tech Support go about responding to, and fixing that "bug"? As for the PS doing nothing at all as far as your HAL tools are concerned, what can I say? I use a digital frequency counter attached to the CLKIN pin - I do this with lots of chips, and its never failed me as a method of independent verification. (Of course, this only works for the actual memory clock, not the sclk or gclk, but since these are related...)
Everyone - If you have a monitor with an OSD and you want to check the accuracy of the PLL programming done by the PS, go to the Screen adjustment page and select a custom refresh rate. Then compare what the PS does with what your monitor OSD reports - programming the pclk is very similar to programming the sclk, but its even more complex.
Kruzin and SwampLady - Difference of opinion only: Greg's PINs stuff is very clever, but I don't agree about permanent overclocking. A lot of work in PS 3.0 (the Performance Tuner thing) is in fact premised on the idea that o/c'ing is worthwhile only when it makes a difference - as it clearly does not while I'm writing this message...

SwampLady (and Agallag) - I wasn't jumping all over you because of a typo. A while back someone wrote in claiming all kinds of problems using a STB Voodoo2 card. I wasted a lot of time trying to find and borrow a BlackMagic card and see what was up, only to find out they had a Voodoo3. So to your real question: I think not. Registers are supposed to be reset to their defaults by the video BIOS on power-up. Register contents are lost when you shut down or reboot. And there is nothing remotely perfect about any software I write. You're trying to be helpful. I appreciate it. (Are we on good terms again?)
Since I'm not receiving details from you guys (not a single bug report so far, with quite a few G400 users - mostly in Asia), let me try to put this back on track with a few details on my side. Maybe someone will spot something.
1. I like Matrox cards in general, and the G400 in particular, but I have no relationship to Matrox whatsoever. I buy my boards thru the retail channel just like the average user.
2. I only have one G400 card. Its a retail, boxed, single-head 16MB card. It has a Rev-02 chip - most of you, I think, have Rev-03 chips.
3. I got my card in HK in June - iXBT suggested these were not even genuine Matrox cards, but Matrox HK assured me they were. (Just thought I'd mention that.)
4. I'm working just 20 minutes down the road from Matrox's HQ in Montreal, but to this day there are no normal and certainly no MAX G400s available anywhere around here. I don't consider the G400 support in the PS done (if anything of this sort is ever "done") until I've tested with at least one MAX.
5. I always validate cards with a digital frequency counter, but that only validates the mclk, not the gclk/sclk/wclk. (Anyone with an OSD can validate the way I write the pclk.) With all due respect to Haig, a frequency counter is *vastly* superior to software , whether it be Matrox's HAL, G4Set, G200clk, or the PS. I could be mucking up the other clocks, or dozens of other things, for sure, but if so, its accidental.
If you go back to the beginning of this thread, you'll see it was started by Paul, who's having problems with Q2 and who believes it was caused by the PS messing up his BIOS. He's reflashed his BIOS, and he *still* has problems. I repeat: there are people who have problems with the G400 who have never heard of the PS.
Now Haig - head of Matrox's Tech Support - says the PS "screwed" his card completely. A pretty heavy condemnation. Don't think for even one second that I'm not extremely concerned about what is said here.
I am not convinced the PS is doing anything that can't be fixed by a reboot. Still, I've already decided to disable G400 clock support in the next PS release, at least for the time being.
I think eveyone will agree that this is the only responsible thing to do, especially since - unlike Matrox - I don't have to support the G400 at all...
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