MarkV-Open GL & ECC Memory

[SCompRacer]

MarkV, saw your post to Iconoclast and noticed in your well equipped system you had ECC memory. Is it enabled in BIOS and if so who is the mfr. of your memory?

I get blue screen/memory parity errors with G400 OGL in Quake II and 3D Studio Max R2, must reset to reboot. If I disable ECC in BIOS, OGL works. My memory is made by Intratech.

Any info would be appreciated.

Rich O.

P II 400, stock-clock, ASUS P2B-LS w/Adaptec 7890 chipset & Intel 82558 LAN,dual 9GB Cheetahs,256MB ECC RAM (by SPD, no custom settings), Plextor Ultraplex/Plexwriter,SCSI ZIP insider,Hitachi DVD CD ROM, G400 16MB OEM, dual Monster 3D II's (get OGL to work and they are gone), Hollywood + decoder card, SB Live, US Robotics 56K and Sony 400PS.

[M Ragsdale]

Hi SCompRacer,

How do you like your Plexwriter, and is it IDE, or SCSI.

Matt

[SCompRacer]

Hello Matt,

It is SCSI. Matter of fact, Plextor only makes SCSI drives, no IDE at all but they are pricey.

It is an excellent CD-R, but only 4X12, where they have an 8X20 out now. But with the 32X Ultraplex CD ROM drive I can make a backup copy from CD to CD-R without saving to the hard drive first and burn it at 4X, a real time saver.

A Back in Nov98, MaximumPC gave it a 9 "Kick Ass." With the Plextor Disk Dupe utility they said you can even copy the mixed track Sony Playstation disc's.

[MarkV]

Hi Rich,

I got your e-mail, sorry my reply took so long but I was at work late today. Unfortunately I don't have much of an answer for you just yet. My memory was purchased 128 MB at a time from the same vendor at two local computer shows. I have no idea who makes the modules or the chips, but I will check the next time I open the case. I never put much stock in memory brands because I'm not an overclocker, so I usually just buy whatever's cheapest at the shows, or in this case from the only vendor that had ECC memory. I do have hardware ECC enabled in the BIOS, as well as every other error-detection signal available on the GX chipset and Pentium III (most of which are typically disabled) because the Supermicro boards allow you to enable them. I've had this configuration since January, and I've never had any blue screens or parity errors.

More bad news, I don't think I have a single OpenGL app on my machine, save those few screensavers that come with Windows 98. I'm going to head over to id's site right now to see if they have a freeware version of Quake II that I can download just to see if I get any similar errors, as I'm not a big fan of first person shooters. To me they all just seem like Doom rehashed time and time again, but your problem intrigues me so I will give it a go to see if I can duplicate it.

I'll keep you posted with whatever I find...I have to do something to help you get rid of those Voodoo cards!

[MarkV]

Just a quick thought, I used to have a P2B-DS motherboard and I know Asus updates their BIOSes regularly. Do you have the latest for your P2B-LS? Are you using a beta BIOS by any chance? I'm not sure how much of the ECC protocol is implemented in the CPU and chipset as opposed to the BIOS, but that's one thing that would be good to rule out. You can also check the Asus newsgroup (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus) to see if anyone else is having similar problems.

[MarkV]

Well, I downloaded Quake II demo version 3.14. Under the video options I selected "default OpenGL", and 1024x768 fullscreen with texture quality at max. I started the game and wandered around the level and killed a couple of guys. No problems at all.

Did you have to do anything particular in the game to make the parity errors happen?

[MarkV]

Another thought, did you run the Powerdesk uninstaller before loading up the drivers for your G400? I've heard in the forums that a lot of OpenGL problems are related to old drivers. The Powerdesk uninstaller (available at Matrox in the Utils section and also from the MURC downloads page) does a good job of obliterating all previous Matrox drivers, and I think it cleans up the display-related areas of the registry in general.

[SCompRacer]

No need to apologize, jobs come first. I work midnights so I am opposite everyone anyway.

You have been busy! Not even your problem and you try and solve it, thanks for assisting.

First, I do not O/C myself, just trying to pin down any common denominator of memory mfr. And as far as games go, these are the only two I own. Am lousy at both of them but the demo's sure look cool and they do great stress tests on PC's!

Been there and done that for Asus message base. I still frequent it, learn and try and help others. Have to sort too much chafe from the grain if you know what I mean. They have everything from soup to nuts there! TnT2's and VooDoo's rule there too though the G400 posts are starting to pop up alot. I did get some responses from other Asus owners with ECC memory with G400's and they have Open GL crashes too. Memory controller problems? Best response I got from there was being directed to this forum, which is specialized help for the G400 without being insulted for buying it.

As far as being up to date I am obsessive about getting and installing latest BIOS and drivers. I even updated the G400 BIOS today. As far as G400 drivers, I had DL and installed latest drivers on first install.

In Open GL, Quake II does not even make it to the demo! Crash, blue screen/memory parity error. 3D Studio MAX R2 app will open but as soon as you try and open a file, you get blue screen/memory parity error. For now, if ECC is enabled, I can switch to Direct3D drivers for 3D Studio MAX.

Anyway, I am plugging away and appreciate all you have done. I have another issue which is posted here regarding Forsaken not running at all, get "cannot read video and audio stream".

Have to make this work as I sold my old video card anyway!

Thanks again,

Rich