Is my G400Max defective?

[Ingo Korb]

I'm having multiple problems with my new (ok, 14 days old) G400 Max and somehow I suspect that this may be because of some hardware problem as I have yet to find a person that has similiar problems with that card.

The problems are:[list=1][*] In glQuake some places are colored that should not be, i.e. there are big red dots on those textures. It seems to happen deterministically, even after a reboot the problematic spots stay in the same place. An example:
[*] In HalfLife the small yellow text has some stray black pixels that are not there in software mode.
[*] The DVDMax feature randomly results in a green screen in about 50% of all tries. In some rare occasions I get a green screen that displays a faint, shifted and red/blue-only picture of the video I'm trying to play back. It seems to happen with every video playback application I tried. Trying to restart the application (or to make it reinitialize the overlay) again and again (and again) eventually results in a correct picture, sometimes it works correct on the first try.
[*] When I'm switching from the windows desktop to a full-screen dos box I get a black screen. I can restore the display by entering "mode co80" blindly. If I try to switch a blacked out dos-box into windowed mode I get a 80x25 window although I'm using 80x50 text mode.[/list=a]

I don't think that any of these problems are related to a heat issue as they even happen when I first switch on my system in the morning.

My system is a Celeron 333 (Slot) on a Gigabyte 6BXC motherboard, 224MB of ram, SB16, SB Live, 3c509 network card, Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card, BT848-based TV card, G400Max, IDE DVD, SCSI CD-Rom and CD-R, 10GB IDE HD and 4 GB SCSI HD.

I'm trying to use the card in Win98 SE using the 5.25 drivers and 1.05 Bios.

I already tried to get in contact with the Matrox tech support, but the only thing I got was an automated reply dated Sept. 14 1999.

Both of the pictures can be found in a bigger version at http://www.fortunecity.de/wolkenkratzer/venus/375/ .

[This message has been edited by Ingo Korb (edited 09-28-1999).]

[Kruzin]

1. Don't have GLQ...but I have heard this is a common problem with that game.

2. That's normal in HL in OGL.

3. I recall hearing this problem, and I saw it myself breifly with the current drivers. I have not seen it with the latest betas I'm testing...so hopefully it is fixed with 5.3x...

4. I used to get this occasionally on my 17" CTX. Turned out it was the monitor not coping with the mode switch all of the time. I don't get it at all with my 21" ADI, in any driver version. When you get this black screen, can you switch your monitor off an on, and will it still be black, or will the display show up?

Overall, I don't think you have a defective card. The fact that you can get into the games and play them without lockups and crashes is a good indicator...

[Ingo Korb]

I have to admit that HalfLife crashed twice on me while I tried to get a better screenshot from those black pixels - but afterwards I saw that my G: drive (where Windows is installed and where it puts the swap file by default) was completely filled up by the swap file. I really wonder why this stupid "OS" wants to swap that much on a 224MB system...

As for the mode switching problem: It's definately not a problem of my monitor (Eizo F56) - if I switch to the secondary input (Linux machine, always in text mode) and back the black picture of the G400 stays. Also it would not show the 80x25 line window when switching the fullscreen dos box to windowed mode.

[This message has been edited by Ingo Korb (edited 09-28-1999).]

[Gurm]

Ingo,

As far as the swap file, I recommend that you just make a permanent 500mb swap file on whichever drive you want and tell Windows to suck it. Then defragment that swap file with Norton or something and be done with it. Worked for me!

- Gurm

[Kronos]

Have you enabled the TV output function for dos screen modes (via the Bios setup utility) for you G400 Max. The reason I ask this is that for some reason, when this feature is enabled, my EIZO monitor (flexiscan T560i-M) has difficulty in displaying Dos screen modes - it often blanks for around five seconds, makes worrying noises before displaying a screen that is either screwed up completely, or virtually unusable due to its position etc. The only conclusion that I can draw is that with dos tv output on, the monitor reaches it limits as to the types of video frequencies it can display.

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Sometimes, just sometimes, the things I say make sense!

[IceStorm]

Heh. You need smarter monitors.

Put a bad signal into my monitors, and it tells not only that the signal is out of spec, but what the spec of the signal it's geting is. Pretty cool when you want to tweak refresh rates.

Check your standby light - it's possible your monitor goes into standby when it gets a bad signal.

Never tried DVDMax on my card, or Clone - just Multi-Monitor mode. Guess I should one of these days...




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Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

[Ingo Korb]

Guess what, my monitor even tells me the exact frequencys if they are out of range and marks the one that exceeds its ratings. I even (ab)used it as a frequency meter because of that, although you need to be careful with the signal levels when doing that.

But - no, currently I'm not using Dos TV out, I can't stand 50Hz on my monitor and I don't really need it.

[This message has been edited by Ingo Korb (edited 09-28-1999).]

[ALBPM]

Make sure that 'Palletized textures' is disabled in the registry.

Paul

[Kronos]

I don't know Icestorm, my Eizo monitor has yet to display a frequency out of range message, I actually find that it always displays a picture, even if it is sometime screwed. And yes, these monitors can cope with 50Hz output, a rare capability nowadays it seems. I'm not sure what's causing this problem, I hate to say it, but a full reinstallation might correct the problem, then again, it might not. Could be a motherboard/graphics card incompatability i.e the card is drawing too much power, but I somehow doubt that this is the case, I'm afraid that your problem has me stumped, anyone else with any suggestions?