Tech support? Is this typical of Matrox?

[Red]

On and on it goes.

Took half day off work to call Tech Support only to be told that if the card runs with no problems in AGPx1 outside of slow, then Matrox will not give let me return it. The tech said that the problem with crashing at AGPx2 is because some MB are unable to handle it, even though this not a generic MB but the Asus P2B-F.
This is a crock of s...
First off Asus is known as one of the most stable dependable MB manufactures, plus I have seen many other posts here with the P2B running fine @ x2.
Second, the G400 Max advertises that it runs at x2.
Finally I just told the tech that this is not a solution, so he refered my case to someone who is supposed to get back to me in a couple of days.

Getting to the point that now all I want is a refund and not this run-around. Damn shame cause its a nice card when it works.

Tonight I'm going to try and borrow my buddies TNT2 Ultra and see if it will run in x2.

[Mark F]

Red,
Remember the Matrox cards and the TNT2s use different forms of AGP 2x. The Matrox version is "more advanced", there for "harder" to implement. Being able to acheive 2X with the TNT2 doesn't relait to being able to do it with a Gx00 card.

Can anyone can help explain the difference between DIME and DMA AGP?

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[Himself]

DMA AGP just means the card can initiate transfers from system memory itself without the cpu.

DIME AGP is the ability of a card to pretend that it has really really slow ram onboard.

[GD]

AGP has two ways to access the main memory. The first is known as DMA and the second as DIME. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access whereas DIME stands for Direct Memory Execution. DIME is considered to be better because, unlike the DMA method it does not require the textures to be stored in the graphics card's RAM before being processed. To make this clearer I'll provide an example. In DMA mode the textures are transferred from the RAM to the graphics card local memory, and then continue to the card's processor through a dedicated bus (usually 128 or 256 bits wide). In DIME there is no reason for the textures to be stored in the card's local memory, and are therefore directly transferred to the texture units.

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PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[rinkol]

I am of the same view. In any case, I don't think it is acceptable that a registry hack should be needed for use with a common motherboard using a very common chipset. The BIOS tweaks are enough. In my situation, with a vanilla g400 and bp6, I am on the edge even with agp 1x - of the 5.11, 5.13 and 5.25 drivers, only the first provides any reliability at all.

Robert Inkol

[IceStorm]

It's enirely possible the AGP 2x on the P2B-F is different from the AGP 2x on the P2B. My P2B ran the G200 just fine (never tried my G400 MAX on it).

If you're looking for a solid board, you may want to try the Soyo 6BA+ rev III. Solid as a rock for me so far, and I've been beating on it for the past two months. G200 and G400 MAX both worked fine with it.

You may also want to make sure your power supply's stable - heard some mention of unstable powersupplies causing problems. My case is a SuperPower KS-298 - I think.(www.spower.com). It came with a 250 watt powersupply that seems to be fine with my board.

The other thing to try is underclocking your front side bus to 50Mhz. This will force AGP down to 50Mhz. If you run fine at 50Mhz, then there's a power/timing problem between the G400 and the P2B-F. Wouldn't be the first time someone forgot a resistor on the AGP circuitry.

I went through major headaches when the G200 came out last year - had a DFI P2BXL board that just would not work with the G200. Found it it was an incorrect resistor value on the AGP bus. Runing the FSB at 50Mhz allowed the G200 to run, but a 200Mhz PII-266 was just not my idea of fun.

Ironically, I replaced the P2BXL with an Asus P2B motherboard to rectify the situation. :-)

Just my $0.02

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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.

[Maggi]

Hi Red !

Again my yet unanswered question:

What is your AGP divider set to ???

Depending on your MoBo's revision, you might have a dedicated jumper for choosing between 1/1 and 2/3 ...

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Cheerio,
Maggi
________________________
Asus P2B-DS @ 103MHz FSB
2x P3-450 @ 464MHz
512MB CAS2 SDRAM
Millenium G400 32MB DH

[Mark F]

About the power supply issues:
I was talking with Techs at PC Power&Cooling, and they mentioned that some Asus MoBo's have a problem maintaining constant voltage (they fluctuate). They sent me some parts,that go inline between the power supply connector and MoBo connector, INCASE I get some ASUS boards(was thinking about a P2B-LS). Maybe some ASUS boards still have this problem?
No problems with G200 or G400Max on AOpen AX6BC boards here. Even switching them (the video cards) didn't cause a headache.
Well, actually the G200 once wouldn't go into 2X by itself, after driver upgrade. Forcing it caused the system to freak as soon as 3D was accessed. Went to DEVICE MANAGER, removed video card, rebooted, card was (re)found, all was well again.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD

[Scytale]

Red, I wouldn't accept no for an answer (to RMA). It has been proven (by bcronin, for one) that it's a card dependent problem, not a mainboard problem.

It's one hell of a sucky problem, I hope Matrox will have the balls to handle it the right way...

[Red]

Maggi

Sorry about that, had thought I'd had answered that, but anyway it has always been set to 1/1 since this is with the Celeron 400 SEPP.

IceStorm

I'm using a 300w supply and have been monitoring the voltages with MBM4, although I no that this is not a fool proof method to rule out the PS.

I decided to give Matrox the benefit of the doubt. Went and picked up a new P3B-F Asus to day. Maybe should have read these posts before the purchase, but have used Asus for my last 4 systems, creature of habit.
Hopefully all will be fine.