Matrox G400 + Chaintech MB Problems

[Cube]

Hi,

I had a number of hangups in all sorts of programs after installing a Matrox G400 AGP in my PC.

Here's what helped me to get out of this mess - it is possibly a solution for any VIA-based motherboard having problems with AGP devices:

Step 1 Go into BIOS setup and enable USB
Step 2 Install Win98 on your system
Step 3 Install the VIA 4-in-1 Driver (see below)
Step 4 (Optional) Install MS DirectX 7
Step 5 Install the Matrox drivers (see below for exact version)

The 4-in-1 driver, updated 09/06/99, is suitable for all VIA chipsets using Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT. This driver will install the: IDE Busmaster (2.1.41), VIA AGP 3.55, IRQ Routing Driver (1.3a) and VIA Registry (ACPI). Also included is the VIA DMA Tool which facilitates the adjustment of DMA settings. The 4-in-1 Driver will automatically detect which versions of drivers you are currently using as well as determine the necessity to upgrade. The driver is available at http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm.

I fear that the sequence of these installation steps is fairly important.

My configuration: Chaintech 5AGM2 main board with AMD K6-II 350 MHz 3D processor and VIA chipset, Matrox G400 32MB AGP graphics adapter. Matrox powerdesk version 5.25.019. OS: MS Windows 98 Second Edition. It now works with 2x AGP enabled, even when all the options of the graphics adapter are turned on (including bus mastering). I have not seen incompatibilities with my Soundblaster Live card so far, as indicated in other postings.

Oliver

[tish beta2]

My on-board SCSI controller has the same IRQ as the onboard USB ROOT HUB. I have a usb mouse and two SCSI HDs so it works fine with a scsi controller... can you delete or disable the USB drivers?

Also, do you have the latest BIOS for your G400? download this <A HREF="ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/unified/bios/bios_104.exe">unified bios</A> and run the file UBiosWin.exe

[Red Dwarf]

I also had some troubles installing my G400 32 Dualhead on the 5agm2 mainbord. I solved by installing the via 4 in 1 drivers but not the IRQ routing drivers because the my system lockedup at startup.

[Overlode]

Matrox G400 + Chaintech MB Problems

Having upgraded to an AMD K62-450, Chaintech 5AGM2 (VIA MVP3 chipset) and a Matrox G400 32Mb Singlehead, I've had a hell of a time just getting the Matrox to work at all. I've experienced the usual (judging by other posts) lock-ups etc. solved by disabling bus-mastering and only using 1x AGP for stability, but I've had to turn off various pipeline/cache options in the BIOS just to get the system to boot into Win98SE.
The trouble is, I'm not particularly happy with the performance of the cardm the techdemo seems to be running at 15-20fps max. (my estimate!) - I'd really like to have bus-mastering enabled, AGP 2x, OpenGL acually working (always crashes at the moment) and Win98 shutting down properly - is this too much to ask? Has anyone had any similar experiences with a happy ending?

Thanks for any assistance...

PS.
I'm using the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers, latest G400 BIOS, latest Matrox Win98 drivers. All my PCI slots are free, one ISA slot used for my ancient Yamaha sound card. According to device manager I have USB drivers assigned to same IRQ as the Matrox - I have no USB ports, so could this be a problem?

[Overlode]

Thanks for the help, guys!

Last night I had success when I removed the VIA IRQ Routing driver (as mentioned by Red Dwarf) which then enabled me to turn on bus mastering without any lock ups. I did remove all the USB stuff that seemed to be sharing an IRQ with the G400, which I think had the side-effect of removing the VIA IRQ driver. AGP 2x works as well, although if I use the standard Win98 AGP driver some games won't start. No crashes, they just fall over when trying to initialise the display. Installing the VIA AGP driver seems to fix this. I'm now toying with the idea of doing the Enable USB/Install Win98 etc. procedure to improve reliability.

The bus mastering did have a dramatic effect on the card's performance - definitely the 30%-40% speed increase I've seen quoted before. But, OpenGL still fails , throwing up an exception every time a screen saver/OpenGL game is started. I've tried both the standard Matrox OpenGL ICD and the beta ICD, but without any success. I'd really like to get this fixed - anyone got any ideas??

Last point - have all you other 5AGM2/G400 owners had to disable all the DRAM caching etc. in the BIOS? I will experiment now that I've got the G400 working nicely, but I don't like the idea of not getting the max. performance out of my new CPU!

Thanks again,

Chris
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PS. G400 BIOS is latest (1.04), I was going to re-flash it, but the flash prog. told me I already had the new version.