ABIT motherboard compatibility

[rduck]

As i have said in another post, i should be getting my G400 MAX soon?!

I have a ABIT BM6 motherboard with Celeron 433 (not overclocked).

I just wanted to see if there are likely to be any probs. Ive heard alot of stories recently.

[Zypher]

The more I hear about this 'Abit connection' with g400 problems, the more I think they're full of shit, or have no clue. Don't put an irq-using card in PCI1 if you can help it. Each oem decides how to enumerate irqs to the slots in their own way. You deal with it.

BH6, g400 Max, 2x mode and BM, apps run just fine. I want more features in drivers, but the hardware doesn't choke at all.

[Haig]

Hi guys,

I have seen many reports here and have been getting quite a few emails at work about ABIT motherboards, G400, and AGP2x.

Common sympton is that when in 2x, system will hang in ~20 minutes regardless of what you are doing.

So far, these are the complaints we have seen and been getting:

PII/G400/BE6/AGP2X
PII/G400/BH6/AGP2X
PII/G400/BX6/AGP2X
PIII/G400/BE6/AGP2X
PIII/G400/BH6/AGP2X
PIII/G400/BX6/AGP2X

No problems when in 1x.

I don't know how long it will be before we fix this since we are having a tough time in reproducing it.

Today, we managed to crash a BX6 with a PII
once but that was it.

I'll let you guys know if we find anything.

Haig

[Sprocket]

I have an ABit BX6 R2/Celeron 466@525 and a G400 and I can only run 2X mode using the 5.15 drivers. Doesn't bother me much as I haven't noticed that much of a speed degredation.

[ALBPM]

I've had the G400 Max in two ABIT boards now without any problems. The BX6 rev 2 and the BE6. The only problems I've had were self induced from IRQ conflicts.
If your using an ABIT Hot Rod PCI card or the Promise AT/66 PCI controller card be sure your not sharing an IRQ with your USB controller. This will cause lockups and stuttering while playing games.
The BE6 has the integrated AT/66 controllers so it isn't as likely to have conflicts with the USB controller.
If your not using the AT/66 or the USB then by all means do disable them in the Device manager so they don't use an IRQ.

Paul

[stevenscott]

I have 2 Abit computers BE6 and a BX6. with my Matrox Mystique G200 I had some crashes on both computers. I have the Matrox card in my BE6 now and I get some unexplained crashes and do not know why it happens. I have tons of different software programs and it is eother buggy drivers or a combination of different software programs. It is almost impossible to tell what causes these unexplained weird crashes, but it really sux. I do not overclock anything and everything is pretty new in both computers.
Win98
128 MB RAM
ABIT BE6 w/PIII 450
Matrox Mystique G200
SBLive
too much stuff to list
----------
Abit BX6 w/Celeron 300a
had my Matrox in now has a Hercules Thriller
and has no crashes
--------



------------------
Steven Palmer
Win98
Abit BE6
Pentium III 450
Matrox Mystique G200
--------
Ordered Rainbow Runner not yet received as of 9/17/99
-----

[GTI]

My BX6R2.01 late batch with G40016MDH is rock solid at 2X/BM always with EVERY PD drivers I used and I did tried all of them. 5.25 now.
And I do run it at 145/193 all the time.

I have Celeron300(no L2)@450.
I ONLY time my system crash is when I push the CPU to 464 and run some CPU hungry games like REVOLT. Backing off back to 450 works every time.The stock Intel fan/sink is holding me back from 464 for sure.

I only have the G400 and a SB16 cards inside.
I have a slot fan right under the G400 but it is not exactly the ideal cooling as the fan is not right over the heatsink and only covers about 1/3 of the G400 sink. But heat is never the problem with my G400, I need a faster CPU.

One very happy G400 customer here.
GTI.


[This message has been edited by GTI (edited 09-25-1999).]

[Guyver]

Check Sig...

Rock solid, no problems - definately longer than 20 minutes here...

Of course my AGP Bus is 89Mhz not 66, so you'd think that would make it less stable, not more....

Way to go Matrox...

AGP2X all the way...



------------------
ABit BE6, PIII-450 OC'd 600Mhz. 128MB PC133HSDRAM, 2.0V, 39C, Matrox Millenium G400 MAX, Adaptec 2940UW, Seagate Cheetah 9.1GB, Quantum 4.5GB, Kenwood 52X TrueX, Mitsumi 3XDVD, Sony SDT-5010 4MM DAT, Toshiba 32X SCSI CD, Memorex 6x2x4x CDRW, Iomega 100MB Zip ATAPI, 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy, 3Com/USR 56K Voice Faxmodem Pro, HP DeskJet 895CXi, Pioneer VSX-3700S Dolby Surround Receiver, Design Accoustics 3-way fronts, Pioneer Surrounds, Logitech Marble FX

[SPSUguy]

Hey,

I have a BH6 with a celeron(a) 300@450. G400 with agp 2x and BM... no problems at all....

Later

------------------
Abit BH6, Celeron 450, Matrox G400 32mb, 256mb ram, IBM 10GB, DVD 5x, MX300

[DOG]

Same answer here as Zypher, definately do not put an IRQ using card in PCI slot 1.

------------------
G400 Max@175.50/219.38, Celeron 300A@464, Abit BH6, SB Live Value, 128M SDRAM, WD Expert 18G 7200rpm, PCI Ethernet with Cable Modem.

[Scytale]

I like this thread, but I suggest renaming it to My card works fine, so you must be an XHole

[ALBPM]

Has anyone having problems with lockups tried increasing the core voltage by 0.1 volts or more to see if that solves the problems. It seems that most of you having problems are not overclocking and running at the default voltage.

Paul

------------------
P3-616(112x5.5), ABIT BE6, 256MB PC100, MILL G400 MAX-32MB on BNC, Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 on D-sub, IBM Deskstar 18GB ATA/66, 21"Trinitron, SCSI CDR/RW, SCSI ZIP,SB Live!Value,USR Voice Faxmodem Pro(USB Ext),Epson 1520 printer,Umax1200S scanner,WN98 and a (Very Messy Desk) ;-P

[Scytale]

Paul, yes, I tried. I tried from 2.0V up to 2.7V, at different CPU speeds. Tried a different CPU too. Nada.

[IceStorm]

For everyone having motherboard/card problems, here's a test that may prove whether or not it's your motherboard:

Manualy set your Front Side Bus down to 50Mhz.

Why? It is known that some revs of some boards have serious problems running at 66mhz. It is entirely possible you received one of a bad batch of boards. If your system runs fine at 50, then you'll need to either have your board repaired, or get a new board.

When the G200 came out, I tried three in my DFI P2BXL board before it occured to me to try this test. When I did, I found that the G200 worked fine when the FSB was set to 50Mhz. This drops the AGP bus speed to 50Mhz, and the card was able to run.

The problem is that the electronics which connect the AGP slot into the motherboard are not always implememented correctly. For the DFI, a resister value needed to be changed for the G200 to have worked properly. Instead of that, I replaced the board with an Asus, and never looked back.

Later revisions of the P2BXL had the fix already applied. The same may be true of the Abit boards.

Just my $0.02


------------------
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!, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 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.

[Nuno]

I have a Abit BX-6 (the original one) and a celeron 300A @ 450 2.2v and NEVER had a single problem with any Matrox card. Before with the G200, now with the G400 (and both overclocked), it never hung up, no graphical corruptions, and ALLWAYS agp 2x - once the G200 stangely got back to AGP 1x when I updated the BX6 bios, but a reinstall of powerdesk fixed it.

My thoughts about Gx00 and Abit combos: People generally buy Abit when they intend to overclock. Then they push the hell out of their systems, crazy FSB, mad overclockings, things start to went wrong and then let´s blame Abit.
Let me tell you one thing. A oc system that seems stable may not be indeed stable. I oc my celeron 300 to 450 2.1v and it would run Q2, Unreal timedemos, Final reality all day long. One day I installed linux and it started to give me all sort of trouble. It couldn´t even compile a kernel. Then I bumped the voltage to 2.2v and bingo.

Ok, ok, some aren´t overclocking at all, but, hey, problems happen. AFAIK, TNT/TNT2 were much more picky about motherbords, ram combinations than Matrox cards ever were.

I intend to keep my BX6 for much more time. I will upgrade the CPU to those new celery with SSE that are due to get out by the beggining of next year. (just hoping those celerys will be regular socket370 compatible).

And when I upgrade the mobo, it will be another Abit. Couldn´t be more satisfied with mine. The support is good, the bios updates very frequent. They do care with their customers and they know their market: overclockers/tweakers.

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 09-25-1999).]