Are new MAXes clocked lower?

[Ashley]

I just got my hands on a couple of brand new G400s and was surprised to find that while the vanilla is still clocked by default at 126/168MHz, the Max is now clocked at only 130/196MHz (gclk/mclk).

I reflashed the Max BIOS with the latest release, just to be sure, but the clocks remain the same. The vanilla has SEC-6ns. and the Max has SEC-5ns. SGRAM, as before; Windows and PD both recognize the Max as a Max, and PD reports a 360MHz RAMDAC. It doesn't seem to be driver related either: its 130/196MHz under Win98, NT4SP5 and W2K RC2.

Anyone with a recently purchased board noticed anything similar?

[Rags]

Ashley,

What are you using to check this?

Rags

[Ashley]

I checked it using everything at my disposal. Under Win98,

MGATweak 1.12 reports:
SysPLL=195.75
GClk=44.44
MClk=195.95
WClk=44.44

G200Clk 0.21 reports:
SysPLL=195.75

MXck reports:
Sclk=195.750

Under NT4 and W2K, the PowerStrip report is:
MClk=195.8
GClk=130.5

They're pretty consistent results, at least as far as the SysPLL is concerned: its down from ~300MHz to 196MHz.

Also, there seems to be a good reason why the new card is clocked lower: the card is quite stable at 196MHz, but using the Matrox Tweak Utility, going from 100 to just 103% produces rather bad pixel garbage on screen. (:

[Maniac]

That sounds really odd! Have you tried the latest MGA tweak to verify??

[Ashley]

Isn't 1.12 B.015 the latest version? I think so...

It is odd, but then 130/195 is still up there and it wouldn't be the first time a company lowered their clock speeds after initial introduction on the market...

[Maniac]

130/195? Not sure how that could be the speed using standard clock dividers. Something may be ****ing with your clock speed upon initial system bootup. It could be a duplicate registry entry...

------------------
Celeron 300A@464 2.0V, Abit BH6 G400 16meg DH@150/200, Western Digital Expert 18gig, Ricoh mp7040A, Pioneer 6X DVD slot load, Motorola Cable Modem w/DEC ethernet card, Soundblaster 32PNP

[Nuno]

It´s possible: PLL 195, Mem PLL/1, Core PLL/1.5

Interesting stuff. But I don´t believe Matrox would start shipping lower clocked Maxes, that simply wouldn´t make sense.

[Frank]

How many of those Max's do that?

[Kruzin]

Could be a fried BIOS. My vanilla G400 timings and dividers where messed up by an older version of PowerStrip, and the only way out of it was to restore my BIOS with my emergency backup disk (a bios upgrade won't do it...must be a full restore).

[Ashley]

That (recovery) didn't help either - besides, if the BIOS was fried it wouldn't boot at all.

There's nothing actually wrong with the card. It works quite well - its just clocked somewhat lower than what I expected...

[Scytale]

Hi Ashley. You're the first one to mention this, it seems very strange indeed. It may be a fluke - If not we're going to find out soon enough... we'll have screaming people all over the place...

[gbm]

Get the latest MXINFO from my website - it shows all the clocking information for G400 somewhere at the end. You should be able to read the default frequencies and dividers.

Until the site is fully recovered you need to download the .ZIP file with all the utils right from the main news page.

[SwAmPlAdY]

You see what happens when you play with powerstrip

Why don't you get those bin files from Matrox. It looked like it did the trick for eveyone else.

SwAmPy

[Rags]

besides, if the BIOS was fried it wouldn't boot at all.

Sorry, but your BIOS could very well be damaged and still be able to boot. If you have been using PowderSniff, then it is possible that a recovery may be in order.

Rags



------------------
FedEx Sucks!

[Kruzin]

My BIOS was fried by the earlier PS (whether or not you still want to try do hide from that reality is up to you), and it booted and ran fine. It was just clocked slower than it should have been.

Matrox has not changed the clockings of the card. There is either something wrong with your card (*cough*bios*cough*), or you have used the Matrox overclocker, underclocked it, and saved those settings to the registry.

I suggest going with Swampy's suggestion of contacting Matrox and getting a BIN file for your BIOS, if it's not the Matrox Overclocker reg settings coing it.