My G200 dosn't seem to like my sound card.

[Jon P. Inghram]

First my system setup...

Mill. G200 AGP 8 meg with PDesk 5.30
Gigabyte GA-586SG(bios rev. 1.14)
5591/5595 SiS chipset
K6-300 running at 300mhz, 66mhz fsb
64 megs of 66mhz SDRAM
64 megs of 60ns EDO
Soundblaster PCI64
A SMC PCI network card
Windows 98

Here's the IRQ list:

0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 (free)
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 Realtek RTL8029(AS) PCI Ethernet NIC
5 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 (free)
10 Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI64
10 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
11 Matrox Millennium G200 AGP - English
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 SiS 5513 Dual PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 SiS 5513 Dual PCI IDE Controller

Ok, my problem... I get terrible sound corruption whenever I move a window, or cause the display to be updated. Two good examples are:

If I'm booting the system and there is a startup sound, it'll make this awful scratching noise while the icons and stuff are being rendered.

Another is if I'm playing a MOD with WinAmp and drag any window around, including it's own. This will cause the sound to distort and slow down. I've got "Show window contents while dragging" off, and it dosn't make much difference. Also, if I'm looking at a web page, and go to a different link, the sound will glitch real bad when the new page loads.

Just to get 5.30 to work I had to crank the AGP apeture up to 256 megs from 64. Otherwise I had the cute BSOD with any 3D apps. I've also played musical PCI slots, and the only thing that happens is the system won't work at all if the soundcard's in the first slot.

Another smaller problem is that Halflife is almost useless in D3D or OpenGL when there are many monsters/objects in the AREA, not just in line of sight. The framerate will drop to next to nothing, and the sound will break up horribly. This does not happen in software mode.

On the other hand, Quake2 runs pretty good now, even when cranked up to 1024x768... go figure... :-)

Well, thanks for any replies in advance!

[Greebe]

One of my computers has a MillG200, SiS 5591/5595 chipset (r581a), and a TB montego and have no problems... Using PD 5.25 though... system doesnt like 5.3 at all. Make sure you are using Aureal's lastest drivers! Here

[Jon P. Inghram]

I'm using the latest drivers from Creative for the Soundblaster, which is a EAX card, not A3D. :-)

I also should add that I'm using DX7, although all the problems were also happening with DX6.1 and PDesk 5.xx. OpenGL DOES seem to be working a little better now with 5.30 though, so it seems they did manage to get at least something right.

[Greebe]

Doesn't the PCI64 use a Vortex 1 chip?

[cirrus]

Greebe Could you help me in questions concerning MSI6167 in thread: http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/005477.html

I'd like to know which IRQ your g400 is using?

--
arto

[Randy Simons]

Generally speaking, Super7 users shouldn't use PD5.30. Most of us have problems with the combination G200, Super7 and PD5.30.

I urge matrox again to fix this issue.

------------------
Randy Simons
Digital Dreams Software http://www.dgdr.com/



[This message has been edited by Randy Simons (edited 21 October 1999).]

[SteveC]

The SB PCI64 is actually a Ensoniq AudioPCI.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", they said.

[Jon P. Inghram]

This problem has been going on for a long time now actually, and it's not just a 5.30 problem. 5.30 has actually improved OpenGL, to the point that I can run Q2 without the D3D wrapper and not have it lock the computer up with the sound looping.

Yesterday I switched back to PDesk 4.51 to see if it made any difference. It did make the sound problem go away, but when I played Everquest, all polygons, including the walls and ground, would "wiggle" for a instant when I stopped moving. It was like it wasn't exactly sure if it should round the FP values of the various coordinates up or down.

Also, the boards running at AGPX1. I've tried forcing X2, but the screen corrupts and locks up upon booting.

Oh, could someone clarify just what the AGP apeture does? From what I understand, it's simply the amount of memory the AGP card can access for textures through system RAM.

[Greebe]

Sorry about that...I have way too many machines around here! LOL That's what I ment ... not thinking straight... use the audioPCI reference drivers... not the Creative labs drivers... I have heard of many with your problem and I avioded it by using PD 5.25 and the AudioPCI drivers instead. Hope this helps! and sorry for the... ummm... oops

[Jon P. Inghram]

Hehe, no problem.
Ok, I went to Ensoniqs site, and downloaded the only driver I could find, "e64w95up.exe" and installed it. Didn't seen to change anything.
Here's something odd I've noticed too, I recently got a new hard drive, and installed Win98 fresh onto it. I used to be able to record at 48kHz, but now it's limited to 44.1kHz. As far as I can tell I installed everything back to basicly the same as before.

[Greebe]

Yup I've noticed buggy installation problems myself. That one really drives me nuts.

[motub]

What I notice is IRQ5.. was that NIC always there? I've never seen anything but SB emulation there... which I notice you don't have.

Yes, I know you aren't playing DOS games, but it seems important nonetheless... I wonder if you look under 'Sound, Video and Game Controllers' in the Device Mgr, if you won't find a yellow exclamation point somewhere...

On the same note (since you just reinstalled Windows), is there a 'Set Blaster' line in your Autoexec. bat? If you are supposed to have SB emu and don't, you may need that, as well (I've had Windows tell me it couldn't enable SB emu because I hadn't set it in DOS... pretty funny, since Bill's been trying to eliminate any slightest whiff of DOS for some years now...)

But this is probably not relevant... if 4.51 made the sound problems go away, why not just try 5.13, then 5.15, then 5.25 and see how high you can get before the problem reasserts itself (if it does).

I agree you should not be using 5.30.. I d/l'd it, but after checking here, I won't even consider installing it on my current system...


------------------
Holly

What? System specs? Oh, yes, right...well, at the moment, it's: Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, Maxtor 7GB HDD, LS-120, Promise Ultra33 EIDE controller, Diamond Monster Sound MX300, HP 8100i CD-RW, Hi-Val (Nakamichi) 16X 5-disk CD changer, Win98 +SR1...oh yeah, and a Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM.



[This message has been edited by motub (edited 22 October 1999).]

[Jon P. Inghram]

I've got the SB emulation turned off to save IRQ's, and possible a little RAM. And as for the autoexec.bat, you're right, there aren't any entries for for the SB; the install must not have gone over right. I'll fix that right way.

And as for testing different versions... I have already gone through that wonderfully pleasant process several times. :-) It seems that the sound problem effects all PDesk 5.xx versions.

This might help a little though, if I uninstall the AGP driver from SiS, pcilist will report the "CPU-to-PCI/AGP bridge" as "AGP enabled", but with "AGP pipeline - 32" and "AGP side-band" disabled. It'll also indicate that it's running at AGP 2x! Under "AGP VGA adapter", it'll show all those items just mentioned as enabled, and also 2x. This will also fix the sound problem! But, Everquest will also lock the computer up if you try to exit the program! I have use CTRL-ALT-DEL to abort EQ...

As to why the NIC is using IRQ 5, I have no idea, it seems to be working fine so far.

[Rags]

SiS??? Are you running an Amptron or a PCChips motherboard? If you are, you are halfway to solving your problem, the other half of the solution is either pitching the motherboard or praying to the chipset patch gods, or getting a VooDoo(which doesn't implement AGP texturing).

Rags



[This message has been edited by Rags (edited 22 October 1999).]

[EchoWars]

Throw the bloody MB in the can...or better yet, break it into four pieces like I did. Two went back to the friggin' bastards who sold me the thing, and two got sent back to Amptron. Funny, I never heard from 'em.

One thing I noticed that was a little odd is the 64meg SDRAM and 64meg SIMM memory. Although 'technically' the SIS chipset supports it, it is a really poor idea. The memory timings in the SIS are pretty questionable to begin with, and you are complicating the hell out of things by mixing them. Pull out the SIMM memory...and get an Epox MVP3G2 or MVP3G-M board. If you can't, at least pull out the old RAM and run that CPU at 4*75...you will see a world of difference..

BTW...that SIS chipset does NO AGP at all. The only way to get the system to run stable is to use the 'force AGP off' registry hack. Like I said....