Gigagyte, Athlon-G200 question: Please help!

[GD]

Hi there,

A friend of mine recently bought a PC and I gave him my old G200 until the T&L market matured a bit more, so that he could get a better card than the Ge-force.

However we have been experiencing several problems... The 3Dmark always hangs at some point of the test. The Q3A hangs immediately at the logo video (it hangs even before the first shot which reveals the id logo is heard).

What's wierd is that the BIOS assigns IRQ 5 to the G200 and IRQ 11 to Soundblaster live... Although this typically does not produce any problems, it does have a serious impact on performance right? (irq 5 is supposed to be a low-priority one)

Here's the config:

Gigabyte Athlon mb, athlon 500, g200 mill 8MB, Quantum KX 13 GB, SB live value, DVD by NEC, Ricoh CD-RW, Panasonic LS-120 drive, 128 PC-100 SDRAM

Any suggestions?

Win98, 4.51, BIOS latest, Dx7a, AMD drivers the ones that come with the CD.

Thank you for your help

[This message has been edited by GD (edited 25 December 1999).]

[GD]

Does this mean I have no hope at all? :-)

[Nuno]

1st thing, move the G200 to IRQ9 or higher. Matrox cards definitly don´t like low IRQ´s in some systems.

The AMD drivers on the cd are the latest ones? Check amd site to comfirm.

[GD]

Thanks for the feedback nuno,

I know low IRQs are not good but I cannot find of any apparent way to change them... In the system's BIOS it only allows me to select between PCI or ISA for each IRQ value...

No the drivers are not the latest but I don't think that installing the latest mini port AGP driver will force the BIOS to assign a different IRQ to any device...

I'll try again though and let you know...

Thanks again,
GD

[Greebe]

GD, none of the Athlon MB's out can you assign the IRQ's on. Mine is sitting happily on IRQ5! I've seen and built many Athlon systems and that's normally where it'll be assigned to. I popping off 8000 3Dmarks (99 Max) at 850mHz.
Yes the latest drivers are most important! Insure you do have the latest drivers from Giga and AMD. Has there been any other Gcards installed prior to installing the G200?

[Kenny[SP]]

hi !
hey i was one of the first happyer athlon owner (back to august and early) i have a problem with video, texture corruptions d3d games or opengl games do works but sound was horrible sometimes, netscape was ok, but ie4-5 was horrible on certain pages... winamp worked correclty in pentimupro optimazation but in mmx and 3dnow the sound was a bit awfull ! and i give it to ya : my athlon was defective not the fpu part nor the integer part everything was ok there but the mmx/3dnow sub functions were baddddddddddd..
3d mark just crached after the very first screen... q3 worked flawless with current icd, but was completely messed with turbogl (and it's 3dnow optimazation)

regarding low irq-high irq i will not say it's bull shit but it does not affect so much performance
my 3d marknumber is 6019 (my g400 isnot overclocked)
and my cpu synthetic bench is 10486 and my thlon is not overclocked too

(athlon 600 + 128 pc100 + g400 dh 32mb)
the only thing i can see is that i don't really get high performance with q3 and turbogl i get the very same thing with th ecurrent icd (i find it a bit more beautifull too )


well hope it will help...

Ken

[GD]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Greebe what kind of drivers could gigabyte offer? Both the northbridge and the southbridge is by AMD, let alone gigabyte doesn't even list this Athlon motherboard on their site... If you know about any drivers please let me know! I'll try to install the latest Miniport AGP driver from AMD and the eide driver one of this days and let you know.

Kenny I also don't think the IRQs are somehow related to the crashes... Anyway the system was built by neither me nor my friend. I do not trust greek computer companies a lot so I will try to convince my friend to format the HD and perform a clean install... I think it is the best solution.

Again, thanks for your interest,
GD

[Greebe]

If I'm not mistaken AMD dropped Gigabyte from their recommended list about a month ago.